Thursday, April 02, 2026
Reaching the known Universe and Project Hail Mary
Saturday, February 14, 2026
Allie and I at Denver Botanic Gardens - Winter 2026
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/DUv2xaFAcJV/
Allie and I on a cool Winter Sunday morning from the tree tops in Boettcher Memorial Tropical Conservatory
Thursday, February 12, 2026
Will the Gaming Industry Change Use of FPS and TPS?
The Inertia of Familiar Language
The traditional definitions of first- and third-person games rely on camera placement rather than on player agency. That shortcut has distorted how we talk about perspective for decades.
So why has this never been corrected? The short answer is likely inertia.
Once a term becomes familiar, widely taught, and commercially useful, it stops being descriptive and starts being infrastructural. Changing it becomes expensive, not just financially, but culturally.
The FPS Effect
The modern taxonomy of game perspective crystallized in the 1990s with the rise of the first-person shooter (FPS).
“FPS” was an unusually successful label:
It described what players saw
It differentiated a new genre
It was easy to market
It spread quickly through magazines, retail shelves, and early web discourse
Once first person became synonymous with “camera at eye level,” everything else was forced into contrast. The term third person did not emerge from narrative theory. It emerged as whatever FPS was not.
This asymmetry locked the vocabulary in place before anyone had reason to question it.
Camera Language Is Easier Than Agency Language
It is far easier to say:
The camera is behind the character
than to say:
The player issues commands to a represented self
Marketing departments, tutorial writers, and reviewers naturally gravitated toward the simpler explanation. Over time, that simplification hardened into definition.
Once perspective was taught as a visual property, revisiting it as a player–system relationship required more effort than most discourse was willing to invest.
How Designers Commonly Talk About Perspective
In public-facing discourse, perspective is usually described in terms of camera placement. In design-facing discussions, however, the vocabulary often shifts.
Designers frequently frame perspective through concepts such as:
Player embodiment
Identification with an avatar
Degrees of abstraction
Command versus inhabitation
Latency between decision and action
These ideas appear regularly in design talks, postmortems, and critical writing, even when the traditional labels of first- or third-person remain in place. The emphasis is less on where the camera sits and more on how the player relates to what they control.
This does not mean designers uniformly reject camera-based terminology. Rather, it suggests a practical distinction: the internal language of design often exceeds the precision of the public labels used to describe games.
In other words, the mislabeling persists not because designers lack conceptual tools, but because those tools are rarely surfaced in player-facing taxonomy.
Why the Industry Is Unlikely to Fix the Labels
Even if the argument is sound, several forces resist change:
1. Legacy Vocabulary
Decades of books, articles, reviews, and tutorials use the existing terms. Revising them would create friction with historical material.
2. Search and Discovery
“Third-person action game” is a deeply indexed phrase. Replacing it would damage discoverability without offering immediate commercial upside.
3. Audience Expectations
Players already believe they know what these terms mean. Correcting them risks sounding pedantic or confusing, even when accurate.
4. Mixed Perspectives
Many modern games blur categories intentionally. Studios may prefer flexible ambiguity to precise taxonomy.
Taken together, these pressures make formal correction unlikely.
Why This Still Matters
If the industry is not going to change its labels, why insist on the distinction at all?
Because language shapes analysis.
Mislabeling perspective:
Obscures why certain games feel immersive despite external cameras
Confuses discussions of agency and control
Flattens meaningful differences between avatar play and command play
Makes serious criticism sound mystical rather than structural
A player-centric model gives critics, designers, and players a sharper vocabulary—even if public-facing labels remain unchanged.
The Value of a Parallel Vocabulary
This series is not a call to rename genres overnight. It is a proposal for a parallel framework that can coexist with existing terminology while offering greater precision.
Just as film studies distinguish between camera angle and narrative voice, game analysis benefits from separating:
What does the camera do
What is the player
Keeping these concepts distinct allows deeper discussion without breaking compatibility with established language.
A Useful Mental Reframe
Rather than asking:
Is this game first person or third person?
Ask:
Who is acting?
Who is being addressed?
Where does the player exist in relation to the system?
These questions remain valid regardless of genre, technology, or trend.
Keeping It Going
The industry is unlikely to abandon camera-based labels. They are too entrenched, too useful, and too familiar. But clarity does not require replacement. It requires recognition.
We can say that a game has first-person perspective with third-person camera angle. Or, a game is second-person perspective with the ability to show either game-piece camera angle or top-down third person camera angle. Such descriptions are more meaningful.
Once we understand that most so-called third-person games are structurally second-person, a great deal of confusion dissolves. Design intent becomes clearer. Player experience becomes easier to articulate.
Also see
Tuesday, February 10, 2026
Full Day Lord of the Rings Mavora Lakes Adventure
However, while visiting these filming locations was great, the travel between them is a bit rough. This is the nature of travelling around the South Island of New Zealand in this region, especially when you are leaving paved highways behind for a time. The tour length definitely adds to discomfort as much as the roads themselves since this is a 10 hour tour, with long stretches between locations. Just be prepared. One bit of advice is to pack your own lunch, as I found the location where food was available to purchase to be rather lacking.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/DUefP6dgWfQ/?img_index=1 and https://www.instagram.com/p/DUego49AVOc/?img_index=1
Besides the thrill of discovering so many filming locations in one tour, we also got to see much of the beauty of South Island's mountains and lakes. It feels like New Zealand was always meant to be the location of Middle Earth.
Sunday, February 08, 2026
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Also see:
Saturday, February 07, 2026
Places I've Visited So Far Winter 2025-2026
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.
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