Guest Post: A Change In Perspective

Metroid: Other M recently came out, and in it, you must switch between first and third person, I began to think about perspective. Which should designers pick?

Too many people just pick the first they visualize with the game, without giving it any thought, a huge pitfall. The perspective one plays the game from will change everything.

A reason designers pick one over the other is the mechanics they want to use in the game. A shooter (guy running around with a gun) consists mainly of the mechanic of aiming and shooting. It is usually harder to present a game in which the player shoots enemies with the third person perspective (Resident Evil has done it well). First person shooters like Call of Duty work very well because you can focus on shooting, and the controls between aiming and running mesh.

Now imagine Super Mario Galaxy 2 in the first person. You won’t be able to see the puzzle, a planet, and pieces like buttons become hard to work with, as they are hard to see. It’s hard to play a platformer without seeing where you’re jumping. These problems are fixed in third person.
Another basic difference is the character you want to show. God of War, a third person game, tells the powerful tragedy (at least the first one) of Kranos. Not being able to see his movements, expressions, and violent moves would be a damper on the game. Without that interesting protagonist, the story is meaningless, right?

Wrong. Look at Half Life 2. The entire game is in first perspective, and it has one of the best stories of all time. Being in first person allows for roleplay. You ARE Gordan Freeman, the leader of the resistance. YOU are the chosen one. When you play, you become the character, so your thoughts become Gordan’s thoughts. If you’ve ever spoken out loud to any of the characters, or thought of the things you would do if it wasn’t just a game, you know what I mean.

The sense of immersion you want in the game can also weigh into the perspective choice. In Half Life 2, that immersion helped build the story. Watching other members of the resistance bring down the television screen outside the train station felt awesome, and really added to the living, breathing world around you. It would not have felt as cool watching Gordan watch these things. This is probably the strongest pro for the first person perspective – how much immersion adds to the story and to the player’s feeling that his actions matter in the living world around him/her.

So, when deciding the perspective of your game, follow these steps.

1. If being in first perspective can hinder the gameplay (make it hard to accomplish challenges), choose the third perspective (like platformers, most fighters, and games where you control many people/units).

2. If being in third perspective can hinder the gameplay, choose the first perspective (like most shooters).

3. If you want to tell a powerful story (a major focus of your game) of the character, you may want to lean towards third person (Ico, Alan Wake, most RPGs).

4. If you really want to immerse your audience in the very interesting world you have created, and don’t mine if the lack of character occurs, you may want to lean towards first person (Half Life 2, horror games that aren’t character-driven).

That should clear any confusion, and if you can’t decide from that, you probably haven’t developed you vision enough.

Dylan Woodbury lives with his family in Southern California. He runs http://dtwgames.com, a game design website that posts intriguing new articles every week, both beginner’s tutorials and theoretical ideas. He also has an interest in writing, and is planning his first novel. His primary goal is to change the world through video games.