The Last Express, a 1997 CD-ROM computer game from renowned videogame creator Jordan Mechner (Prince of Persia), won rave reviews and major awards from both the gaming and mass-market press. It is considered one of the best adventure games ever produced.

THE LAST EXPRESS

Exquisite design and a literary story A thrilling ride. Newsweek
Grips you from the beginning and keeps you glued to your computer until its heart-pounding ending An innovative masterpiece that has set a new standard for the adventure game genre. Nexus Gaming
A mix of Indiana Jones and Alfred Hitchcock A winner. CNN
Mechner is a master of style and technique The Last Express, a complex cinematic thriller set in 1914 aboard the fabled Orient Express, is a taut, intelligent adventure unlike any seen before. Computer Shopper Subtle and accomplished The captivating screenplay will grab you and hook you to the cars of this last train before the war. Le Monde
Mechners adventure romps are more like Hollywood blockbusters than computer games. The London Guardian
Successfully combines intrigue, suspense, tragedy, and romance in a rich, exciting historical drama Superb graphics, sound effects, music, and a well-told, well-acted story. Computer

Gaming World

Far superior to Riven Set aboard the famous Orient Express train in Europe on the eve of World War I, The Last Express is filled with romance, intrigue and action. A unique and utterly beautiful art nouveau style of animation, strong story line, and rich multilingual soundtrack make The Last Express look and sound like no other adventure game. San Francisco Chronicle
The Last Express takes the cinematic adventure game to the next level. Online Gaming Review The top adventure game, The Last Express was given the thumbs up by all ages and both genders a rarity in our tests. Family PC
For the first time in a long time Ive become emotionally attached to a game through its clever balance of class, originality, memorable characters, and a well-designed plot. Gamesmania Jordan Mechner, creator of classics like Karateka and Prince of Persia, astounds once again The mixture of elegant graphics, superb character interaction, and propelling action sequences sets The Last Express apart from other adventures. PC World
One of those rare occasions when game design approaches the level of art My highest recommendation: one of the most beautiful games Ive ever seen. Triad Style
Intelligent writing, complex characters, unpredictable plot twists and some of the most convincing voice acting ever heard in a game Remains intriguing all the way to the spectacular ending. Gamespot
A very strong candidate for the best adventure of all time. Games Domain Review
Awards won by THE LAST EXPRESS
Family PC Top Rated Awards Best Adventure Game Games Buyers Guide Best Adventure/Role-Playing Game MacWorld Hall of Fame Best Role-Playing Game Game.Exe Award Best Adventure Game
SPA Codie Awards Finalist, Best Use of Visual Arts in Multimedia Washington Post Golden Fez Award Computer Gaming World Premier Award Finalist, Best Adventure Game Computer Games & Strategy Plus Finalist, Best Adventure Game PC Games Runner-Up, Best Adventure Game Computer Games & Strategy Plus Stamp of Approval Games Domain Review Gold Award PC Gamer Editor's Choice Award Computer Games Top 10 Graphic Adventures of the Decade

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).

Figure 1-3: The Last Express first-person.
This scene is shown through the first-person of the main player-character, Robert Cath. The Last Express does use the same sort of minimalist control panel information present in Figures 1-7 (Metroid), 1-10 (Doom), 1-6 (Arcanum), and 1-9 (Alice). But The Last Express presents the information outside of the traditional game space by placing the information on the black border and having the game take place inside of the window created within this border. In this way, the objects that Cath possesses can be shown without having to represent Cath visually, which requires a high processing load, and without having to contrive some other way to represent the objects that Cath holds. Some games do require the player-character to open a briefcase or jacket and then scroll through the different itemsan interface which requires more processing power and more tedium for the player. (Image from: Smoking Car Productions. The Last Express. Novato, CA: Brderbund, 1997.)
within the game world and game space. Games like this include the god views of puzzle games like chess, checkers, Tetris, simulation/strategy games like SIMCITY, and strategy games like Disciples II and Black and White. Gameplay in these games is based on the concept that the player is a force that acts upon the world of the game, rather than a force within the game that then acts on the objects and actors of the game from within. The god view is a distancing, abstracting point of viewthe logical end of the cone of vision paradigm of linear perspective where the end of the cone is outside of the field of the
Figure 1-4: The Last Express third-person.
The vast majority of The Last Express is played from a first-person perspective, but the fight scenes are in third-person because of the need for spatial reference. (Image from: Smoking Car Productions. The Last Express. Novato, CA: Brderbund, 1997.)
game space: the view looks onto the game space, but is not present within it. Acting outside of the game world also occurs in party system games (like the Final Fantasy and Might and Magic games), where the player controls several characters at once (the 'party'). These games do not allow the player to manipulate objects from a point of contact within the game space because the player must act as an outsider controlling a group of characters. Playing as the controlling force of a group is not the same as playing within the game space: in party system games, the player plays as a controlling external force which acts on the party, and the party then acts within the game. In party system games and simulation games, the player plays as a god, general, or director figure, that is a force outside of the game that directs the actions of the game. Opposingly, in a game like

13 Yet, many popular and more critical works treat the players insertion into the space as following from the proper visual presentation instead of a complex and varied playing experience. Diegetic immersion and intra-diegetic immersion are both subsets of the possibilities for which a player may experience a game space; they are not exclusive forms, but exist on something like an xy axis with some games offering differing blends and others favoring diegetic forms more exclusively. Diegetic immersion is based on the users ability to become absorbed into the text by forgetting that which is exterior to the text. This experience of immersion is a consequence of inattention to the spatial field, not because the spatial field is a given, natural domain of experience (and therefore simply fades into the background,) but because the players attention is simply turned elsewhere. With the attention turned elsewhere, the player is able to partially forget his or her independent existence and fade into the work as a nondiscernable and nondifferentiated aspect of the work. Once the player turns her attention to the experience of space, the player becomes aware, not of immersion, but of the bodys insertion into, and, at some level, disjunction from, the space that surrounds it. Thus, there are two levels of immersion possible in video games: one where the player becomes absorbed into the experience of playing the game (diegetic immersion), and another where the players focus is not merely on the playing of the game, but also on the experience of the game space through the player-character within that space; wherein the characters involvement with the space becomes the players involvement with the space (intradiegetic or situated immersion). When the player is immersed intra-diegetically in the space of the game the player is not acting upon the game, but within the game space.
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

NPCs are the non-player characters that populate the game world. They are often merchants and training assistants. In Diablo II the townspeople who give quests, sell items, and offer healing are all NPCs.
25 must play as a singular entity because embodiment for humans will always be experienced as a singular phenomenon. Human embodiment is embodiment through one position in space, but this one position is also through a complete body with all the nuances of that body. Even with the fragmentary nature of a singular human body, human embodiment is singular in that it cannot cross the divide between two separately embodied creatures. Even though the body is often perceived through only parts of the body, these parts are viewed within the context of the body as a singular entity comprised of parts. Thus, a video game with simultaneous multiple bodily representations does not allow for embodied context because it fragments the body not into parts of the body, but into multiple bodies. Yet, if the context is narrativized in such a way that the multiple embodiments become singular, then the multiple embodiments can function adequately for embodiment. For instance, if a player plays as one character and then another while switching back over very distinctly separate time frames or if the character is leading another character in ways which the player-character cannot control or can only control in narrativized ways, then the player is not fragmented and the possibility for embodiment exists. In the Resident Evil games the player plays as one character and then another over separated parts of the gamethe player never simultaneously controls more than one character. In ICO, the player plays as the boy player-character who must lead around a blind princessas long as the player-character holds her hand, she follows. But, once the player-character lets go, then she can wander off. The blind princess never responds to commands of the player; she only responds to the player-characters actions towards her. Having a god-view and playing in a party system game automatically
26 eliminate the possibility for game world embodiment because they fracture the player into multiple bodies or into the space surrounding the bodies and thus do not place the player in a bodied representation at all. The player's understanding of context in first-person point-of-view games commonly is based on the idea that the player plays as the player-character by seeing through the player-characters eyes, which seems to many in the game design field as more intuitive and natural because the player appears to act and perceive the gaming space in the way that the characters act and perceive the game. But, this ignores the fact that the player has no context within the game space (that is, intra-diegetically) because the player has a very limited access to the representation of positionality and spatial relations within the game space. Just as the player cannot be within the game space for god-view and party system or squad based games (because the player has no place or presence within the world, but is rather a force on the world,) the player cannot enter the game through the screen. The player cannot enter into the game space to function from within the game space through the supposedly transparent medium of the screen, because the player has no context within the world and because the spatial construction of the player and the game space are incompatible regardless of refinements of graphic presentation of the game space. All strictly fighting games, like the Street Fighter, Tekken, DOA, and Bushido Blade games, are in third-person point-of-view because fighters require a bodied presence for dynamic control and for recognition of context or placement within the space itself and in relation to the other character. Fighters make a singularly pertinent example of this restriction because, to execute the combinatorial

movements of block, hit, crouch, or jump accurately, it is necessary to see the character and to see the character in context with the other elements.
Figure 1-11: First-person with Doom.
Doom is a first-person shooter (FPS). The display at the bottom of the screen shows the items that the character has, the characters health, and other basic game information. At the bottom center of the screen is a gun; this part of the display changes based on the weapon which is equipped and is intended to give the player a sense of being in the world by connecting the player to the gun that represents the players movement on the screen. (Image from: id Software. Doom. Mesquite, TX: id Software, 1993.)
The Third-Person Point-of-View Paradox First-person point-of-view seems to promise the "best" sense of and engagement with the space because optical perspective is closer to that of "normal" optical subjectivity than other perspectives. But, closeness to "normal" optical subjectivity need not be given priority in the game space where consistency reigns, and verisimilitude with the extra-gaming world has no bearing in the creation or the implementation of a consistent space in a video game. On the other hand, third-person point-of-view graphically represents a physical presence through an embodied character in the world. First-person games sometimes have a pseudo-bodily representation in the game by 27
28 having a hand or hand-held object at the center of the screen. The hand or hand-held object on the screen is not analogous to the characters position within the game space: the hand is a visual aid as to what item the hand is holding, a targeting help, or is merely there; none of these representations show a bodily representation within the game space.22 Third-person point-of-view games do present an embodied representation within the context of the game space. While Stephen Poole contends that this view is disembodied because the player sees the game space in a different way than the player would see a nongame space, the perception of the space is, ironically, richer because the player is allowed a sense of the space. In third-person point-of-view games, the player is given an embodied representation in the space with all that an embodied representation entails, including the physical relationship of the character to the space and objects around the character and a contextualized presence in the game space so that the player can experience the space through the player-character as other than simply a geometric construction. Ironically, then, third-person point-of-view affords the player an experience of embodied space that is more complex and closer to the corresponding encounter with the extra-gaming world than does first-person point-of-view. Part of the trouble with the first-person point-of-view is that it isolates one dimension of spatial experiencein its most abstracted and subjectively impoverished form. Proponents of first-person point-of-view, like Richard Rouse claim that, because this is how humans all see the world through their eyes, it is the most natural method

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

Recently video games have begun using well-known musicians and composers in the development of sound effects and soundtracks. For instance, the music for American McGees Alice was composed by former Nine Inch Nails member Chris Vrenna and the music for Quake was composed by Nine Inch Nails lead Trent Reznor.
31 not actually play video games despite the pivotal importance of that play.25 Also important to remember is that optical perspective and the possibilities it creates for immersion within the game space do not dictate any sort of qualitative judgment of a game or game space. As one game designer states in an argument oddly for the supposedly fuller experience with first-person point-of-view: Its important to realize that the shift from first to third-person in any computer game represents not just a switch in what the player is allowed to view of the world, but also a transformation in the type of game being played. Certain game designs will cease to function when viewed from any viewpoint other than the one they were designed to use. (Rouse 12) Video games vary greatly in terms of their construction and presentation, and video games need to be analyzed on all levels so that a critical vocabulary and critical method can be developed as a starting point for the exploration of video games. Currently, video games have chiefly co-opted theories of space and immersivity from other, generally unlike media, like print and film, or their more popular understanding has entirely lacked theory; or has been based on limited notions of direct manipulation. These methods have done a disservice to the need for a more completed understanding of video games and how they are already experienced in the specific contexts of play.
Using a game guide still involves the player in the experiential aspect of video games, but simply watching another play video games does not. For work on actual video game play, with all the frustrations, see the works by Espen Aarseth, J. Yellowlees Douglas, Terry Harpold, and Steven Poole.

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