Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Whether to use first person or third person is a choice the designer needs
to think through carefully. If you want to give the gamer more control during
gameplay, then third person is likely the way to go. If you as the designer want
to control the experience more as the gamer plays through your game, then first
person is probably what you want.
Also, as you design a game, take into consideration how much realism you
wish to provide the player. For a more realistic experience (what you as the char-
acter hears and sees), a FPS POV may be more desirable. However, if you have
incredible environments to see and explore and hazards to negotiate, the TPS
POV might be the way to go so the gamer can move the camera to watch their
character and see more of the world they inhabit.
An interesting combination of the two POVs can be found in the game
Ratchet
& Clank,
developed by Insomniac Games and published by SCEA for the PlayStation.
The gamer can choose to switch between FPS and TPS POVs. This is an unusual
approach to design and allows the gamer to choose how they wish to see the
game. Blizzard's
World of Warcraft
, through the use of the mousewheel, allows
players to zoom in so close that they see the game as a first-person POV as well.
This option gives the gamer some variation in how they play the game, but
doesn't really affect gameplay. Most players tend to jump into the FPS POV for
short spurts, just to up the adrenaline a bit; however, most prefer to drop back to
the TPS POV.
In addition to choosing a point of view, you must decide where to place the
camera. Options for the camera position include bird's-eye view (overhead or
helicopter),
projection
, side-scrolling, and faux 3D. We'll look at these four
options next.
Bird's-eye View
The bird's-eye view has the gamer looking down onto the playing field. A classic
example of a game that uses bird's-eye view is
Frogger
. This view lends itself to
games that involve exploration. In addition, games that require strategy often
use this approach because you can coordinate a map. Games that use the bird's-
eye view are often known as
board
games.
Figure 5.6 shows a screenshot from the game
Weird Helmet,
made by Star
Mountain Studios. The goal of the game is to turn tiles on the game field so that
the avatar can race across from one portal to the next in outer space before he runs
out of the air he carries in his “weird helmet.” An overhead view is ideal for game-
play of this type because of how quickly the player must be able to anticipate which
tiles to turn in order to make a pathway from start to finish for the racing hero.
Bird's-eye view is
also known as top
down, overhead, or
helicopter view.
