Real-World Games and Player Perspective

Why Physical Games Clarify the Debate

If digital games complicate questions of perspective with cameras, avatars, and simulated worlds, real‑world games strip those ambiguities away. There is no virtual camera, no rendering engine, and no ambiguity about where the player exists in relation to play.

What remains is the core relationship that person actually describes: how the player is positioned relative to action and agency.

When we apply the same player‑centric framework to physical and tabletop games, the mislabeling of digital perspectives becomes immediately obvious. The categories align cleanly without edge cases, caveats or special pleading.

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First Person: Embodied Physical Play

In first‑person games, the player is the acting body. There is no representational layer.

Examples 

• Tag

• Soccer, basketball, martial arts

• Darts, bowling

• Poker (as bodily participation rather than avatar play)

Perspective Structure

• The player acts directly

• The player’s body is the locus of agency

• There is no token, piece, or proxy

The language of play is unambiguously first person:

I run.

I throw.

I bluff.

No one meaningfully describes these games as issuing commands to a representation. There is no interpretive distance between decision and action.

This is first‑person perspective in its purest form, mapping precisely onto digital first‑person games where avatar and player identity collapse into one.

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Second Person: Token‑Mediated Play

Second‑person play emerges the moment a personal proxy is introduced.

Examples

• Monopoly

• The Game of Life

• Sorry!

• Most role‑playing board games

Perspective Structure

• The player is personally represented

• Actions are issued to a token

• The token is “you,” but not identical to you

The language shifts naturally:

You move three spaces.

You pass Go.

You go to jail.

No one confuses the plastic token with the player’s physical body. No one treats the token as an unrelated entity either. It is unmistakably you, addressed directly.

This is the exact structural relationship found in traditionally labeled “third‑person” digital games:

• A visible body

• A controllable character

• A personal avatar that can be observed, directed, and positioned

The tabletop world exposes the truth that digital cameras obscure: this is second‑person play.

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Third Person: Unembodied Command

True third‑person perspective appears when the player has no personal representation at all.

Examples

• Chess

• Checkers

• Go

• Wargames with multiple units per side

Perspective Structure

• No piece represents the player

• All entities are equally external

• The player exists entirely outside the system

The language reflects this detachment:

That piece captured the queen.

These troops were sacrificed units.

That side is losing control of the board.

Even when players identify emotionally with a side or strategy, no single piece is you. The relationship is observational and managerial rather than embodied.

This maps cleanly onto digital strategy games, god games, and simulation titles where the player’s presence is abstract, systemic, or omniscient.

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Why These Categories Feel Obvious Offline

In physical games, no one argues that Monopoly is “third person” or that chess is “first person.” The distinctions feel intuitive because:

• There is no camera to confuse viewpoint with identity

• Tokens and the actually human self are physically distinct

• Agency is visibly mediated or not

Digital games inherited linguistic categories before these distinctions were fully examined. Real‑world games demonstrate that the confusion is not conceptual, but rather it is terminological.

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The Consistency Test

A useful diagnostic question emerges:

If this game were played on a table instead of a screen, what would represent the player?

• Your body → First person

• Your personal token → Second person

• Nothing at all → Third person

This test holds across media, genres, and technologies.

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Implications for Game Analysis

Understanding perspective through real‑world analogs helps clarify:

• Why some games feel intimate despite external cameras

• Why avatar visibility changes player psychology

• Why command‑based games encourage strategic rather than empathetic thinking

• Why VR intensifies embodiment without redefining perspective

Most importantly, it reinforces the fact that perspective is about player–action relationships, not visual framing.

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Looking beyond

Real‑world games quietly and intuitively preserve the original linguistic meaning of person in the terms of first-, second- and third-person. When we let them inform our understanding of digital play, the long‑standing mislabeling of game perspectives becomes impossible to ignore. The camera never determined perspective; the player's relationship within the game makes that determination.

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Also see:

• We’ve Been Using “Third-Person” Wrong for 30 Years in Gaming
• A Player-Centric Model of Game Perspective 

Places I've Visited So Far Winter 2026

It's 2026 and I have expanded the places visited, both within the US and Internationally. I've not expanded travel within Canada and Mexico, so I won't include specific maps for those.

A Player-Centric Model of Game Perspective

From Definitions to Application

The previous article in this series established a narrow but important claim: camera angle does not determine narrative person. "Person" in "first-person" describes who acts, not where the camera viewpoint is placed.

Taking this into consideration, let's apply the concept directly to video games. Doing so requires shifting perspective from what the player sees to how the player is represented within the game system.

This article proposes a player-centric model of perspective and uses it to reëxamine the three categories commonly described as first-person, second-person and third-person.

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A Player-Centric Definition of Perspective

Rather than anchoring perspective to the camera, this model defines person by the relationship between the player and the acting entity in the game world.

Person	Defining Question	Player Relationship
First	Am I the body acting?	Player and avatar are the same entity
Second	Am I directing a represented “you”?	Player controls a personal avatar
Third	Am I commanding others?	Player is unrepresented in the world

This framework does not replace existing camera terminology. It runs alongside it. A game can still be described as having a first-person perspective with a third-person camera. What changes is how we describe player perspective.

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First-Person Games: “I Move Here”

In first-person games, the player and the avatar collapse into a single acting subject. There is no meaningful distinction between the decision-maker and the body that carries out those decisions.

Common examples include:

• Doom

• Counter-Strike

• Mirror’s Edge

• Most virtual reality titles

Player intent is expressed directly as action:

I reload.

I lean around the corner.

I jump.

The defining feature is not the absence of a visible character model. It is the absence of narrative distance. The player does not instruct a character. The player acts.

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The Misnamed Middle: Games Labeled “Third-Person”

Most action and role-playing games are grouped under the label of third-person:

• Tomb Raider

• The Witcher

• God of War

• PUBG

This category is where the traditional terminology begins to fail.

In these games, the player does not fully inhabit the avatar in the way first-person play requires. The character on screen is visible, persistent, and separate. The player does not experience the world as the body. The player directs the body.

The internal language of play reflects this relationship clearly:

You roll.

You climb.

You draw your weapon.

This is not metaphorical. It is structurally second person. The avatar represents the player, but the representation is mediated. The player and the character are not the same acting subject.

What distinguishes this middle category is not camera distance, character visibility, or animation style. It is addressability. The player addresses a personal avatar that exists as an object in the game world.

That distinction matters. A player can empathize with, customize, and narratively identify with an avatar while still relating to it as "you" rather than "I." The presence of dialogue choices, equipment management, and movement commands reinforces this relationship. The player tells the character what to do. The character then does it.

The camera makes this separation obvious, but it does not create it. Even if the camera were forced to overlap the character’s head, the underlying relationship would remain unchanged as long as the player continues to issue instructions to a represented self.

The moment a player can observe their own body as something acted upon, perspective has already shifted away from first person.

This is the core of the mislabeling. These games are neither first-person nor third-person in the narrative sense. They occupy a distinct middle ground that aligns cleanly with second-person structure.

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True Third-Person Games: “They Move There”

Third-person perspective, in the narrative sense, emerges when the player is not embodied at all.

Strategy and command-based games provide clear examples:

• Civilization

• X-COM

• Command & Conquer

• StarCraft

Here, the player does not control a personal avatar. Instead, they direct multiple agents, units, or factions.

The language of play naturally changes:

They advance the unit.

They lose morale.

They capture the city.

Even when the game provides a narrative role such as ruler, commander, or overseer, that role is abstract. No single entity in the game world stands in for the player.

This aligns cleanly with third-person narration in literature. The player observes and directs, but does not inhabit.

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A Shift in Perspective

Reframing game perspective around player representation reveals a gap in the familiar terminology. What has long been labeled third-person gameplay occupies a distinct middle ground that matches second-person structure far more closely than third.

This does not mean existing labels must be discarded. It does mean they should be understood as describing cameras rather than perspective.

The next article in this series steps away from digital games entirely. By examining board games and other real-world play, it becomes easier to see why camera-based definitions were always an awkward fit.

Continue to Part III: Real-World Games and Player Perspective. 

We’ve Been Using “Third-Person” Wrong for 30 Years in Gaming

A Comfortable Mistake

Video games are routinely sorted into neat perspective boxes: first-person and third-person. The terms feel intuitive, established, and beyond dispute. An FPS shows what the character sees. A third-person game shows the character from the outside. A second-person game doesn't truly exist, per se. Case closed. 

Except that this framing quietly borrows language from literature and then uses it incorrectly.

In grammar and narrative theory, person is not about camera placement. It is about who is the acting subject. Once we apply that definition consistently, a strange realization emerges: what the games industry has long called third-person does not actually describe a third-person relationship at all.

This article is the first in a short series. Its purpose is not to reclassify games yet, but to clear conceptual ground. Before we can argue about first, second, or third person in games, we need to be precise about what those terms mean.

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Camera Angle Is Not Narrative Person

Before redefining perspective, one clarification is essential: camera angle does not establish narrative person.

Games inherited the terms first-person and third-person largely through visual analogy. The distinction became shorthand for what the player sees on screen, not for how the player is positioned within the system of action. This shortcut made the terminology easy to teach, but conceptually unstable.

In literature and narrative theory, a scene can be described from any imaginable vantage point without changing grammatical person. A third-person novel may describe events from directly behind a character’s eyes. A second-person text may position the reader outside their body. A first-person account may briefly describe the narrator from an external viewpoint for dramatic effect.

The camera, or its literary equivalent, does not determine personhood.

By tying person to camera placement, game discourse quietly collapsed two distinct ideas:

• Cinematography: where the viewpoint is located

• Narrative person: who the acting subject is

Untangling these concepts is the key to understanding why the familiar labels begin to break down under closer inspection.

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What “Person” Actually Means

In language and literature, person refers to the relationship between the speaker and the subject of action:

• First person: I act ("I walk down the road")

• Second person: You act ("You open the door")

• Third person: They act ("She draws her sword")

Person describes agency and identity, not point of observation. It answers a simple question: who is doing the acting?

This definition has remained stable across centuries of grammar, rhetoric, and narrative theory. What changes from medium to medium is not the meaning of person, but the techniques used to express it.

Game terminology drifted away from this definition by anchoring person to the camera rather than to player representation. Once that shift occurred, the labels continued to function socially even as they lost their original precision.

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Clearing the Ground

At this stage, no games need to be reclassified. The only claim established here is a foundational one: camera placement and narrative person are not the same thing.

If person is understood as a question of who acts rather than where the camera sits, the familiar categories of game perspective become less stable and more interesting. Some labels begin to feel strained. Other labels begin to feel incomplete.

The next article in this series builds on this groundwork by proposing a player-centric definition of perspective and applying it directly to video games.

Continue to Part II: A Player-Centric Model of Game Perspective.

Express Your Message as Atomic Weights

The Element Cipher transforms your words into strings of element names and then converts those to numbers that are based on the atomic weights for those elements. It’s a fun little chemistry-themed encoder. Type a phrase and watch it translate into a sequence of elemental values that hides your message in plain sight. Decode it back and your text reappears from the atomic haze!

Element Cipher

Converts text to atomic masses (3-digit format) and back.

Message to Cipher/Decipher (English or 3-digit string)

Note on Numerals: Numerals (0-9) are not supported for encoding. Please spell out the words.

Cipher Output / Deciphered Result (Click or tap to copy)

Trail 44 South Mesa

South Mesa has a good loop trail and lots of interconnecting trails with many other areas.  The loop takes you from the trailhead and around the South Mesa. Technically, this is not the route shown in 60 Hikes Within 60 Miles: Denver and Boulder, but it still a nice hike with good views.  The hike starts out with thick brush, but transitions to forest on the Westside of the Mesa, as you switch from Mesa Trail to Homestead Trail before returning to the trailhead.

This is a good hike for dogs. The Mesa Trail, in particular, being fairly wide and well-maintained. There are come connector trails that do not allow dogs. These are very narrow and rocky.

We visited these trails in Fall. I wonder how this location blossoms in late Spring.