For week 9, we talked about Fullerton’s chapter on player viewpoints and immersion. In the chapter, Fullerton goes over the 1^st person, 3^rd person, and overheard perspectives in games, and how they all provide a different view and angle of their games. Fullerton states, “The controls, viewpoint, and interface all work together symbiotically to create the game experience and allow the player to understand and have agency within the system.” This applies for many game genres like first person shooter, real-time strategy, adventure/story games. For the game to display their information effectively, camera angles matter a lot for player movements, and for developers to show what players want them to see and experience. In the game Destiny, it takes advantage of 1^st and 3^rd person view, 1^st person for using guns and favoring precision, while 3^rd person was used for swords or supers, giving players a bigger view when using larger weapons. In strategy or turn base games, it’s mostly overhead/isometric views as It’s intended for easier access to information and to multitask, to show players a broad view of what they have and the environment.

For our class playthrough, we watched the first parts of A Night in the Woods. It’s a 2D, third person game about animals living human lives. The story follows a cat named Mae as she goes back to her hometown, exhausted and irritated about everything, but finds unexpected things happening. What I really like about A Night in the Woods is that it feels relatable and grounded. There’s no action-packed story to tell, but instead we get to explore the setting and it’s characters as if it’s a normal day for everyone. There’s soothing music, entertaining dialogues, minigames, interesting characters, and choices to respond to some situations like Twine games. though the main viewpoint was 3^rd person view, the game sometimes switches it up to other viewpoints like 1^st person or overhead for minigames, which is a fitting experience. This also helps with the immersion, how you’re following one character and seeing everything through her, and the different viewpoints are to switch it up whenever the game wants you to experience something closely or in a different angle.

Sources

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

A Night in the Woods, Infinite Fall, 2017