First Person (video Game)

In video games, first person is any graphical perspective rendered from the viewpoint of the player's character, or a viewpoint from the cockpit or front seat of a vehicle driven by the character. The most popular type of first-person video game today is the first-person shooter (FPS), in which the graphical perspective is an integral component of the gameplay. Many other genres incorporate first-person perspectives, including other types of shooter games (such as light gun shooters, rail shooters and shooting gallery games), adventure games (including visual novels), amateur flight simulations (including combat flight simulators), racing games (including driving simulators), role-playing video games, and vehicle simulations (including sailing simulators and vehicular combat games).

Game mechanics

Games with a first-person perspective are usually avatar-based, wherein the game displays what the player's avatar would see with the avatar's own eyes. Thus, players typically cannot see the avatar's body, though they may be able to see the avatar's weapons or hands. This viewpoint is also frequently used to represent the perspective of a driver within a vehicle, as in flight and racing simulators; and it is common to make use of positional audio, where the volume of ambient sounds varies depending on their position with respect to the player's avatar.

Games with a first-person perspective do not require sophisticated animations for the player's avatar, nor do they need to implement a manual or automated camera-control scheme as in third-person perspective. A first-person perspective allows for easier aiming, since there is no representation of the avatar to block the player's view. However, the absence of an avatar can make it difficult to master the timing and distances required to jump between platforms, and may cause motion sickness in some players.

Players have come to expect first-person games to accurately scale objects to appropriate sizes. However, key objects such as dropped items or levers may be exaggerated in order to improve their visibility.

History

Origins

First-person perspectives are used in various different genres, including several distinct sub-genres of shooter games. Shooting gallery games, which evolved from mid-20th-century electro-mechanical games and in turn late-19th-century carnival games, typically employ a first-person perspective where players aim at moving targets on a stationary screen. They in turn evolved into rail shooters, which also typically employ a first-person perspective but move the player through levels on a fixed path. Rail shooter and shooting gallery games that use light guns are called light gun shooters. The most popular type of game to employ a first-person perspective today is the first-person shooter (FPS), which allows player-guided navigation through a three-dimensional space.

Electro-mechanical racing games had been using first-person perspectives since the late 1960s, dating back to Kasco's ''Indy 500'' (1968) and Chicago Coin's version ''Speedway'' (1969). The use of first-person perspectives in driving video games date back to ''Nürburgring 1'' and Atari's ''Night Driver'' in 1976.

It is not clear exactly when the earliest FPS video game was created. There are two claimants, ''Spasim'' and ''Maze War''. The uncertainty about which was first stems from the lack of any accurate dates for the development of ''Maze War''—even its developer cannot remember exactly. In contrast, the development of ''Spasim'' is much better documented and the dates more certain.

The initial development of ''Maze War'' probably occurred in the summer of 1973. A single player makes traverses a maze of corridors rendered using fixed perspective. Multiplayer capabilities, with players attempting to shoot each other, were probably added later in 1973 (two machines linked via a serial connection) and in the summer of 1974 (fully networked). ''Spasim'' was originally developed in the spring of 1974 with a documented debut at the