There isn’t really any set definition for second-person in visual media (ie. films and video games).
I’m Googling it, and I’m seeing people say that “second person” could include voiceover narration, a scene shot from visual perspective of an otherwise unseen monster, or characters breaking the fourth wall and addressing the audience.
Each of those would only be part of the work, regardless. Second person is reallly a textual thing.
To make Monkey Island second person, you’d basically have to turn it into a text adventure or any other type of textual fiction.
I think that explains why graphical games rarely attempt a second person framing. As for the opposite — why text adventures do use second person narration — I have no idea.
I guess it’s because the very first game (Cave) was a sort of DnD a father GMd to his children through a sophisticated computer program. Next up, everything was a ripoff of that same concept.
Ofc, better IF historians are needed to give a full explanation. Everything up to, dunno, the 2000s was second person.
That’s probably true. I guess since I hadn’t been born at the time, I underestimate how much of an influence DnD was on things.
I looked up some other earlier text games like The Oregon Trail (1971), Highnoon (1970) and The Sumerian Game (1964) and they also address the player as “you” a lot of the time.
I wonder if this is partially because text games evolved from general computer interfaces that addressed people in the second person. I don’t know when that started, exactly, but simple user prompts (like variations on “Do you want to quit?)” must have existed early on.
Isn’t it more because second person puts you directly in the game, you are doing these things, they’re your choices. It works much better with present tense too, putting you in the moment. Switching to 3rd person puts the player at more of a distance from the character, you are influencing someone else’s decisions, but they are entirely separate from you.
Which to me seems more consistent than the second-person view.
I mean, if the game talks to me in second person (e.g. “You see a treasure”), then the matching response would be “I take the treasure”. But at least in standard Inform games, this syntax is not even allowed. Instead, you have to use imperative second-person commands again and just say “Take treasure”, implying that actually the “game” is the agent and you as the player are just the controller. This matches the first-person perspective.
This is not standard in IF (I don’t think there is a generalised standard). Plenty of games are either in first/second/third person only, not switching between persons.
However, it is part of ChoiceofGames guidelines to have your games published under its labels.
@moderators maybe the person/POV convo should be its separate thread?
A lot of second-person IF has interpreted those commands not as imperatives but infinitives, with player guidance like “imagine your command is prefaced with ‘I want to…’”. I’m not sure what other languages have done, when imperatives and infinitives don’t look alike.
Hardcore grammarians or English teachers may correct me…but I believe parser responses commonly are in first person, only the subject is implied as shorthand.
You see a treasure.
> [I] TAKE [the] TREASURE.
I had this natural speed bump as an author - in my job I have to document insurance accounts in “complete sentences”; of course as an author I’m notating “I emailed a claim form to the member.” when most people document “Emailed a claim form to the member.”
Technically correct, but could be red-penned as “not a complete sentence.”
^^I did it reflexively right there - “[That is] technically correct, but [it] could be red-penned…”
See, that’s the thing. First person singular, second person, and imperative/infinitive conjugations in English are all the same in most verbs (I take, you take, to take, take). So any of those could be valid interpretations.
I think that the imperative is what is really being used. The example I can think of where the conjugations differ is “to be”. Imagine a command that would switch the player POV:
> BE ALICE
> [to] BE ALICE
> AM ALICE
> ARE ALICE
Personally, I prefer BE ALICE as the most natural, though your opinions may differ.
To the best of my knowledge, Japanese parser IF that takes Japanese input usually uses dictionary-form verbs (which is similar to infinitive although the language doesn’t have an exact equivalent). The big exception that I’m aware of is Portopia Serial Murder Case, which uses the imperative because the conceit is that you’re telling your assistant to do stuff.
The Spanish parser IF I’ve played has also used the infinitive, although I don’t have a super broad experience of Spanish IF.
French parsers also tend to use the infinitive. This may be because the imperative can take three different forms (TAKE):
(tu) PRENDS: second person singular (you)
(vous) PRENEZ: second person formal/plural (you/y’all)
(nous) PRENONS: first person plural (we)
compared to English’s (you) TAKE and (we) TAKE. So French IF uses PRENDRE (infinitive). Or it could just be because the infinitive is the norm for parser commands.
In Italian it’s usually all over the place. The text is something like
YOU ARE IN A DUNGEON, YOU CAN SEE A SWORD HERE.
then the command is
(you) TAKE SWORD (imperative).
And that’s how I’ve seen the commands working in eng too, up to now. It’s just a set of orders one gives to an helpless minion. That’s why I don’t mind the first person. (And for narrative choice, I do prefer it anyway).
NGL I always understood it as an imperative command (both in French/English).
EDIT: wait a minute, it’s infinitive in French… I meant to say infinitive…
Imperative is an order to someone. “there’s a zombie, RUN!” is in the imperative form of the verb “run”. The implied missing word is “you”, i.e. “you, RUN!”
Infinitive is the “base form” of the verb, in English usually paired with “to”. “I like to run” has “run” in the infinitive. Ran, running, and runs are different forms of the verb that are not infinitive.
it’s confusing in english cuz the infinitive and imperative form of verbs is usually the same (always?)
Imperative - the form used in commands, particularly ones where only that word features.
Infinitive - the form of the word with no modifications for tense, person or anything else.
In English, the imperative and infinitive forms are the same most of the time. However, there are some languages where the imperative form changes depending, for example, on who is speaking or being spoken to. The infinitive, on the other hand, never changes, which is why so many dictionaries either use the infinitive or a different verbal form that shares the unchanging property.
