Word Spy - first-person shooter

first-person shooter n. A type of computer game in which the player assumes the perspective of a gunman.

Example Citation:

The media-savvy retired Lt.-Col. David Grossman made headlines with remarks about video games being 'murder simulators' that train kids to kill, spawning a potential generation of mini-Rambos.

He focused particularly on . . . the much-maligned first-person shooter genre of PC games—Doom, Quake and their many descendants.
—Steve Tilley, "Learning to Kill?," The Toronto Sun, September 17, 1999

Earliest Citation:

One of the newest action titles on the Sega CD system is Psygnosis' sci-fi title, Microcosm. In this semi-innovative game, a whole army of shrunk-down enemies has been injected into the bloodstream of an important executive, and you must stop their assassination attempt from the inside.

You control a small fighter armed with an assortment of guns in a bland, first-person shooter that takes place inside the executive's blood vessels and bones.
—Jim Prange, "Microcosm almost a star," The Grand Rapids Press, April 19, 1994

Notes:

This phrase first appeared online, and there are a number of newsgroup citations from 1993 (the earliest being an April 9, 1993 post).