Second-person-shooter

Why nobody uses 2nd-person POV: You would see the player character's face, looking at you. His face would be center of screen, and you would see the world at the sides of the screen. As you move forward into the world, he would walk backwards.

Why nobody uses 2nd-person POV: You would see the player character's face, looking at you. His face would be center of screen, and you would see the world at the sides of the screen. As you move forward into the world, he would walk backwards.

http://www.kongregate.com/games/himojii/second-person-shooter-zato

Its actually quite fun.

I'd call that a third-person you-are-the-enemy POV. Not true 2nd person.
But true 2nd person really doesn't make sense anyway.
"Faux" 2nd-person, maybe.

I camed up with with this. What if, instead of controlling your character directly, you control you character trough feelings? For example, in a boss battle, where boss "opens" for fire rarely, you have to build up patience and build down anger etc.?

That sounds irritating, especially for a shooter.

I don't want to say immediately that controlling a character indirectly through an interface of push-button emotions sounds like a bad idea. But whatever the genre, it sounds irritating because instead of an interface that works 100% of the time as you wish, your character may instead only do what you want some of the time. But perhaps there's a place for it somewhere.

@ Heath, you hit the nail on the head there. Having only vague control of your characters will inevitably end up annoying the player. A prime example for me is Majesty 2: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim. The whole game is built around you having vague control over your Heroes (aka units). I'll admit they did what you wanted them to do most of the time but on occasion they wouldn't which resulted in one of the most infuriating experiences of my life.

It's interesting to think of things like this but I don't see how a second person game (of any sort) would work. Books written in the second person (like Bright Lights, Big City) talks about how "you do this..." and "you do that.." as contrasted with 1st person ("I do this") or 3rd ("he does this").

A game in this style would seem to negate any sense of agency from the player.

3rd person - I am controlling an avatar. He runs when I push the stick.
1st person - I see the game world through the avatar's eyes so it makes it feel more like I am doing the running (although this is still a stretch).
2nd person - ??? The game tells me I am running so I push the stick?

I am having trouble conceptualizing what this would even be like. Simply inverting the camera would not work. If you took Tomb Raider and moved the camera so it always pointed at her face, would that make it a 2nd Person Game? I don't think it would. I would also argue that indirectly manipulating the avatar (for instance through emotions) would not constitute a 2nd person POV either.

@ Heath, you hit the nail on the head there. Having only vague control of your characters will inevitably end up annoying the player. A prime example for me is Majesty 2: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim. The whole game is built around you having vague control over your Heroes (aka units). I'll admit they did what you wanted them to do most of the time but on occasion they wouldn't which resulted in one of the most infuriating experiences of my life.

Majesty 1 was infinitely superior to Majesty 2. But in either game I never had problems with heroes doing the wrong things. Beat the whole game and played hundreds of hours of sandbox.

@ Heath, you hit the nail on the head there. Having only vague control of your characters will inevitably end up annoying the player. A prime example for me is Majesty 2: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim. The whole game is built around you having vague control over your Heroes (aka units). I'll admit they did what you wanted them to do most of the time but on occasion they wouldn't which resulted in one of the most infuriating experiences of my life.

I remember a Pac-Man game on SNES that did something like that too. Suddenly, Pac was a sunny-skyed platformer like Super Mario World, but not only that, you couldn't just move him left and right. You had to persuade him some odd way and he could even get irritated at you. You would then get irritated at the game and take it back to the store where you had rented it.

But if we're talking about emotion, here, there are some experimental things out there that certainly don't rely on twitch gameplay.

Would something like Lifeline count as a "second-person" game? In Lifeline, you don't have direct control over your character; you're stationed in this security room, watching the main character on the security cameras and shouting directions at her via a USB microphone plugged into the PS2.

...I think everyone hated that game, though, because the voice-control was difficult to work with. (I loved it, but it took a LOT of patience to get into it.)

Would something like Lifeline count as a "second-person" game? In Lifeline, you don't have direct control over your character; you're stationed in this security room, watching the main character on the security cameras and shouting directions at her via a USB microphone plugged into the PS2.

I don't thinki so it would constitute 2nd Person. I think it's just 3rd person via an indirect (and frustrating!) control method. I do not think that a true 2nd person POV is possible in a game just like I don't think it is really possible to have a true 2nd person movie. 2nd person literature is the narator telling the reader what he or she is doing. I don't see how one could really translate this into a game.

All those old text adventure games were in a kind of 2nd person; you tell "yourself" what to do. If that makes any sense.

When I had last researched the FPS genre, SPS came out. A Japanese game developer was experimenting with it. Except, you saw from your enemy's eyes. It was odd. What would happen if multiple enemies were on-screen?

When I had last researched the FPS genre, SPS came out. A Japanese game developer was experimenting with it. Except, you saw from your enemy's eyes. It was odd. What would happen if multiple enemies were on-screen?

Check out the game that SimonForsman linked to earlier in the thread. It is a Unity Web game that handles the multiple enemies in an enjoyable way. Fun little game.

Why nobody uses 2nd-person POV: You would see the player character's face, looking at you. His face would be center of screen, and you would see the world at the sides of the screen. As you move forward into the world, he would walk backwards.

Absolutely reasonable, but that's because a "third person" is considered the narrator, so a ghostly presence up and behind.

I can imagine a 2nd person also in another way, the face is not looking at me, we are both looking in a direction and he is just on my left or right side. So it would be a kind of lateral 3rd person.

All theories of course.

A second-person narrative in literature is one where the reader is the protagonist and the narrator uses 2nd-person pronouns - e.g. "you walk down the stairs" / "you see movement up ahead" / "it was the worst day of your life".

It seems to me that games are already closer to a second=person experience than most books, as the player directly witnesses events in the story. Making a second-person game therefore would not require a change in camera perspective - a game with a "1st-person" camera could have a second-person narrative if the storyline/narration/other characters support the idea that the player is actually taking part in the action themselves, i.e. the player and their avatar are the same person.

Imagine a game which takes place in a world similar to our own, where the player never sees their avatar's reflection, hears them speak, hears others refer to them by name, or anything else which would confirm that they are a different person to the player - you could create a storyline with these constraints where the player is conceivably playing as themselves.

For example, the game could play out like a premonition of future events: the player finds themselves in the middle of some disaster in 2020 and fights to survive and help others - in this situation it would be quite reasonable that the player's life prior to the events of the game is never mentioned, and so there is little risk of introducing contradictions between the history of the player and the in-game version of themselves, The game is then a story about a series of events happening to the player themselves - this seems to me the closest parallel to a second-person narrative in literature.