What's your perspective?

"F/rst person is dead as a perspec/Jve." So said one of the designers of one of the most famous first-person perspective PC action games of the '90s. I only heard this declaration second hand through a friend of said designer, and as such won't mention who the developer was, or which game he designed. Nonetheless the statement is representative of a sentiment one could see throughout the industry following the runaway success of Tomb Raider, the first hit action game to use a real-time 3D engine with a third-person perspective. The recent success of such first person games as Half IJfe and Rainbow Six seems to have revitalized the popularity of that perspective in the gaming community, but still the debate between the viewpoints continues.What may seem to a developer as a chance to show off the cool moves of a well-defined main character, actually has deep ramifications on the type of game one creates, both in terms of game design and the resulting emotional attachment the player develops within the game. It seems the key comparison to make in considering first and third person PC action games would be between two of the most popular games in each category: John Carmack and John Romero's Doom and Toby Gard and Paul Douglas' Tomb Raider. Doom established the real-time 3D first-person shooter style of game, using a design that largely survives in first-person shooters released today. In Doom, players storm through maze-like levels seeing the world exactly as if they were the character they are controlling their surrogate in the game world.The Space Marine in Doom is a barelydefined character, a blank-slate onto which players can project whatever kind of personality they want. For Tomb Raider, the developers took related technology but changed the game's design completely by making the player see their surrogate in the game world, witnessing the character's deft footwork as she dodged around corners and jumped over pits. Here the central character is Lara Cro~ who has a very specific style to her appearance and actions. Though she doesn't talk much in the Tomb Raider games, Lara is infinitely more defined than the Space Marine from Doom.