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Picture Imperfect – Schizophrenic Camera/Eye
By Corvus | October 3, 2008
This will likely be my last post that focuses on the problems with video game cameras. It’s been a fun ride thus far, with many good comments underscoring and debating my points. I will have at least one more post looking to the future of the video game camera and suggesting new approaches and techniques that might strengthen their presence as meaningful storytelling tools.
Today’s post focuses primarily on the first person camera and touches on issues brought up by comments left on previous posts in this series (see above link). The central question of these issues seems to be, “Is the camera meant to represent our eyes, a camera lens, or a gun sight?” And the answer, for better or for worse, appears to be a flat “Yes.”
Denis mentioned something that bothered me in Bioshock. The protagonist survives a plane crash in the ocean and when he surfaces, gasping for breath, water droplets stream down the camera lens. The protagonist is not Samus, a space marine, or a motorcyclist. It is highly unlikely he was wearing a helmet, which would have been an overly conspicuous accessory given that he was about to blow up a plane. Bioshock’s intent was to involve the player deeply and personally in a story about human nature and the very first thing they try and do is impress you with the visual of water droplet streaming down a camera lens.
Am I being too nit-picky? Perhaps. But it’s small details like that which can completely derail any sense of physical presence for me.
Alan touched on another point of contention (and the heart of this particular post) when he pointed out that the human eye does not produce lens flares. Lens flare, as the name implies, is something that happens when light is scattered through a lens system (i.e. multiple levels of zooms, etc). The human eye is simply more adaptable at handling strong and variable sources of light.
I touched on the targeting reticle in my last post, and Alan pointed out that it is meant to help the audience focus their eye. Other video games implement item highlights to try and help our eyes find focus. These are both very mechanical means of trying to replicate the ease with which the eye changes focus. Someone said to me that video game cameras are more representative of the human eye than a camera because they keep everything in focus all at once. This isn’t at all true, however. The human eye is simply so capable of shifting its focus from large items to small items, nearby items to distant items, that we’re able to stitch together a comprehensive and (mostly) clear picture from all the data our eyes continuously collect. As Alan said, however, try and focus in on a single paragraph, or a small item on your desk. Then, without moving your eyes, try and make out the details of items in the periphery of your vision.
No, it’s evident to me that video game cameras have traditionally been more analogous to point-and-shoot cameras. They have a flat focus, depicting everything with equal amounts of clarity. There’s a reason cinematographers and professional photographers don’t typically use cameras with a flat focus field, and by limiting our video games to this presentation, we’re limiting our ability to use the camera as an effective storytelling tool.
And therein lies the true issue with video game cameras. They have, as Nelsormensch pointed out, been driven primarily by usability concerns and inertia. By and large, the video game camera has an established vocabulary that is understood by the audience and therefore produces great discomfort when changes are introduced. Difficult camera controls are enough to ruin an otherwise decent game and so developers and publishers would rather leave well enough alone in order to ensure their audience isn’t turned away by the unknown. The result is an odd assemblage of eye and camera behaviors that are entirely unique to the medium (the Doom movie notwithstanding).
This is completely understandable, however unfortunate. It’s also going to change. There are experiments happening with game cameras. From Call of Cthulhu’s insanity filters, to Echochrome and Super Paper Mario’s use of the camera as a game mechanic, to the upcoming Fallout 3’s stylish way-over-the-shoulder third person camera and VATS targeted zoom system. None of the attempts thus far have had the impact of Godard’s trademark rule-breaking jump cuts, but it’s only a matter of time before someone turns their artistic attention to the video game camera and implements a system so risky, so rewarding, so compelling, that it changes the vocabulary of game cameras forever.
And that, is what the next couple of posts in the series are going to talk about.
Tagged:camera, lens, video games. | 7 Comments »
October 3rd, 2008 at 8:44 am
Coincidentally, I just saw this on Rock, Paper, Shotgun this morning:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008/10/03/sherlock-holmes-gets-a-face-lift/
Apparently the folks at Frogwares remastered Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened to include both 1st and 3rd person camera perspectives (the original only had one, but I’m not sure which).
Apropos to this discussion, it’s interesting that they decided to do all the additional work necessary to support both modes and it sounds like a lot of this was based on player feedback. Not sure if this is the right solution for FPS-ish games, but for other types, maybe this is another way to approach the camera issue.
October 3rd, 2008 at 11:53 am
There are all sorts of interesting visual tricks that developers use to represent various effects. For example, it’s particularly interesting to watch the evolution of the night-vision effect. That’s a topic all by itself.
Another odd one is the visual representation of intoxication/hallucinogen effects, sometimes accompanied by gameplay changes as well. A related visual trick deals with team affiliation. For example in America’s Army, players (on both teams) always see themselves as U.S. or allied soldiers. The computer serves as an intermediary between what’s really going on and how the player perceives it.
Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened wasn’t particularly good, but it’s notable for a couple of reasons. One reason is that it breaks away from the Myst-style “fixed viewpoint” format in favor of a free-movement system. The other reason is that it’s the game responsible for making me switch from inverted-mouse controls to direct-mapped mouse controls, since I had to review it and there was no option to swap the y-axis settings.
October 4th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Until recently the technology wasn’t available to not have everything in perfect focus. It’s only over the last few years that games can use soft focus to mimic effects of focusing on very close or very distant objects.
The recent Half Life 2 episodes have used some interesting techniques to mimic how the eye perceives light. When moving from a dark area to a light area everything appears over bright for a few seconds as the “eye” adjusts to the scene, the reverse happens when moving into dark areas where there is a moment of near total darkness while the “eyes” adjust. I’ve found this to be visually appealing but I do wonder if this is necessary or if our own eyes are actually doing the same when we move through light and dark areas in a game. Is the range of contrast levels available to modern monitors high enough to make that an actually issue?
Cameras in game seem to go out of their way to copy film, and use effects like the water droplets on the screen, that are common in film to try and evoke a sensation of “being there”. This works to some extent in third person titles as there is already a filmic quality to the movement of the camera, but in a first person game it can feel distinctly out of place.
Though in later sections of BioShock walking through water obscures your vision for a few moments leading to an increase in tension as you become partially blind. It might not be true to life but in it’s way it is effective.
October 12th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Alan Au mentioned hallucinogenic drugs, and there were enemies is Yoshi’s Island for snes, way back, that screwed with both the screen and the controls. Yup, in a 2d sidescroller. But it worked well, imo.
Anyway, it’s easy to understand why the gameplay camera involves a lot of lens-based effects, like lens flares, droplets, glare… most of what we see on the screen is shot with a camera. Everything that’s real, anyway, which is what games usually mimic. 2d games tend to follow cartoon conventions, 3d games film conventions. It’s not surprising, and while it may be annoying to some to see droplets on the screen as if they were on the lens, I prefer drops and glare over out-of -focus eyelashes, eyebrows and hair, a double-vision nose, and the blur that comes from squinting.
The modern TV/computer screen just doesn’t reproduce actual human sight, and until there’s is a technology that actually gives us the seeing experience of our avatar in the games, the attempts to emulate eyesight are probably won’t be anything but a fun break from the convention that at most will contribute some to the established in-game camera but not ultimately change it. Until volumetric displays or whatever the next step in technology is.
October 12th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
I’ve always viewed the camera as a window into the game world.I’m still using my eyes to look through the window, so I prefer the view to be as un-fooled-around with as possible. Flat focus with minimal crazy effects lets me personally focus on different parts of the screen without having to move my cross-hair (which I see more as my “hands” in the world than as my visual focus) The more crap that I have to look through and around simply to play the game, the less I want to play.
The camera effects that immediately pull me out of a game are just about any time the camera animates when I didn’t actively tell it to move that way. Things like the screen bouncing when I sprint, the swaying when I zoom a sniper scope, or the camera spinning all over the place when those tiny spider things in Doom3 hit me. They take me out of the game, and much like the droplets in Bioshock, make me wonder what makes that motion happen.
That said, subtle, well-placed effects (Samus’ reflection on her visor in Metroid Prime, or the speed lines and DOF changes in Burnout when boosting for example) can enhance the feeling of the game. In Metroid’s case, it keeps me in character: chick in a suit, looking through a visor (hey look! UI). In Burnout, it makes the car feel a lot faster without making it actually go so fast that the control gets away from the player.
October 12th, 2008 at 9:15 pm
as said, technology limited things like depth of field. only more recently did such an effect become possible. and well, since the monitor does not track your eye, the computer cannot tell where to pull focus unless you manually do that with the crosshairs, and that would just be counter productive in gaming. games simplify reality to be fun. and well, screens didn’t get large and wide screen until just recently which would allow a better perspective instead of making compromises for a small screen that doesn’t fill your peripheral vision. wide is more natural..our eyes are side by side after all.
October 24th, 2008 at 9:52 pm
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