In the Fullerton chapter from this week, she writes “The interface for a digital game is a combination of the camera viewpoint of the game environment and the visual display of the game status and controls that allow the user to interact with the system” (pg 260). This week we talked more specifically about viewpoints and perspectives in video games. They determine a huge part of the overall experience in video games. Game designers choose certain viewpoints to achieve certain experience. For example, most story games will usually have either 1st person or 3rd person perspective, unless it’s a text based game. On the other hand, top-down perspective are used for MOBA games or strategy game. However this is just a generality. Pokemon uses top-down viewpoint but it’s not a strategy game. Top-down viewpoint allows the player to see a wide area. This is useful when the game designer wants the player to control multiple units at the same time which is the case in most strategy games. On the other hand, 1 person or 3rd person perspective allow the player to be closer with the character.

One game that I find interesting is the old Resident Evil sequels. The game shows a static angle at a time and when a character goes to another section of the room, the angle changes. This design really increases the horror and surprise elements. For example, due to the fact that players sometimes can’t see ahead, players have to listen to sounds. There are rarely any games like this. We also have games that uses side view perspective such as Night in the Woods that we played on Tuesday. The side view allows the designer to use 2D arts to achieve the overall mood of the game.

So in general, it’s important to think about what kind of game that we want to make. We need to choose the best perspective to achieve the effects that we want. Not to mention that how the mechanics and the kinesthetics work in that perspective also matter a lot.

Works Cited:

Fullerton, Tracy. Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games, 4th Edition. 2019.