Re-Examining the Immersion Factor For First-Person Shooters

An opinion piece on Gamasutra looks into the common perception that a first-person view provides a much more immersive experience in shooters. The author argues that this concept needs to be reconsidered, as immersion nowadays is more dependent on what you see, rather than how you see it. The question is further complicated by ever-improving technology and new control schemes. "It's important to realize that making a first-person game almost necessarily means making a game for the dedicated gamer. Innovations on the interface side could help lower the casual block, perhaps through the Wii, Project Natal, or the PS3's new motion controller. Regardless, it will take a lot of work and concerted effort to penetrate the casual audience with a first-person camera. The question is whether we even need to, when there are so many camera systems that games have yet to fully explore."

Comments

Reminds me of the old Star Trek arcade game

[Anonymous Coward]

The Star Trek arcade game (you remember -- the kind you had to put quarters in) had both a first person view (ok, first ship view) and a top-down view. The first person view was nice eye-candy, but a useless distraction in actual combat. The top-down view had so much more usable information and no distracting eye-candy. It was all you needed to play the game effectively (as long as you wanted on one quarter once you mastered it).

That doesn't mean Crysis would be better without the first-person view. It's the realism that makes that kind of game.

Re:Reminds me of the old Star Trek arcade game

[ld a,b]

To be fair, there are studies pointing that this is due to the frames in movies having ghost images embedded.
With photo-realistic games, each frame is rendered separately and thus more are needed to recreate the illusion of continuous motion.
What's fun is that Anime and old school sprite games are completely unaffected or even improved by having a much lower frame-rate.
It turns out that if you avoid trying to be realistic, immersion is easier.

Re:Reminds me of the old Star Trek arcade game

[CastrTroy]

That's where you start to get into the uncanney valley. Once things start to look too close to real, it messes with your head, and you start to see all the subtle flaws. If something looks completely not real, we just forget about the realness entirely, and start to enjoy the game.