First-person (video games)

In video games, first-person (also spelled first person) is any graphical perspective rendered from the viewpoint of the player character, or from the inside of a device or vehicle controlled by the player character. It is one of two perspectives used in the vast majority of video games, with the other being third-person, the graphical perspective from outside of any character (but possibly focused on a character); some games such as interactive fiction do not belong to either format.

First-person can be used as sole perspective in games belonging of almost any genre; first-person party-based RPGs and first-person maze games helped define the format throughout the 1980s, while first-person shooters (FPS) are a popular genre emerging in the 1990s in which the graphical perspective is an integral component of the gameplay. Although, like third-person shooters (TPS), the term has come to define a specific subgenre of shooter games rather than any using the perspective, with several shooter games, while belonging to other subgenres, using a first person perspective, such as, traditionally, light gun shooters, rail shooters, and shooting gallery games. Other genres that typically feature a first person perspective include amateur flight simulations, combat flight simulators, dating sims, driving simulators, visual novels, immersive sims, and walking sims, although it has virtually been used in all genres, including survival horror and stealth games, either as main perspective or for specific actions or sections.

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 in many games they 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; 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, but 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, although the key objects such as dropped items or levers may be exaggerated in order to improve their visibility.

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 arcade 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 are more certain.