This paper will focus on the inter-relationships between media, technology
and culture as demonstrated by the online multiplayer FPS scene, and will
make explicit the degree to which game texts and associated technology
facilitate culture and the formation of community, and how in turn such social
structures inflect and determine the development of computer games, related
Internet technologies and subsequent models for software development and
distribution. Beyond the idea of “participatory media”, I argue that multiplayer
FPS games have become “co-creative media”; neither developers nor players
can be solely responsible for production of the final assemblage regarded as
“the game”, it requires the input of both.