CONTEXT - A Game Design Vocabulary - page 94

Chip actually starts this scene on the periphery of the map. To get to the moat and the maze,
Chip must walk a path that takes him around the outside of the castle—ensuring that the
player sees the exit. While playing the game, the player is only shown a 9x9-square area around
Chip at any given time. It's important to have Chip pass the outside of the castle to make sure
the player knows where to go. This relates to the idea of camera, which is discussed in the next
s e c t i o n .
Camera
C a m e r a in this context refers to what the player can see at any given time. Does she see just
part of the world? The whole world? Does the camera move, or stay still? It might move in
periodic transitions, or slide over the world freely, or it might follow the protagonist. If the game
consists mostly of text, perhaps there is no camera, only the narrator's voice.
The way that the player sees the game characterizes the game world and the player's relation-
ship to it. If she is looking at the game from above, the scenes of the game might feel like a
map—maybe one that's being slowly uncovered, as in Desktop Dungeons (see Figure 4.21). This
camera suggests that strategy will be important. If the camera moves with the protagonist,
that provides a closer relationship between player and protagonist. If it doesn't, the player has
a closer connection to the world than the protagonist. A camera that lets the player see the
entire game from a remote distance or high vantage can suggest that the player is like a god,
considering each and every object in the world; in this case, even a protagonist character might
be just another small piece that the player can manipulate.
If the camera shows us only what the protagonist sees, from a “first-person” perspective, the
protagonist is the camera. In this kind of game, the player has a very different relationship to
the world. Now everything is not of equal value; what the player's looking at is what's impor-
tant. And the player cannot look at the protagonist. The protagonist is no longer just a part of
the game world; she's the way that the player can perceive the world, the lens she must look
through.
Santa Ragione's Fotonica (2011) is a game with a first-person camera, but it's a fixed camera
(see Figure 4.22). It's a game about running and leaping, and the camera is always fixed on the
horizon, even as mountains and hills and other shapes glide by on the periphery of the player's
vision. The game provides beautiful things to look at but never lets the player turn her head to
look at them directly. The purpose of the game is to run and jump forward, following a track
that consistently steers the player's focus toward the center of the screen.