VIDEO GAMES: PERSPECTIVE, POINT-OF-VIEW, AND IMMERSION

By LAURIE N. TAYLOR

A THESIS PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2002
Copyright 2002 by Laurie N. Taylor

To Pete

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I have many people to thank for this thesis: my friends, family, and teachers. I would also like to thank the University of Florida for encouraging the study of popular media, with a high level of critical theory and competence. This thesis also would not have been possible without the diligent help and guidance from my committee members, Dr. Terry Harpold and Dr. Jane Douglas. They are both brilliant and insightful in their approach to new media and their understanding of too many areas to list. This thesis would also not have been possible without my mom, who thought video games would cause eye strain and only agreed to let me play without time limits after I got straight As in fourth grade. She put me on the path to the academic study of video games. Thanks go to Colin for making me even more competitive by cheating when we played video games together and for being kind when I needed him. Thanks go to Eric for always keeping everything in perspective with his dry wit. And, thanks go again to Pete, for helping with research, discussion, and giving me love and support.
TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.... iv LIST OF FIGURES.... vi ABSTRACT..... vii PERSPECTIVE IN VIDEO GAMES...1 Video Game Construction.1 The Game Interface.2 Immersion and Consistency.12 Experiential Space.18 Context.21 The Third-Person Point-of-View Paradox.27 REFERENCES....32 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH...35
LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1-1 1-2 1-3 1-4 1-5 1-6 1-7 1-8 1-9 1-10 1-11 page The Sony PlayStation 2 (PS2) Controller...4 The Sega Dreamcast Controller...4 The Last Express first-person...6 The Last Express third-person...7 Overhead pull-out third-person (god view) in SIMCITY 3000 Unlimited.8 Three-fourths isometric with Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura..9 Third-person with Metroid...11 Third-person with Resident Evil -Code: Veronica-..11 Text-based space in Zork....15 Third-person trailing view with American McGee's Alice..17 First-person with Doom....27
Abstract of Thesis Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts VIDEO GAMES: PERSPECTIVE, POINT-OF-VIEW, AND IMMERSION By Laurie N. Taylor May 2002 Chair: Dr. Terry Harpold Department: English Presently, video game designers, players, and often even video game theorists approach the representation of point-of-view in video games as intuitive and uncomplicated. Drawing on the current critical work on video games, theories of immersion and engagement, and theories of human-computer-interaction, I question the significance of optical perspective in video games in terms of player point-of-view. Because video games are an experiential medium, critical study of video games must include the study of the diegetic, visual-auditory, interface, and experiential (often termed interactive or participatory) aspects of video game play. Through an analysis of the various points-of-view within different games and the differing points-of-view within a single game, I attempt to delineate the differences both in the creation of the experiential game space and in the possibilities for immersion within the game space. For this, I delimit two types of immersion: diegetic immersion, which corresponds to immersion in the game, and intra-diegetic or situated immersion, which corresponds to immersion
within the created virtual space of the game situated through both a characters perspective and an embodied point-of-view. I discuss how these are not necessarily mutually exclusive and how they can and do blend together, combined with the game's overall representation of perspective, for varied gaming experiences. I conclude with an analysis of how differing perspectives and points-of-view influence gameplay and game world spatial understanding.
PERSPECTIVE IN VIDEO GAMES Video Game Construction Representations of space are a defining element in video and computer games, but critical studies of exactly how these spaces are perceived and experienced by the player are, with few exceptions, lacking.1 Space in video and computer games is virtuala presentation and representation of space generated through the programmed codeand not physically experienced space, in the sense that there is no material dimensionality of the space of a video or computer game.2 Video game play is understood experientially through visual and auditory presentation and through the games human-computer interface.3 Video game design focuses chiefly on the visual register of play and, within the visual, on the act of seeing for the games presentation, often ignoring the other aspects of the visual register and degrading the auditory to only a supporting role. The style and vocabulary of visual presentation in contemporary video games has embraced a representational discourse primarily based on the techniques of linear perspective and

Notable exceptions include Espen Aarseth, Allegories of Space: The Question of Spatiality in Computer Games," in CyberText Yearbook 2000, eds. Markku Eskelinen and Raine Koskimaa (Jyvaskyla, Finland: Research Centre for Contemporary Culture, 2001), 152-71; Steven Poole, Trigger Happy: Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution, (New York: Arcade Publishing, 2000); and Terry Harpold, "Thick and Thin: 'Direct Manipulation' & The Spatial Regimes of Human-Computer Interaction." (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 2001 August 2001. 12 Jan. 2002. URL: http://www.siggraph.org/artdesign/gallery/S01/essays/0386.pdf).
Hereafter all video and computer games will be included under the general title of video games with the interface being distinguished as either the console or the computer.
Video game HCI includes the presentation by the game, the actual apparatus by which the player affects the course of the game, such as a controller, and the design for the way the player interacts with the game as with the control set-up, player-character, and so on.
related schemes of spatiality.4 Thus, video games have given implicit priority to the concept of unified monocular vision, as demonstrated most directly in first-person perspective games. While the dominance of linear perspective as a mode of representation has been much interrogated for other forms of pictorial representation, it has not been so for video games. Popular-critical video game studies like Hamlet on the Holodeck and Trigger Happy have instead focused on the potential of (in terms of virtual reality and market revenue) and history of video games, unquestioningly accepting the linearity and dominance of the visual component. Visual presentation of play in video games must, however, be interrogated in terms of the complex interactions between the game presentation, the player, and the interface, because of the pivotal distinction between depictions of space and experiences of space during play in that space. The critical problem of how perspective shapes the video game space is foregrounded by the often different or inconsistent perspectives which exist inside a single game and throughout video games as a medium. The Game Interface Representation of space in video games relies heavily on elements of the game interface because the player must work through the interface to act on the game and its spaces.5 Video game interfaces, like the interfaces of many new media objects, must be taken into consideration in this conflict, because they are pivotal to the user-players

See Chapter 6 Solid Geometry in Steven Poole, Trigger Happy: Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution, (New York: Arcade Publishing, 2000).
This is often referred to as interactivity. In this study, interactivity means the ability of the player to cause any effect within the space of the game and the players responses to the game. See J. Yellowlees Douglas, The End of BooksOr Books without End? (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2000).
3 reception of the object itself. The interface includes both the physical apparatus by which the player accesses the gamecontrollers, joysticks, keyboards and miceand the varying configurations of that apparatus. Just as the game depends heavily on the interface, the interface also depends on attributes of the game. For instance, third-person trailing point-of-view (POV) games are played more frequently on consoles because controllers are widely thought to be more appropriate than keyboards for use with actionoriented games. In-depth strategy games, however, are more often published as desktop computer games. There are several reasons for this difference. In-depth role-playing games (RPGs), like Planescape: Torment and the Might & Magic series, and strategy games, like Disciples II and Lords of the Realm II, are easier to play with more key functionality. Even given the current generation of console controllers (having more buttons than ever before), games which require multiple menus, commands, and characters or squads to be controlled simultaneously are easier to play and design if one or two keys can be devoted to each command (See Figure 1-1 and 1-2). This devotion of device space to buttons is impossible on a controller; thus, games like these must have multiple menus which then access additional menus. Because the commands are used frequently, games using a controller often require the player to spend a great deal of time searching through menus. The keyboard and mouse of the desktop game simplify play for the player, with a menu or a command being accessible through the use of a single key. The primary game interfaces are: a keyboard and mouse, the joystick (primarily used with computer games), and the controller (also known as the controlpad). The optical perspective from which the game is played, as it is represented in the involvement with interface, is also pivotal to the creation of the game space. Perspective

Figure 1-1: The Sony PlayStation 2 (PS2) Controller.
In addition to the standard controller layout with the directional pads on the left and buttons on the right, supplemental buttons may be at the tops, sides, and bottoms of the pads. On the PS2 controller, 2 buttons are atop the left and right side of the controller, which are labeled R1, R2, L1, and L2 to denote top right, bottom right, top left, and bottom left. The PS2 has rumble functionalitywhere the controller vibrates with certain games.
Figure 1-2: The Sega Dreamcast Controller.
While the Dreamcast controller is conceptually like the PS2 controller, the Dreamcast controller is different in that it has two (one left and one right) underside buttons. Unlike the PS2 controller, the Dreamcast needs an additional component to vibrate. For the Dreamcast controller, the memory card (with the Dreamcast, called a memory unit) slides in from the top into the slot area shown here underneath the Dreamcast name and symbol. Here, the virtual memory unit is shownthe virtual memory unit displays additional information during game play, such as maps or the health status, and for ease in checking memory information.
5 for video game play defines the point-of-view by which the player interacts with the overall game space and the internal game environment. The most used point-of-view perspectives for gameplay are: first-person (Figure 1-3, 1-10, and 1-11), third-person (Figure 1-4, 1-6, 1-7, 1-8, and 1-9), third-person trailing (Figure 1-9), overhead or topdown (generally called a god view) (Figure 1-5), and three-fourths isometric (Figure 16).6 These views support different experiences of immersion for video game play and different understandings of the game space. Most games blend these perspectives; many switch perspective solely for cinematic sequences, but many others switch perspective throughout based on the game play sequence. In many games, the player can also change the perspective point-of-view and zoom in or rotate the camera angles. Generally, changes in perspective occur during cinematic sequences, or because some aspect of gameplay could not otherwise be conveyed. For example, The Last Express switches from first- to third-person for all fight scenes because the fight scenes would be too awkward to convey with the immobile straight-ahead vision of this firstperson point-of-view (See Figure 1-3 and 1-4) or with Resident Evil where the view shifts to first-person for reading documents which would be illegible without being enlarged through first-person point-of-view. Perspective shapes the players perception of the game space because it tacitly encodes the vantage point from which the player acts on and engages with objects and actors in the game world. With this, perspective can shape a game space in a way that is disjointed, with the player being able to act on the game, but having no actual place

8 Dynasty Warriors 3, where the player acts as a general-character in the game world (with troops which follow the particular general), the player-character occupies the position of
Figure 1-5: Overhead pull-out third-person (god view) in SIMCITY 3000 Unlimited.
Many strategy video games, drawing on earlier ludic strategy models like chess and GO, have the player operate as an all-seeing force on the world; hence the term 'gods-eye view.' The SIMCITY strategy design illustrates the gods-eye view by allowing the player to see everything that exists in the game world at any given time. (Image from: Maxis (EA). SIMCITY 3000 Unlimited. Redwood City, CA: Maxis (EA), 2000.)
the general within the game. In a game like this, the troops following the player-character are effectively an aspect of the generals character; the player cannot control the troops voluntarily so the player does have a unified and singular position within the game as the general and as only the general. In this way, single player-character games allow the player to play within the game space through the position of the player-character. Controlling multiple player-characters as undifferentiated groups, the player functions as a force that acts on the game the game as a system of structured rules and potentialities: instead of within the game space the game space as a constructed representational space. One such game where the player functions as an external force is Final Fantasy VIII, in which the player always plays through a group of characters (including members
9 like Squall, Rinoa, and Selphie). As the game progresses, the player changes the members in the group. The player never directly identifies with any one character, because the characters only function as members of a unified group. With the player this removed and external from the game world and from unique or individual identification with any one character, she has no identifiable position within the game space or within the game narrative. For a player to play within the game space, she must have a clearly identified or demarcated position within that game space.
Figure 1-6: Three-fourths isometric with Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura.
The three-fourths isometric view puts the player-character(s) as part of the overall world structure and, by having a more simplified visual representation of the player-character and the game world, allows for more information to be present on the screen at any given point. Many of the three-fourths isometric view games are party-system games, as are many first-person games where the player sees for the entire character-group through the eyes of the screen. (Image from: Troika Games. Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura. Bellevue, WA: Sierra Studios, 2001.)

14 In order for intra-diegetic immersion to occur, the player must first be diegetically immersed in the game. Diegetic immersion requires that the game have a consistent world, so that the player is not forced from immersion by inconsistencies of the game space, and that the interface issues are overcome or naturalized. Consistency in the game world does not mean consistency or verisimilitude with the extra-gaming world (that is, the perceptual manifold of the world outside of the game), but the consistency of the constructed game space within the confines of the game space.8 The game space is constructed with many elements working together: different game engines, programming code, interface, visual/aesthetic choices, and the game world boundaries set forth in the game narrative and game theme.9 Note also that a consistent game space need not be optically-visually presented, and need not resemble the spatial conventions of actual space, if its differences from the conventions of actual space serve the play of the game. In this regard, text-based adventure games (Figure 1-9) may be said to figure consistent spatial schemes, with an absolute minimum of detail. For spatial consistency to be felt throughout the game space, the player must first be able to overcome the problem of the game interface in order to interact with the space without having to constantly take notice of and account for the method of interaction. The interface includes the physical apparatus by which the players actions are allowed into the game space (a controller or a keyboard and mouse),
Inconsistencies in the game space can also occur from programming or system limitations or errors slowdown (when there are too many variables for the games hardware and software to process at once and the game literally slows and hangs in the middle of play) is intrusive and immediately reveals the constructedness of the game space.
A game engine is the core of the game in that it generates effects (including, but not limited to: rendering, cinematics, the particle system, and physics engine of the game) and controls the in-game artificial intelligence. The game engine can define the attributes of the visual space of game, and thus the perspectival logic of the game.
Figure 1-9: Text-based space in Zork.
Space is textually represented in text games like Zork, but the space is not inconsistent provided that it does follow the rules of the created game space. (Image from: Infocom, Inc. Zork I: The Great Underground Empire. Cambridge, MA: Infocom, Inc., 1981.)
the relationship between the players actions and the actions in the game space, and the onscreen elements that provide the player with information. The internal game interface itself is a kind of framework or window, within which the game is represented and it surrounds the visual scene of gameplay. This internal interface is comprised of game progress elements, control panels, maps, health meters, weapon status elements (showing the weapon in use and the ammunition remaining,) and the like. The Doom control panel (see Figure 1-11) and the Item Screen are classics models of this (See the left side screen area for The Last Express in Figure 1-3). The interface also includes the player learning the experiential space of video games to see video games as having more than just represented spacespace must exist as representational and lived so that the game narrative and character exist within a space. Game spaces can also be more or less

16 consistent based on the cultural assumptions of the game space and the game narrative, with games that are ported (transferred) over from one culture to another showing very specific biases that may not be recognized in the culture in which they originated.10 Fatal Frame, a game made in Japan and released in Japan and the United States, features a female player-character named Miku Hinasaki. In the Japanese version, she is an elementary school girl in search of her missing older brother and is dressed in a traditional elementary school uniform. The games publishing company, believing that players in the United States would not understand the uniform and would have trouble with such a young player-character, changed the U.S. release version of Miku Hinasaki so as to be significantly older (in her late teens) and dressed her in a blouse, mini-skirt, and knee-high boots. Similar changes are commonly made in the translation of games from Japan to the United States because Japans legal and cultural regulations differ from those in the United States. Because video games are created from many elements, game spaces are highly varied and what constitutes diegetic consistency for one game may be inconsistent for another. For instance, Diablo I and II both have randomly generated game levels for more equal competition in online multiplayer games, but the level randomization and regenerating enemies are inconsistent with the overall game structure when one plays the game as a single-player. Both Diablo I and II are three-fourths isometric view games. Their levels randomize when a player leaves and returns to an area. Essentially, the levels all have certain attributes: the kind of enemies, certain special items, and passages to certain other areas. These attributes are created and the player can play through that
The vast majority of video games are made by the United States and Japan, so the cultural differences are heavily influenced by the video game market and cultures of these two nations.
17 portion of the map, but when the player returns to the area, the level maps will have changed. The attributes remain the same (provided the player does not change the game difficulty setting,) but the placement of the attributes on the level map changes just as the level map itself changes. This randomization is inconsistent because the game narrative and theme presuppose the areas as constant and unchanging, which directly contradicts the game play when the levels change. American McGees Alice does not have randomly generated levels or levels that alter with gameplay. Rather, the game narrative and theme of Wonderland, fused with the player-character Alices madness, could situate level alterations within an overall consistent game space. Game spaces that are perceived from the standpoint of
Figure 1-10: Third-person trailing view with American McGees Alice.

Alice is a third-person trailing perspective game. With a third-person trailing perspective, if the perspective is not manipulated by the player or because of the environment, the perspective remains slightly behind and above the player-character. Here, Alice is backed into a walled corner so the perspective has automatically altered to be higher and closer than in normal gameplay to avoid showing awkward perspectives, such as showing only the wall and not the game space. Alice is based on the conceit that Alice is mentally ill and has been institutionalized and that to regain her sanity and freedom, she must fight through the treacherous evils of her own mind. (Image from: Rogue Entertainment. American McGees Alice. Redwood City, CA: EA, 2000.)
mentally disturbed characters and game worlds in which magic plays a significant role can undergo significant changes in the spaces, but these changes must still remain consistent with the overall game space and they must be narrativized by the game space. Experiential Space French philosopher Henri Lefebvres definition of represented and representational space is useful in this context. Lefebvre divides space into three categories: spatial practice, which is the material perceived geometric space; represented space, which is the conceived mental re-presentations of space; and representational space, which is the combination of both spatial practice and represented space and is space that is experientially lived.11 Video games are generally viewed to be represented and not representational space because the experiential aspect of video games has been ignored or forgotten.12 Essentially, for video game space to become representational, the conventions of video game space and of the interface must become naturalized. As print interfaces and conventions must be learneda point often ignored by critics because the interfaces and conventions have become so seemingly standard and naturalso must video game interfaces and conventions be learned for the player to play in the game space.
For a discussion of Lefebvres definitions of spatiality and for a discussion of how these terms can be applied to a spatial analysis of cityscapes, see Edward Soja, Thirdspace (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 1997).
See Espen Aarseth, Allegories of Space: The Question of Spatiality in Computer Games," in CyberText Yearbook 2000, eds. Markku Eskelinen and Raine Koskimaa (Jyvaskyla, Finland: Research Centre for Contemporary Culture, 2001), 152-71. Aarseth concludes that video games lack a social and cultural level which keeps video games from the possibility of representational space.
19 Unlike the spaces of film, paintings, and photography, videogame spaces are spaces that are both observed and engaged directly; they are thus experiential spaces.13 The experience of any space in video games varies depending on the player's presuppositions regarding the forms and limits of game space, the importance and use of a particular space to the game narrative, and the player's vantage point in the space. Once the player learns the conventions of both the geometric and experiential aspects of video game space, the player can then begin to both play and dwell within these spaces. Because these spaces are experiential, varying and heterogeneous phenomenological spaces may be encountered within a single geometrical space, stemming both from the multiplicity of spatial purposes figured within the games and the differing narrative and gameplay contexts in which the experience of these spaces are situated. Recent technical improvements have enabled game designers to portray a more geometrically accurate space, but, as much of 20th century phenomenology of vision has demonstrated, geometrically accurate space is not equivalent to lived, representational space. A phenomenological awareness of the space must exist in order for the space to constitute a lived, representational space. This awareness of space is constructed from the combination of the geometric construction of space, the narrative of the game space, and the character through which the player interacts within the space. In order to create a story, one must take on or take part in the role of a character, whether it be acting as that character oneself, or playing as a character viewed only within that world. Once there is a

In this regard, Espen Aarseth has termed video games ergodic texts to describe how video games require the player to work through the text and that this working through is an important part of the text itself. See Espen Aarseth, Aporia and Epiphany is Doom and The Speaking Clock: The Temporality of Ergodic Art, in Cyberspace Textuality: Computer Technology and Literary Theory, ed. Marie-Laure Ryan (Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 1999), 31-41.
20 sense of character, then there is some involvement with the space of the game world. Then whatever occurs can create mood, evoke emotional response, and construct a story around the actions or inactions of that character. In addition to the cognitive grasp of the nature of the medium and its spatial construction and of the specific traits of the work, players must overcome the actual cognitive engagement of the physical interface to become immersed in the game world. The physical interface, generally the controller or the keyboard and mouse, requires frequent input from the player and the input required can disrupt the players involvement with the game space. Douglas and Haragadons The Pleasure of Immersion and Engagement: Schemas, Scripts, and the Fifth Business, a study of immersion and engagement, shows that texts which require the user to respond require a greater cognitive load make the user more aware of the distance between her or himself and the text.14 However, a common but inaccurate view has been that video games, as interactive media, necessarily require the player to consciously act while playing because of the high level of manual input required. In A Users Guide to the Brain, John Ratey cites a number of studies of explicit memory (conscious recollection) and implicit memory (where no conscious recollection is needed,) which show that physical acts do initially require cognitive work. These studies also show that, as the physical acts become learned, they no longer require the cognitive load, like tying one's shoes or riding a bikeat first it takes conscious thought, but then it becomes learned. After the learning period, these complex actions become motor memory, requiring little cognitive processing and no
J. Yellowlees Douglas and Andrew Hargadon, The Pleasures of Immersion and Engagement: Schemas, Scripts, and the Fifth Business, Digital Creativity 12.3 (2001): 153-166.
conscious thought is required for the actions to be completed.15 Video game control operations are cognitively appropriated in the same manner. They first require a prefrontal cortex cognitive load, and then are learned and the tasks are relegated to the brainstem where the operation of the controls requires no conscious effort. New game interface configurations are an adaptation of the already existing muscle memory and so should take less time for players to learn than having to learn the initial game interface.16 Context The evidence of the role of cognitive load and muscle memory in gameplay raises an additional question: how the player learns to relate the movements dictated by the control interface to the actions on the screen. Much of the work on this area comes from the field of computer interface design, which aims at the ideal of direct manipulation. Direct manipulation refers to the concept of the user acting through the supposedly invisible and transparent screen to directly manipulate the items on the screen, which directly correspond to the system applications. For instance, the idea that the user moves a file by moving a file icon: the user does not directly move the file (which exists only as a visual representation of intangible electronic data,) but the operating system interprets the users commands (which the user dictates through the interface of the mouse and keyboard) and the operating system then responds. 17

See pages 20-1 on Merzenicks work with monkeys in John J. Ratey, M. D, A Users Guide to the Brain, (New York: Pantheon Books, 2001). On the conventions of interface design even though games are notoriously idiomatic in their applications of interface principles, certain trends emerge and players who are familiar with one idiom of play are able to quickly adapt to another.
See Edwin L. Hutchins, James D. Hollan, and Donald A. Norman, Direct Manipulation Interfaces, User Centered System Design: New Perspectives on HumanComputer Interaction, eds. Donald A. Norman and Stephen W. Draper (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1986), 87124; and Sun Microsystems, Starfire: A Vision of Future Computing, (Sun Microsystems, El Dorado Hills, 1995).
22 The design goals of direct manipulation also play a large part in the design of video games, where what the player does is supposedly what happens. Many video games and computer interfaces rely on the idea that the user acts as the user-her or himself through the screen; thus the ideal-user, who like the ideal-player-character, acts through the screen (and with no complicating factors introduced by the passage through the screen) instead of acting within the screen. The idea of a computer or video game space as a space that the user acts on instead of within makes the space at most representational and not lived because the user is fundamentally separate from the space that he or she is acting on. The two are separated not just in the sense of being inconsistent in their spatial construction, but also in that they are also physically separated by the screen which divides one spatial modality from the other. The difference between acting on the world (ideal-user or ideal-player-character) and acting within the world is based on context within the world. Context within the space accounts for the consistent spatial construction because actions within the space are coming from within the space instead of coming from some nebulous external space. For the player to have a context within the overall game space, two conditions must be met. One is narrative context, which affords the player a context within some sort of cultural and social spatial construction. Without some sort of narrative context, the world space is hollow, but the narrative context can be simple so that the player, by playing, helps create the narrative context. An example of basic narrative context is the plot line for Super Mario Brothers (SMB), which places the player as the hero figure of either Mario or Luigi with the goal to save the land, its people, and Princess Toadstool by defeating Bowser. Given even the simplicity of the SMB game narrative, it allows for the

23 possibility of a narrativized space; a production of space which exceeds its geometric dimensions. Game spaces like Tetris, chess, and checkers do not have this simple narrative form and they also do not have characters through that the player can work with the game to create a narrative that is not already present. Multi-user dungeons (MUDS)18 do not begin with a predetermined narrative that each new character must fit into, but MUDS allow the player to create a player-character or to play as the player. In this regard, MUDS are more open-ended and do allow for the possibility of narrative as the character plays within the space and MUDS also allow for the possibility of no game and no narrative outside the social connections of people through the created environment in much the same way that chat rooms function.19 For narrative to be produced there must be the possibility of character; thus, text-based games can allow for character within game space because text-based games allow for narrative and consistent spatial construction. The characters place is not propped up by the audio and visual code, but the place is created within the game physics and game rules. Player identification with the character may not be as easy as with visual video games because of the cultural significance placed on the visual, but the possibility still exists.20 Fighting games like Street Fighter EX Plus Alpha have characters and backstories and the games can be played in a particular series for a particular character, but the
MUDS began as text-based games and at first were played mainly in textually created dungeon areas. They are now graphically displayed and their current equivalent is with games like Everquest and Asherons Call. For an in-depth discussion of MUDS, see Sherry Turkle, The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984); and, Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997). For more on the cultural emphasis on the visual, see Frederic Jameson, Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, (Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1991); and Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972).
24 stories do not influence the actual game play except in determining the order in which the opponents are fought. Because the game does have a narrative component (though the narrative is largely unimportant to game play) the player is the determining factor in whether or not the player is playing as a character or playing as a variable set of moves. When there is a distinct character of any sort in a game, provided the character has a place within the game world, narrative context is discernable because the narrative context can stream from the characters existence within the world. However, the way the player plays must be held as an indivisible part of the equation because the player determines whether or not he or she is playing as a character. Thus, the possibility of both a character and a narrative is required, but this requirement is very low and the player completes the equation by playing as a character or just playing. The second condition for context within the game space is a sense of presence in that space. Presence in a game space means that the player must have some embodied presence, a sense of being in the game space (created through sensory perception of the audio and visual positioning that the game displays). In current video games, the playercharacter must be visually represented within the game space in order that embodiment is successfully signifiedmeaning in effect that the game perspective must be at least episodically third-person. Role-playing games (RPGs) are often held to have the most detailed story lines because RPGs often create complex game worlds with many nonplayer characters (NPCs) and player-characters (PCs) and because RPGs often have party systems where the player functions through a group of characters.21 But no amount of narrative context can create a spatial bodied context. For embodiment to occur a player

The lack of correlation between the gun or hand and the characters position in first-person games is often noted by new players as a part of the overall confusion in trying to determine what the playercharacters position is in the space, where the character is, and how the character moves. For an example, see Figure 1-11 Doom.
29 for figuring the first-person experience of the world.23 An exclusively first-person point-of-view impoverishes spatial presentation in the game and removes the possibility of the player playing within the game space, which removes the possibility for the player to internally experience the game space. The presumptive consistency of visual representation of the first-person point-of-view neglects the heterogeneity and complexity of visual representation and perception in the actual world. The third-person point-of-view augments the limited information of the firstperson point-of-view, and suggests another aspect of this problem: embodiment is not merely seeing more (i.e., peripherally), but seeing within a context, whose meaning extends well beyond the optical registers privileged by most games. Third-person games allow for the representation of other-than-visual perception, like often being able to sense entities behind and beside ones body and being able to see straight ahead, to the periphery, and down all at the same instance. Perception often includes the ability to sense when another presence moves right behind or next to a person. In first-person games, this is lost. In a first-person game, another character can move directly behind the player-character without the player character being given any warning or sense of the others presence. In a third-person game, the player would be able to see the other character and would be aware of the others presence and the relationship to the playercharacters position. The third-person game would thus be substituting, in this richer visual presentation, for other perceptual abilities like the tactile abilities to feel the shift in pressure on a floor, the shift in air currents, the change in temperature from the proximity to another body, or the possible odor of another with the point-of-view.
See Richard Rouse III, Whats Your Perspective? Computer Graphics 33.3 (1999):9-12.
30 This may at first seem more counter-intuitive because it transfers other senses of spatial situation into the visual register. But, video games have been founded on the premise of representing all spaces and possibilities through the strictly visual and audible elements of play, with a heavy emphasis on the visual elements. Even now, when game designers are developing more complex and refined soundtracks and are able to utilize rumble packs and other ways in which the controllers may vibrate, the focus remains on polygon count and frame rates because video games are focused on the visual registers of representation.24 Even possessed of an embodied character, a consistent gameworld, and a familiar interface, the player can still refuse immersion in both senses: the player is a part of the game space experience. Thus, all criteria for immersion within the game space can be met, and the player can still ignore them while playing with another aim (for instance playing only for improved statistics with power-ups and points). Because space is constructed partially by those experiencing the space, a player may for some reason not experience the space as other players do. The player in many instances determines his or her own experience of the game space. While more cultural-theoretical work is being done on video games, that work must base itself on the experience of playing video games, accepting that video games are an experiential medium and that to remove the experiential aspect of video game play reduces video games to something that they are not. Many critics site video games as narratives, but many also reduce video games to their narrative aspects because they do

33 Lionhead Studios. Black and White. Redwood City, CA: EA Games, 2001. Maxis (EA). SIMCITY 3000 Unlimited. Redwood City, CA: Maxis (EA), 2000. McLuhan, Marshall. The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972. Murray, Janet. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997. NAMCO. Tekken 3. San Jose, CA: NAMCO, 1998. Nintendo. Metroid. Publisher: Redmond, WA: Nintendo, 1987. Nintendo. Super Mario Brothers. Redmond, WA: Nintendo, 1985. Omega Force. Dynasty Warriors 3. Burlingame, CA: KOEI, 2000. Pazhitnov, Alexey. Tetris. (Ported to the IBM PC by Vadim Gerasimov). USA: Spectrum Holobyte; England: Mirrorsoft, 1986. Poole, Steven. Trigger Happy: Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2000. Ratey, John J. M. D. A Users Guide to the Brain. New York: Pantheon Books, 2001. Rogue Entertainment. American McGees Alice. Redwood City, CA: Electronic Arts, 2000. Rouse, Richard III. Whats Your Perspective? Computer Graphics 33.3 (1999): 9-12. Smoking Car Productions. The Last Express. Novato, CA: Brderbund, 1997. Soja, Edward. Thirdspace. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 1997. Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA). ICO. Foster City, CA: SCEA, 2001. Square. Bushido Blade. Foster City, CA: SCEA, 1997. Square. Final Fantasy VIII. Honolulu, Hawaii: Square, 1999. Strategy First. Disciples II: Dark Prophecy. Montreal, Quebec, Canada: Strategy First, 2002. Sun Microsystems. Starfire: A Vision of Future Computing. Sun Microsystems, El Dorado Hills, 1995. Tecmo. Dead or Alive (DOA) 2: Hardcore. Torrence, CA: Tecmo, 2000.
34 Tecmo. Fatal Frame. Torrence, CA: Tecmo, 2002. Troika Games. Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura. Bellevue, WA: Sierra Studios, 2001. Turbine Entertainment. Asherons Call. Redmond, WA: Microsoft, 1999. Turkle, Sherry. The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984. ---. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997. Verant Interactive. Everquest. Foster City, CA: Sony Online Entertainment, 1999.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Laurie N. Taylor was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but has lived in Florida since the age of three. Laurie has studied at the University of Florida for the past two years and is continuing at the University of Florida as a Ph.D. student in the Department of English. Laurie is most interested in studying video games and new media, and this thesis attempts to better understand new media and specifically video games in terms of perspective. She currently lives with her partner, James (Pete) C. Taylor, in Gainesville, Florida, and with her brothers, Colin and Eric.