The word shooter generally stands for all the different games in which the main action is to shoot on the enemies. Hence, it refers to first person shooters, third person shooters, and shoot'em up.

First person shooters (FPS) are a very popular video game genre in which the player plays with a subjective view, that is to say the player sees through the eyes of the character, he sees exactly what the character sees. The most famous games belonging to this video game genre are Doom, Counter Strike or Far Cry for instance.

AS opposed to the FPS, there are the third person shooters (TPS). In this kind of video games, the character played by the player is seen from the exterior, the players is behind the character and sees his back, following the examples of Gears of Wars, Max Payne or GTA.

Shoot'em up is an old video game genre, which was a hit during the 80's. The player usually controls a spaceship with a view mode from above, and he has to destroy the opposite spaceships that scroll down the screen vertically. The first game that enabled this game genre to become famous was Space Invaders.