Hate the player, not the game: Why did the Christchurch shooters video look like a game?

One of the most remarkable circumstances of the Christchurch shooting incident was the fact that the gunman was able to livestream the first 17 minutes of the attack on the social media platform Facebook. The stream captured the gunmans drive to the Al Noor Mosque until he left the mosque. Perhaps the most notable feature was the use of a first-person perspective achieved with the use of a head camera. For those familiar with video games, first-person perspective is a popular gaming cinematic device. The perspective is most often employed in games that involve guns and shooter-versus-shooter narratives. In effect, the gunman had intentionally replicated the look and feel of a popular mainstream video game genre. Further, the gunman casually referenced a popular internet personality who streams themselves playing games before exiting his vehicle to start the shooting.