Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
The quality of
fi rst-person
experience generally enhances engagement in
interactive media. In grammar, the personness of pronouns refl ects where
one stands
in relation to
others and the world. Most movies and novels, for
example, are third-person experiences; the viewer or reader is “outside” the
action and would describe what goes on using third-person pronouns: “He
did this; they did that.” Most instructional documents are second-person
affairs: “Insert Tab A into Slot B”; “Honor your father and your mother.”
Operating a computer program is all too often a second-person experience:
A person makes imperative statements (or pleas) to the system, and the
system
takes action, usurping the role of agency.
Agency
is a key component of fi rst-person experience. Mateas and Stern
(2005) provide an excellent description in relation to the development of
their experimental game,
Façade
:
Like contemporary games, Façade is set in a simulated world with real-
time 3D animation and sound, and offers the player a fi rst-person, con-
tinuous, direct-interaction interface, with unconstrained navigation and
the ability to pick up and use objects. More importantly, as in successful
games, the player is intended to have a high degree of agency. A player
has agency when she can form intentions with respect to the experience,
take action with respect to those intentions, and interpret responses in
terms of the action and intentions; i.e., when she has actual, perceptible
effects on the virtual world.
Although one may describe experiences in which one is not an agent
using fi rst-person pronouns (I saw this, I smelled that), the ability to
do
something sooner or later emerges as a criterion. On the one hand, doing
very simple things can be an expression of agency: looking around, for
instance, or reaching out and touching something. Such simple types of
agency are often responsible for the “breakthrough” experiences reported
by many people who have used virtual-reality systems.
17
On the other
hand, doing something relatively complex in an indirect or mediated way
may not have a fi rst-person feel. In the early days of computing, a pro-
grammer would submit a program and data on punched cards and come
17. Rob Tow formulates what he calls “The Principle of Action” in terms of sensation and ac-
tion in virtual reality (Laurel, Strickland, Tow 1994).
