Airdrop Gaming's HipShotDot is apparently aimed at boys who like to cheat

Game accessory maker Airdrop Gaming's HipShotDot red dot sight attachment for first-person shooter games is a simple product that turns an age old gamer trick into a fully realized product to assist players. Too bad the company's views on gamers isn't modernized like its product.

"Gamers ever since Doom would place a piece of tape in the center of the screen and mark it with a marker to make their own little reticle on the TV, so then they'll have these sights on their television all night," Airdrop Gaming co-founder Tim Murphy told Polygon at E3 2014, calling the HipShotDot a "new tool for the toolbox in the man cave."

The attachment can be used to assist gamers in any first-shooter title, such as Call of Duty and Battlefield by highlighting the exact centre of the screen. For instance, it allows Call of Duty players, to shoot "from the hip" without having to zoom to find the centre of the screen, which potentially wastes precious microseconds on the battlefield and gives the player a faster reaction time.

The HipShotDot builds on sticky tape method by attaching a suction cup with an embedded USB-powered LED with a second suction cup to help hold the micro-cable in a straight line down the front of the TV. The installed product looks inelegant and a little unsightly but doesn't hugely distract from a match of Call of Duty. The product's six-foot micro-cable can plug into any USB port to power it such as a console or phone charger.

"So we designed this. It is called the ‘Mad Mother' release," Murphy said in response to if the company envisions any issues with a cable hanging from the face of a TV. "So if you are a 12-year old and it is 3:00 a.m. and they hear you gaming and they come running down the stairs and tell you to go to sleep, it easily detaches."

The product launched recently for a recommended retail price of $29.99 and Murphy says that community feedback has been largely positive. What the company has been addressing is player concerns that using the product is cheating.

"We can say that it is not software based, it is not going to shoot for you," he said. "You still need to know how to play and some skill set to be able to play. So when it comes to cheating, we say it is probably like that much [indicating inches] rather than that much [indicating feet]."

Users don't have to apply excessive pressure in order to make it stick to the screen and residue left on TVs "is actually an improvement over the tape idea." The start-up has more products coming out for first-person shooters in the future and is also looking at releasing a new controller that is "not a cheat or a games mod." He couldn't share further details about it.