The Degrees of Perspective in games
An essay on the degrees of perspective in interactive entertainment
by Stephen 'Crispy' Etheridge
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Imagining a second-person shooter?
- The modular release model
- Degrees of perspective in games
- The 3 degrees
- The interactivity corollary
- The persistence of non-interactivity in games
- Narrative perspective in games
- 2nd-person narrative
- 1st-person narrative
- 3rd-person narrative
- Viewpoint perspective in games
- 1st Person
- 3rd Person
- Plausibility of a 2nd Person?
- Conclusion
- ConcTitle
- About the Author
- Extra Reading
Introduction
So my work buddies and I were sitting around chatting, when one of them asks: "Why don't we have second-person shooters?" The background for this is the unspoken void that exists between first-person shooters like Half-Life and Call of Duty, and third-person shooters like Max Payne and Gears of War. What would a second-person point of view be?
- 1st, 2nd, 3rd person in literature. Brief summary.
Degree of perspective in games
Establishing modes of perspective
The first port of call was, as is usual for most dilemmas, Wikipedia. Using the 3 grammatical persons
of the English language as a basis for comparison, we attempted to examine the notion of a 2nd-person perspective. In English, the first person is 'I' (or 'we' if plural) and the third person is 'he/she/it' (or 'they'). It was immediately clear that the third, as far as vision goes, the first-person is where you inhabit the character and see through your own eyes, and the third person is where the character and player are not the same person, but the player is following the character's movements as a spectator.
Here the conversation became muddled as another browser tab was brought up to consult point of view in literature
P2
- Forms of 'address', how they are broken down in games: activity, perspective, narrative
- For a game to be a game, it must be first-person activity (e.g. interactive), otherwise it is classified as a film, machinima, etc.
- 2nd/3rd-person interactivity does still linger on in games, however, as non-interactive cut scenes (non-in-game)
Narrative perspective in games
P3: Narrative in games
- 2nd person is effectively game books ("you are in a forest, what will you do?"). Zelda, Half-Life qualify as 2nd-person narrative? All narrative is relayed directly to the player in direct address.
- 1st-person is sandbox, see The Sims (and Will Wright quote)
- 3rd person is flashback sequences, FMVs, cut scenes
Viewpoint perspective in games
P4: Perspective
- 1st
- 3rd
- What is/could be 2nd-person perspective? Knightmare-esque game? Would it be enjoyable? Is co-op like tank commanding in Red Orchestra a form of 2nd-person perspective, where your view is reduced and other players tell you where you are? Being eaten by an Onos?
Conclusion
Modes of perspective
Perspective has 3 modes that, like language, can take plural or singular states. These are the first, second and third persons.
Degrees of perspective
All media has 3 degrees of perspective: action, narrative and action.
Action
Most forms of entertainment are non-interactive, and therefore the nature of the experience is largely dictated by a third party - the artist/author. In an interactive medium of entertainment, such as the videogame, the 'player' has an increasing involvement in determining the nature of the protagonist's experience, depending on how interactive the experience is perceived to be. Videogames can be considered to satisfy, therefore, a first-person action perspective.
The line here is very blurred when attempting to determine what second-person perspective of 'action' would be. Generally speaking, the action of the protagonist would have to be performed by the audience, but perhaps not entirely of their own free will. Mind control or hypnotic suggestion would seem to satisfy these requirements, but it is difficult to accept how personal entertainment could be derived from this 'enslaved' experience (although not impossible to conceive if imagined in light of the existence of certain individuals with a predilection towards masochistic behaviour).
Instead perhaps a balance between dominant and submissive roles, where the dominant element of the partnership determined either the range of actions available to, or the effectiveness of the actions of the submissive party. Certain games include such a partnership: Mariokart: Doubledash's multiplayer allows two players to occupy the same vehicle, one taking control of the steering and speed of movement, the other deciding when and how to use various pickup items that are collected during the race. Here, the dominant party is the driver, who determines not only when or even if the passenger is granted a random item by driving over a pickup, but where it can be dropped or in which direction it is released. The passenger is only able to control the timing and method of deployment of the pickup they receive.
About the Author:
The author works as a professional games tester, currently contracted to Sega Europe, and is currently working on a mod that plays heavily with subjectivity of interaction and narrative.
He can be reached at crispy[dot]pie[at]gmail[dot]com.