FPS: Address and Information

In class we discussed a lot of ways in which the first-person perspective engages the player, specifically in relation to realism and immersion. I think we covered a wide variety of practical strategies visible as we play: dialogue, third person cut scenes, the controller in hand, etc. I'd like to focus on two strategies that I would consider more invisible: address and information.

I'm taking address from literary theory, thinking about how the game, the book, or movie addresses its player, reader, or audience. In books, first-person pronouns are not used to make readers into narrators. Instead, they uphold the artifice, allowing you access to the character's thoughts and subjective experiences while recognizing that you are not the character. Instead, books use second-person pronouns to directly place the reader in the shoes of a character, if there even is a character beyond the readers themselves. In film, too, first person perspective is used mostly when there is an implicit "I," either because you've been outside of the subjective shots and into the wider film space or because there is a strong, developed character who is explicitly not you. Video games have room for both the literal and the implied "I" and "you." In texts surrounding a game, the introduction can try to situate the player as a character, saying "You are playing as...", or in a character: "Master Chief is..." Whereas the more implied "you" comes largely from how little the game to talks the player—if you can run rampant through an open world without imposed narratives, granted more agency, the game allows for undisturbed inhabiting of the character. I think this goes beyond first-person to pose the question: how does the game address the player: as a character or a person?

Galloway mentions information when talking about movie sets. The levels of information movie-goers are given allow them to relate more or less with the character: the twists of Shyamalan films would be less effective/affective if the audience was fully aware of all the peripheral information that the characters don't. He talks about spatial information, that we are (often) able to move fully about a game space but unable to do so in a film. Still, games will choose to deprive players of information: who is Master Chief under that mask, what is the true purpose of Aperture Labs, what is Atlas's role in Rapture? This can either prevent us from relating to a character whose motives, feelings, or identity we do not fully understand, or it can allow us to project our own feelings onto the characters and/or empathize with them.

What I'm saying is that the way a game addresses a player can inform the player of who the game expects the player to be and embody, and the way a game informs a player can change how the player situates themselves in a game's interface. This isn't necessarily restricted to FPS games, but they're certainly, for me, large elements that dictate how much I relate to the eyes through which the game lets me see.