What is a first person game?
In modern video games, a first person perspective is a vantage point that gives the illusion of looking through the eyes of the game character. The first person perspective allows you to immerse yourself more in the game world as you can imagine yourself as that character. In a first person shooter (FPS) bullets appear to fly right at you which pumps up the adrenaline and adds to the feeling of being in another world. In a racing game with a first person view you see a car pass you just as you would in real life. The first person perspective is primarily used in FPS games but has been used in other genres as well. I am going to focus on FPS games in this diary.
The FPS genre has become a gaming powerhouse with popular series such as Call of Duty, Battlefield, Halo and Gears of War being some of the best selling games of this generation of gaming consoles. The best selling game of all in time in the United States is a FPS game in the Call of Duty series.
More below the orange squiggle.....
Origins
I am going to go over a very simplistic and brief history of the origins of FPS games. FPS gameplay had its first steps into the mainstream with id Software's Wolfenstein 3D, known as the "Grandfather of FPS Games".
A year later it was used in the classic game, Doom, which made great strides in first person gameplay. 3 years after Doom, Quake, was released which cemented first person shooters as a staple of PC gaming. FPS eventually made the transition to console gaming. In 1997, the James Bond themed game GoldenEye 007 landed on the Nintendo 64.
It became a cult classic and many countless hours were spent playing multiplayer. But generally, it wasn't until Halo on the original Xbox that made FPS games on the console an entertainment and financial powerhouse.
The Halo series was the game to have on the original Xbox and many people believe if it wasn't for Halo, the Xbox would have been a total failure.
Immersion
There is nothing better in gaming than the feeling of escapism, being in someone else's shoes. This is the appeal of first person gaming in my view. If I am playing a third person game, I can't imagine myself as that character as usually they look nothing like me. In a first person game, I am looking through that characters eyes, allowing me to escape and feel as if I am that character. The creator of Bioshock sums this up better then I ever could, here is an excerpt from an interview with Ken Levine (emphasis added by diarist).
Industry Gamers: Just how important should story and characterization be for gaming titles and is first person tantamount to immersion?
Ken Levine: I think it’s obviously, for me, the most direct way to engage. It’s one less barrier to the experience. I don’t know if it’s tantamount to immersion, but it’s the easiest way to get the player to transpose himself into the experience. That’s challenging. It’s a strange thing to be in someone else’s shoes. It’s something we do very naturally as children, but it’s something that is much more difficult for adults. I think that games gives us enough of a nudge in the right direction to have that childhood experience of play. Not just play from a fun standpoint, but transposing your identity onto somebody else’s, and that is something so powerful when you are a kid. You just lose that as an adult because you get so self-conscience. Games sort of allow us to break through that layer to let us go back to that space of play, which I think is really powerful.
Battlefield 3
My most recent FPS purchase was Battlefield 3 for the PC which I am loving. It is a modern first person shooter with huge 64 player battles, jets, tanks, tanks, jeeps and lots of guns. The graphics are amazing, the sound design is the best I've ever heard in a game and the gameplay is top notch.
Battlefield 3 has a pretty cool site called Battelog which is almost like a social networking site for Battlefield 3 players. It keeps track of your stats, allows you to make and join platoons (aka clans) and to comment on each others pages. If you play BF3, let me know and I will send you a friend request.
One last note, please feel free to follow Daily Kos Gamers, a group I formed in support of videogames. We have some good diarists writing about all things videogames and we've even had some of our diarists make the Community Spotlight! We've already published 5 or 6 original diaries. We would love to find 2 more diarists who would like to write about gaming. The group is very casual so you can just write when you feel like it. You can write about any aspect of video games. If you are interested, please feel free to send me a message and we can discuss this further.
Are you a FPS gamer? Playing any FPS games currently? If not a FPS gamer, what are your favorite first person perspective games?