Lecture: The Shooter, Violence, Loops and Pleasure by Christopher B. Patterson

This event will focus on the experiences and impacts of "shooter games," otherwise known as first person shooters. It will begin with a talk and discussion on the ways real-world urban, police, and militaristic violence has been attributed to shooters, and the ways that designers, artists, modders and gaming communities have attempted to undermine these narratives of gamic violence. The second hour of the event will be an autobiographical playthrough workshop that will ask participants to "replay" the ways that games have personally impacted and influenced them in their artistic, academic, and daily practices, and to think differently about race, religion, ideology, gender, nationhood, etc. Discussions will tend toward the games within the Far Cry series, as well as Counter-Strike, Halo, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, and other games. No gaming experience is needed.

Christopher B. Patterson, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, The Social Justice Institute (GRSJ)
University of British Columbia / unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) nations.

Books
Open World Empire: Race, Erotics, and the Global Rise of Video Games (New York University Press, 2020)
All Flowers Bloom (Westphalia Press, 2020)
Transitive Cultures: Anglophone Literature of the Transpacific (Rutgers University Press, 2018)
Stamped: an anti-travel novel (Westphalia Press, 2018)