famousringo said:
Grampy said:
2nd person in a video game would be like 2nd in literature, very rare and very tricky. Wkipedia was a good description of 2nd person applied to literature:
Probably the rarest mode is the second-person narrative mode, in which the narrator refers to the focal character(s) as "you", therefore making the audience feel as if they are characters within the story. Because of this, second-person pieces often have an accusatory nature with the narrator often condemning or expressing powerful emotions directly at the person whom they are referring to. A small number of novels have been written in the second-person, frequently paired with the present tense.
There are a few examples in litereature but not books people are generally familiar with. Motivational and instructional books sometimes use 2nd person "you need to get off your fat butt and exercise". Interactive children's books often use 2nd person.
One game that comes to mind as using 2nd person is Wii Fit when sometimes you see the game through the eyes of the instructor, as for example when you do the balance exercise and the figure on the screen becomes "you" because you are controlling the red center of gravity dot. When the figure is just demonstrating how the exercise should be done but in no way controlled by the gamer, it would not be 2nd person even though seen through the instructors eyes.
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The most common use of the 2nd person in gaming would be text adventures:
You stand at a crossroads. East of you lies the castle. Directly west of you is the dragon which wants to eat you.
>Go east
You cannot go east. The drawbridge is up and the castle guards are mocking you. The dragon which wants to eat you draws closer.
>Use pepper on dragon
Thinking quickly, you tear open the packet of pepper and throw it in the face of the dragon which wants to eat you.
"Thanks! I needed some seasoning," says the dragon, coating you liberally in pepper before devouring you head first.
You die.
UNDO, RESTORE, or QUIT?
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You are absolutely correct and I am very ashamed of myself for not thinking of those great old games. I think I played every Infocom game ever written from Zork to Hitchhiker's Guide including Leather Goddesses of Phoebus.
