tao_te_trick (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tao_te_trick) wrote2011-05-09 09:18 pm
tao_te_trick) wrote2011-05-09 09:18 pm
Entry tags:
Life Update: The First
I would love start this up with something grand, but that is not in the cards. What is in the cards is that I am still reeling from my first ever migraine. Now that I have an appreciation for what that means, I will have more respect for my friends who endure these regularly. Now, I'm sitting with my monitor on the lowest brightness and viewing it through sunglasses. This is, likely, the most goth thing I have ever done. Some, if not all, of that goth-ness is subverted by my fluffy green robe.
I only worked a half-day today at work. I thought I had overcome my migraine, but I found light nauseating. Slowly, that nausea grew to be crippling and I went home. It's painful to trust your body and be betrayed by it. This has, oddly, brought me to a discussion of game mechanics.
I work with some people that care deeply about perspective. Specifically, there is a constant battle between those who prefer their adventures from viewed from a third-person perspective and others who wish to see from the character's eyes.
I have good body sense: I am aware of where my body is without seeing it. This has been an aid in martial arts, in stunt work, and in theatre. This body sense has kept me alive. When I play a game, my avatar relies upon me for survival in circumstances routinely more dire than I shall ever experience. In a game, though, I cannot touch, smell, or, in many ways, hear. In life, I depend on those senses.
Perspective, in a game, decides how we compensate for the loss of those senses. In first person, we are given a view unobstructed by distractions. Only weapons occupy our vision. We become death focussed. Without cues to guides us about our immediate surroundings, we are drawn forward and the solutions to all our problems are found in the barrel of a gun.
In third person games, we are given a sliver of our surroundings as well as our avatar's animations as cues to our environment. We still suffer from the tunnel vision inherent in television, but we can sense more of our environment due to the pulled back camera. We lose detail in exchange for greater scope. Because of this heightened awareness, we are also expected to make more educated choices about how to deal with the environment. Murder, while still the most common solution, is definitely less common than when the player avatar is merely a gun.
I'm going to explore this topic at greater length later. Probably when I can trust my body again.
I only worked a half-day today at work. I thought I had overcome my migraine, but I found light nauseating. Slowly, that nausea grew to be crippling and I went home. It's painful to trust your body and be betrayed by it. This has, oddly, brought me to a discussion of game mechanics.
I work with some people that care deeply about perspective. Specifically, there is a constant battle between those who prefer their adventures from viewed from a third-person perspective and others who wish to see from the character's eyes.
I have good body sense: I am aware of where my body is without seeing it. This has been an aid in martial arts, in stunt work, and in theatre. This body sense has kept me alive. When I play a game, my avatar relies upon me for survival in circumstances routinely more dire than I shall ever experience. In a game, though, I cannot touch, smell, or, in many ways, hear. In life, I depend on those senses.
Perspective, in a game, decides how we compensate for the loss of those senses. In first person, we are given a view unobstructed by distractions. Only weapons occupy our vision. We become death focussed. Without cues to guides us about our immediate surroundings, we are drawn forward and the solutions to all our problems are found in the barrel of a gun.
In third person games, we are given a sliver of our surroundings as well as our avatar's animations as cues to our environment. We still suffer from the tunnel vision inherent in television, but we can sense more of our environment due to the pulled back camera. We lose detail in exchange for greater scope. Because of this heightened awareness, we are also expected to make more educated choices about how to deal with the environment. Murder, while still the most common solution, is definitely less common than when the player avatar is merely a gun.
I'm going to explore this topic at greater length later. Probably when I can trust my body again.