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OK, maybe I should change it to Third-Person Perspective. However, if you look up Third-Person Shooter on Wikipedia you get a definition that seems to suggest that the third-person aspect is important, and that the "shooter" bit doesn't necessarily have to apply, generically. (Almost as if the "shooting" part refers to the camera shot, but I know that isn't the case, yet).
Third-person shooter (TPS or 3PS) is a genre of 3D computer and video games in which the player character is seen at a distance from a number of different possible perspective angles, as opposed to the first-person model in which the player views everything in the game world as if through the character’s own eyes. Tomb Raider was an early third-person shooter which popularized the genre.[1]
Leon S. Kennedy in Salazar's Castle in Resident Evil 4.Owing to the general nature of the term, many games are placed outside of the third-person shooter genre because their styles are covered by more specific genre labels. Prior to Resident Evil 4, the Resident Evil games, though they incorporate both third-person gameplay and shooting, are not considered third-person shooters; because of the emphasis on fear and survival, they are called survival horror. In contrast, the GTA series from Grand Theft Auto III on has been labeled by some as third-person shooters, but also incorporates driving and RPG elements. Examples of traditional third-person shooters include MDK, Gears of War and Uncharted: Drake's Fortune.
first person implies some agency, which we obviously have none of in cinema.
Obviously a first-person POV shot in cinema is different from the (superficially) equivalent view in a FPS, but I hope I was trying to say, overall, that game "cameras" are mostly not very much like what we see in cinema, so where are the possible overlaps and similarities?
It also implies identification, and usually we identify with the people who are being subjected to scaryPOV more than the one who owns it - ScaryPOV is closer to second person, and third is your non-identified perspective (i.e. almost everything, except heroPOV, which is pretty rare). I am here, 'he' is out there (in the darkness, looking at me), 'they' are everywhere, swooping around like crane shots.
I see what you're saying, but I don't really see that a first person point of view can be "second person". When we're seeing through the Terminator's eyes, I think the uncanny bit is that we're briefly given that inhuman perspective. Surely we are invited to identify with the character through whose eyes we are seeing, for the duration of that shot? Even if it does at the same time stress their otherness and alienness.
It's definitely an interesting point. However, again I hope I was trying to say that overall, the dominant videogame camera modes are (contrary to the vague general sense that "videogame" films are youthful, funky, fast and furious) not like anything we see for any length of time in the cinema ~ that the closest comparison is novelty shots in mainstream cinema, and that another interesting parallel would be devices we usually associate with experimental or art cinema.
That's my main point, and unfortunately there are subtleties. ambiguities, exceptions and details that I'm not able to explore within this short piece, but I hope that idea does come across. |
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