PERSPECTIVE
Perspective is a wide-ranging term in the context of video games. It encompasses a means of constructing images with the illusion of dimensionality; a set of literary conventions relating to the point of view from which stories are told; the visual perspective from which players see a game; a player’s perspective for seeing and interfacing with a game; and to the rhetorical perspective embedded in a game’s design. This essay introduces each of these forms of perspective.
Linear Perspective
The most fundamental form of perspective is linear perspective, a technique used to create the illusion of three-dimensional space. Linear perspective employs a three-axis grid (horizontal or x-axis, vertical or y-axis, and depth or z-axis) to create a mathematically-derived pictorial illusion of space.
The development of linear perspective techniques during the Renaissance was part of the increased interest in the realistic representation of the visible world in two-dimensional images. The sense that objects appear larger in the foreground and smaller as they move into the distance is based on pictorial construction strategies dating back to early fifteenth-century Europe. Filippo Brunelleschi, a painter and architect, is thought to have developed the technique as part of his creative practice. Art historians have long believed that artists during the Renaissance thought of linear perspective as being akin to a window onto a pictorial world—we see through the flat image and into an imagined space inside it. Though this idea has been brought into question, it is true that the technique was an important tool in the move to authentically represent the visible world and its depth.
Linear perspective techniques are used in all forms of non-photographic image-making—illustration, comics, painting, animation, and, of course, video games. There are three primary methods used to create different vantage points on illusionistically-represented spaces: one-point, two-point, and three-point perspective.
One-Point Perspective
In one-point perspective, a single point, also known as the vanishing point, is placed at the middle of the horizon line. This is used to set the point to which all lines tracing along the depth (or z-axis) of the environment will move. This simulates the sense of lines converging in space if we stood at the center of a road looking into the distance along a long, flat road—the road and its painted lines will appear to converge on a single point on the horizon line.
In the context of video games, one-point perspective is used to not only construct the illusion of depth, but also constrains the player’s view of the space. Games using strict one-point perspectival construction tend to set the “camera” on a single line in the extreme foreground of the picture plane just above the floor plane. The camera then is either fixed at a central point on this line, or slides along the line from side to side.
For video games, these techniques are important in both two-dimensional and threedimensional representations of a game’s environment. Street Fighter II (Capcom, 1991), for example, uses the illusion of receding space to articulate the various zones of the screen and their relative importance to the play experience. The foreground is occupied by the player characters, and is clearly the primary focal point—a slightly receding stage on which the primary game activity takes place. The middle ground, which includes the setting, is of secondary importance. It provides the “set dressing” in which the fight takes place. Finally, the background provides tertiary visual information that is the least important to the play experience, but that still adds to the illusion of a realistic-looking environment.
The arcade game Moon Patrol (Irem, 1982) uses linear perspective in another way. The technique of parallax is employed to create the illusion of a player’s vehicle moving through a realistically-receding space. Parallax involves receding horizontal planes perpendicular to the depth axis moving horizontally at different speeds to simulate the effect of watching something move along an open vista. The further a plane is down the z-axis (away from the viewer) the more slowly it moves across the screen.
One-point perspective creates a sense of moving into a game’s space as well. In Tempest (Atari, 1980), the play space is constructed using one-point perspective, which creates the sense that the various elements are moving up the walls toward the player. In HyperZone (HAL Laboratory, 1991), the player moves forward toward a single point on the horizon line, even when the player’s ship moves from side to side along the horizontal plane. A similar illusion is found in Galaxy Force II (SEGA, 1988), a sprite-based corridor 3-D shooter.
Two-Point Perspective
In two-point perspective, lines converge to vanishing points to the right and to the left, and are thus often positioned at an angle from the viewing plane. So instead of creating the illusion of all objects in the image appearing to recede toward a single point, the objects now appear to move off toward points on either side of the horizon line. In Wolfentein 3D (id Software, 1992), the camera is locked onto a single vantage point that limits the player from looking up or down. As such, the world is viewed from a two-point perspective throughout game play. Though DOOM (id Software, 1993) expanded the design of the environment to include stairs, ramps, and ceilings of varying height, the game still allows movement along the x-axis and z-axis.
Three-Point Perspective
Three-point perspective provides a vantage point that views the constructed world on an angle from both the picture plane and from the ground plane. As a result, objects are seen from above and the side.
This technique is used in isometric games such as Zaxxon (SEGA, 1984). The impact on the play experience is noteworthy, as players are asked to mentally rotate the environment in order to determine when to shoot, when to drop bombs, when to dodge enemy ships, etc.
Three-point perspective is also used in 2.5-D games—games that appear to have depth created through the employment of the perspectival technique, but which have static, pre-rendered graphics. SimCity 2000 (Maxis, 1994) is an excellent example. The fixed camera is positioned 45 degrees above the ground plane.
In games with three-dimensional graphics, this adds the ability for the “camera” to move along both the horizontal and vertical axis, and to swivel both side to side and up and down. Quake (id Software, 1996) took full advantage of three-point perspective by allowing the player to tilt the camera up or down, thus changing the vertical angle along with the horizontal angle.
Narrative Perspective
The second fundamental form of perspective for games is that of the narrative. In literature, the narrative perspective speaks to the voice from which the story is told. The places, people, animals, objects, and interactions within the story are understood through the filter of the perspective from which the story is told. In other words, the perspective functions as a filter through which the story is presented. There are four narrative perspectives used in games: first person, second person, third person, and omniscient. Two additional narrative strategies are often employed in video games: the epistolary voice and the unreliable narrator.
First Person
First-person narratives are told from the perspective of one of the characters in the storyworld. This provides us with insights into the character’s thinking, their understanding of the goings-on in the storyworld. We “see” the world, its inhabitants, and the events taking place there through the narrator’s eyes. As such, we can only know what they know, and see and do what they do. Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) is a classic example from American literature in which the reader experiences the story from the perspective of the main character.
In film, a first-person perspective is often handled through voice-overs. A classic example in film is Blade Runner (1982). In the director’s cut of the film, there was no voice-over, which rendered the film from an omniscient perspective. But in the studio cut, a voice-over track narrated by Decker, the main character played by Harrison Ford, was added. This turned the film into a first-person narrative.
In video games, first-person perspective operates differently. What differs is that the player becomes the lens through which we see the world, rather than through a narrator’s recounting. The player is able to control what s/he sees, and within the limits of the game’s mechanics, what s/he does. This is one of the fundamental unique characteristics of games as a cultural form.
An interesting take on the first-person narrator voice is found in Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (Ubisoft Montreal, 2003). Though the game is seen from the third-person perspective, the story is told through first-person narration. Anytime the player fails to successfully guide the prince through a game play sequence, the prince says something like, “No, no, that’s not how it happened.” This handling of fail states positions the game in an interesting narrative position—it is both first person in the literary sense, but also omniscient, in that the prince knows things we do not as the player about how the story should unfold.
Second Person
Second-person narrative is when the reader is placed inside the story through the use of the pronoun “you” to describe the primary actor. This device was used in Choose Your Own Adventure books as it provides an active role for the reader. In games, this method is most famously used in text-based adventure games such as ADVENTURE (Will Crowther and Don Woods, 1976) or Zork (Infocom, 1979). The world is described for the player, and the player’s place in the game is represented in the second person: “You see a mailbox at the end of a road.” or “You pick up the lamp.” This works well in textbased games, as literary conventions allow the player to occupy an active role within the gameworld.
In graphically-presented video games, what would be called second-person narration—typified by the use of the pronoun “you” in descriptions of character behaviors—would be more readily identified as the third-person vantage point seen in “over-the-shoulder” cameras such as in Assassin’s Creed (Ubisoft Montreal, 2007) or Tomb Raider (Core Design, 1997).
Super Mario 64 (Nintendo, 1996) has a peculiar narrative twist that makes it technically a second-person perspective, though it is more comfortably a third-person vantage on the world. Lakitu, typically an enemy, becomes the camera operator throughout the game. We therefore see Mario through Lakitu’s eyes. This is more a narrative conceit than anything else, but it is technically the second-person literary voice employed in a game.
Third Person
Third-person perspective is typically narrative presented by an outside voice, someone outside the story who observes or knows about the goings-on inside the storyworld. Third-person address can further be divided into subjective and objective categories. Fairytales such as “Little Red Riding Hood” and “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” are third-person perspective. On the one hand, subjective third-person address allows the narrator access to the thoughts of one or more characters within the story. Objective third-person address, on the other hand, does not allow the narrative voice insights into the thoughts of the characters.
In games, third-person perspective is difficult to identify as either subjective or objective. The play experience is understood objectively through the information provided by the game, but subjectively through the player’s control of their character.
Omniscient
A variation on the third person is the omniscient voice. This is an all-knowing perspective—a narrator who knows everything about the storyworld and yet still resides within it. The omniscient narrator is privy to knowledge unavailable to characters within the storyworld, including waiting surprises, proper interpretations of events, and backstory elements. This additional information provides greater depth beyond what is available in the storyworld, thus enriching the narrative experience.
The omniscient voice is most clearly present in tabletop role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons (TSR, 1974). The dungeon master is in a position of knowing far more than the players. This differs from traditional storytelling, however, as the player is also a character, and so can only know what is taking place within the game. In video games, the omniscient voice is quite rare, as games intentionally leave the player to discover the story, and more importantly, to generate it through their play.
Epistolary Voice
This is a particular technique for delivering information through written materials—letters, diaries, books, etc.—within a story. In games, this has become a tried-and-true method for providing backstory. Myst (Cyan, 1993) provides the vast majority of the player’s understanding of the gameworld through books and video letters. In more recent games such as Dishonored (Arkane Studios, 2012) and Gone Home (The Fulbright Company, 2013), players find notes scattered throughout the world that provide them with information on characters, places, events, and backstory elements.
Unreliable Narrator
A particular spin on narrative voice comes through the unreliable narrator. This is a character or narrator that misunderstands or is confused about the goings-on inside the storyworld. Given the player-driven story progression of games, this is a challenging device to use. Still, there are examples, including Braid (Number None Inc., 2008) and Heavy Rain (Quantic Dream, 2010). Tim, Braid’s player character, has the impression that he can undo the mistakes he made that led to the loss of his princess whom he must rescue from a monster. In the end, the player discovers Tim is in fact the monster, and the princess has fled to escape him. And there is a similar surprise at the end of Heavy Rain. The unreliable narrator is a difficult literary technique to use in video games, as the player controls the primary character (if there is one), and so needs to sense that s/he is working with actionable information about the goings-on in the gameworld.
View Perspective
View perspective relates to how the player sees the gameworld. In video games, the view perspective ties together the visual construction of the gameworld with the narrative perspective. There are three visual perspectives: first person, second person, and third person. The view perspective differs from the narrative perspective in that the view perspective is about what is seen, not how the story is told.
First Person
First-person point of view is the vantage point through which the gameworld is seen through the character’s eyes. This is the transposition of first-person narrative perspective. This creates a direct connection between the interface—the mouse on PC and Mac games, the left stick in most console games—and the player’s ability to see the world.
The traditional approach to first-person perspective in a game was first used in Wolfenstein 3D (id Software, 1992) and refined through id’s DOOM and Quake. The player looks out onto the gameworld as if the screen were the player’s field of vision. Seeing the gameworld through the player character’s eyes has become the primary way first-person shooters present the gameworld to the player. Often, the player can only see their weapon-equipped arm.
Second Person
Second-person point of view is seeing the character through another character’s eyes. Because second-person narrative involves a narrator who tells the reader about their actions, we could loosely consider all screen-based video games to be second person. But because the player typically controls themselves within the game, we do not say that games use second-person visual perspective.
Second-person point of view is infrequently found in games. The best examples are tabletop games such as Dungeons and Dragons and text-based adventure games such as Zork or A Mind Forever Voyaging (Infocom, 1985). In a tabletop game campaign, for example, the dungeon master describes the goings-on from a second-person perspective: “As your party walks into the mouth of the cave, you encounter a massive spider inside a pit.”
Third Person
Third-person perspective is common in many video games with three-dimensional graphics when the player needs to see his/her character in the context of the play space. There are five primary ways this is handled: over the shoulder, rear view, axonometric, top-down, and front view.
Over-the-shoulder vantage points are found in games such as Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (Naughty Dog, 2009) and Resident Evil 4 (Capcom, 2005). Both use the device of locating the camera in a persistent location over the player character’s shoulder, which allows the player to see their avatar situated inside the world while still making clear who the player’s character is. This approach models a similar cinematographic technique for making clear the primary character in a scene.
Massively multiplayer online games, including World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment, 2004) default to a third-person perspective that places the camera behind the character (though players can also opt to see the game from a first-person perspective). This has the effect of creating a clear focus on the player character, while providing a more comprehensive view of the gameworld. It also creates a sense of separation from the character, almost making the avatar more of a “puppet” in the player’s hands.
Axonometric view games use a similar technique, though even further pulled back. In games such as Crystal Castles (Atari, 1983), the player’s avatar moves throughout the game space that needs to be seen as a whole. And so the player is given a fixed vantage point above and at an angle to the vanishing point. Axonometric is also used in Advance Wars (Nintendo, 2001). In this case, the player needs to see a large swatch of the gameworld in order to keep up with numerous player-controlled resources.
Real-time strategy games such as StarCraft (Blizzard, 1998) and Civilization V (Firaxis Games, 2010) use a third-person perspective as well, though with the camera pulled back much further to expose the player-controlled elements in an equal way to elements controlled by either other players or by the game itself.
Top-down or overhead games such as Tank (Atari, 1974) have an even more pronounced separation between the player and their representations in the game. This from-above vantage point creates an objective view of the gameworld.
Front-view games such as Space Invaders (Taito, 1978) use a similar visual objectivity, but with the player looking out at the gameworld instead of down at it.
Player Perspective
The construction of the world, the point of view from which the story is told within the game, and the vantage from which the player sees the world, all build the player’s perspective on a game. Even the simplest video game is framed by these interlocking elements to build up who the player is, what s/he does, and how s/he feels during the play experience.
The player’s understanding of himself/herself is constructed out of a number of elements: the way the player is represented (via an avatar, as a controller of elements, etc.); what the player can do (e.g. shoot, run, climb, pick up, etc.); the micro- and macro-goals assigned to the player (climb the wall, eliminate enemies, save the princess), among other criteria.
Who the Player Is
The character or role the player assumes—a space marine, an archeologist, an elf, a god-like controller, a plumber, a rocket ship—is one important layer of framing inside the game. This provides the player perspective on what s/he can expect to be asked to do, how s/he can achieve those goals, and ultimately whether or not s/he perceives a game to be something s/he will want to play or not. There are many approaches to constructing a player’s understanding of who s/he is in the game. These include the visual characteristics, through the attributes they have, through backstory, and through in game narrative elements.
The avatar appearance creates certain expectations in a player. Lara Croft, for example, suggests she will be strong, athletic, and prepared for outdoor adventures based on her physical appearance and attire. In role-playing games, a character’s abilities are visually represented. A character with a long sword or an axe would be reasonably interpreted to be best suited for hand-to-hand combat, while a character with a bow or musket would be assumed to be best for long-range combat.
Story as well shapes a player’s expectations of who s/he is within the game. Assassin’s Creed II (Ubisoft Montreal, 2009) begins with a scene that establishes the player character as Desmond, who is transported back in time via the Animus to assume the role of his ancestor Ezio. In Half-Life 2, the player learns about Dr. Freeman’s reputation as a scientist and respected resistor through non-player character interactions.
What the Player Can Do
The actions the player can carry out during a game provide the next layer of perspective. Given who the player is inside the game, the next thing to understand is what they are able to do. Can they run, jump, shoot, climb, throw, pick up, or cast spells? In games, a player’s understanding of their experience is through the actions s/he carries out, and the impact s/he has on the game state, and their progress in moving through the game. The player character’s abilities at once expand the visual cues and the narrative devices and build upon them by establishing an action vocabulary for the player.
The crowbar in Half-Life 2 (Valve, 2004) is a classic example. The player begins the game with only the ability to walk and look. Before too long, the player encounters a crowbar, which teaches the player how to interact with objects. Once picked up, the crowbar adds a new ability: smashing things.
What the Player Is Asked to Do
The goals of the game provide another layer of perspective. Is the player asked to save a princess? Seek out treasure? Save the world? Investigate some aspect of the game designer’s life? The goals the player is asked to achieve provide the third layer of player perspective.
To ensure the player understands how to use their crowbar in Half-Life 2, the player is put in a situation in which further progress is impossible until the crowbar is employed.
What the Player Feels
These layers of perspective help generate the player’s emotional response to the game; and the emotional response, whether it be celebratory, happy, frustrated, angry, or otherwise, colors the player’s perspective on their play experience. If, in Half-Life 2, the player is asked to do something that seems beyond the player’s perception of their ingame abilities—to take down the first antlion guardian or strider s/he encounters, for example—then s/he is likely to feel a range of emotional responses. Initially, the player will feel determination, perhaps uncertainty. If s/he accomplishes the task, s/he will likely feel elated, or satisfied, or a similar positive emotion. If s/he fails the task, she is likely to feel frustration, anger, sadness, or even resolve to try again.
Rhetorical Perspective
The player perception is framed by the rhetorical perspective embedded in the layers of a game. Rhetoric has roots in classical Greece where it was seen as the art of persuasion. Rhetoric has since expanded to define the perspectives embedded in a text—whether that be a speech, a poem, a song, a film, a painting, a game, or any other form of expression. In looser terms, when we speak of someone’s “agenda” or “point of view,” we are speaking of their rhetorical perspective.
In modern usage, there are two layers of rhetoric inside of communications—that of the message, and that of the medium or cultural form through which the message is delivered. And so if someone wants to convey a rhetorical perspective about something through song, s/he will have certain tools made available for rhetorical affect—e.g. tempo, rhythm, melody, etc.—while others will not be available due to the constraints imposed by the form of music.
Though rhetoric has been around for thousands of years, it is only recently that we have begun to think about the rhetorical perspective of games (Bogost, 2007). Games have certain properties that can be used for creating a rhetorical perspective: systems, mechanics, and narrative. Rhetorical perspectives can be found in all games, but serious games are the most prevalent type of game in which developers attempt to embed a persuasive argument in game-form.
The rhetorical perspective of a game begins with the underlying systems embedded in the game. In many games, the systems are abstractions of real-world phenomena—McDonald’s Video Game (Molleindustria, 2006) models the production and distribution of the fast food chain McDonald’s products, while The Cost of Life: Ayiti (Gamelab, Global Kids, 2006) abstracts the cycle of poverty in Haiti. The real-world phenomena are abstracted down to a tangible set of interconnected elements, each of which has attributes that operate toward a particular outcome.
Any modeling of a system is going to include opinions about the phenomena it represents. McDonald’s Video Game sees the means by which McDonald’s sources, produces, markets, and sells its fast food as bad for pretty much everyone but the company itself; Ayiti puts forward the argument that education, though hard to obtain, is critical to breaking the cycle of poverty for underprivileged Haitians.
In a game, the rhetorical perspective is put in motion by players who engage with the system through the permitted procedures or actions. A game’s developers can model the underlying system(s) of a phenomenon in many ways, but what happens in all cases is that certain elements are excluded for the sake of simplification. And so while the McDonald’s Video Game could have allowed players to plant flowers in addition to soy, or to raise alpaca instead of cattle, the game limits the players to either using land for raising soy crops or cattle herds in order to more clearly make its point.
Goals and the Space of Possibility
The rhetorical perspective of the game becomes most legible through play, based on the actions a player can enact in pursuit of the goals outlined by the game through win states, achievements, and other mechanisms for measuring player performance. The goals set up within a game lead players toward particular interpretations of the systemic representation. And so the goals of the game suggest proper ways to act within the system. Ayiti suggests that educating the children of your family is optimal whenever possible, and finding higher paying jobs for the adults is the best bet.
Ludonarrative Dissonance
The layers of rhetorical perspective within a game are difficult to align into a coherent, legible whole. One of the ways in which they do not always work together is when the game’s systems, mechanics, and narrative fail to work together. Clint Hocking (Hocking, 2007) coined the phrase “ludonarrative dissonance” to speak to this phenomenon in his review of BioShock (Irrational Games, 2007). As Hocking notes, the game’s theme was purportedly about free will, yet the player character was more or less a puppet of a never-seen character, Atlas. This created a dissonance between what the player does—move through the world killing splicers and key non-player characters under the direction of Atlas—and the game’s theme.
Conclusion
It is through these four types of perspective, introduced in this essay, that a player’s experience is in large part framed. Indeed, what the player sees, how the story is presented to him/her, the role s/he plays within the game, and the rhetorical point of view presented through the game’s play, are all very important tools for the design, play, and interpretation of video games.
References
Bogost, I. (2007). Persuasive games: the expressive power of videogames. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Hocking, C. (2007). Ludonarrative disonance in Bioshock. Click Nothing blog. Retrieved April 1, 2013, from http://clicknothing.typepad.com/click_nothing/2007/10/ludonarrative-d.html.