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The virtual gun is so often at the forefront of gaming discussion. For 20 years it has been the weapon of choice for the majority of both games and players. It's the first thing we see when developers show off their latest graphics engines, and there's always one at hand when a violence controversy springs up in politics or the mainstream media. There's no secret behind the gun's ubiquitous nature. Its action can be replicated with relative ease using gamepads and the keyboard and mouse alike, and as Simon Parkin put it in his look back at Portal "There is no tool better suited to giving players the ability to affect objects both near and far in a 3D world, extending the player's reach into the television screen." Such is the gun's elementary effectiveness that over the course of two decades its representation has barely changed at all.
The virtual sword, on the other hand, has followed a very different path. It's been around as long as the gun has, but concealed among the dice-rolls and narrative threads of fantasy RPGs, and as one choice of many in the hack 'n' slash genre. Occasionally it will see a game dedicated towards it, but usually it only plays a bit-part, a supporting role.
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