I work for a small online games retailer in Waltham, Massachusetts. I work with many people who play video games. There is one kid in particular, though, I'll call him...Keith. His favorite game of all time is Grand Theft Auto IV. He plays the online multiplayer from when he gets home at 5pm, until he goes to bed at 2am. And on weekends? He plays it from the moment he gets up until the moment he goes to bed. I am not exaggerating at all. He is hardcore about that game.

We talk games all the time, to make the day go by. I'll talk once in a while of my exploits on Call of Duty 4 over Xbox Live, or how fantastic games like BioShock or Portal are. I'm not a huge shooter fan, honestly. The three I mentioned are pretty much all I've played in the last two years or so. But what happens when I mention them? He flips his lid!

"First person shooters are so fuckin' dumb. You have to be a retard to like them," he'll say. I can kind of respect that. Some people get motion sickness, or some people find the genre to have way too many generic titles to really sift through and find the truly outstanding ones.
"Why?" I would ask.
"Because the character is a gun. It's a fuckin' gun. That's so stupid! Why would I want to play as a gun?"
"But you aren't playing as a gun. You are playing from the perspective of a character. You see what they see."
"No you aren't! You're playing as a gun! No personality, you can't even see anybody. You just see the gun. Why would I play as a gun? I don't get it."
"But you're missing out on some of the best stories ever told in games! BioShock is so incredibly immersive and beautifully done and--"
"Nope. That game sucks. You're a gun, it's dumb."
"But you're not a gun! You are a man who ends up in this abandoned underwater society and you find out how the place fell apart and--"
"No you don't, you're playing as a gun. You're an idiot for liking those games."


So, let me ask you all this: Do you ever feel like you are playing as a gun in a first person shooter? Are there FPSes where the immersion is just not there and you think you're just playing as a gun? Or do some people just not understand that there is more than one way to see your character in a game?

UPDATE: As of January of 2009, he has turned around out of the blue. After tons of begging and pleading for him to play CoD4, Left 4 Dead, and other outstanding shooters, he has embraced the first person perspective. He now has replaced GTA IV with CoD:WaW as his game of choice every day, and frequently plays L4D when myself and others are online to play it with him.