Point of view can also play into game design, specifically the role of the parser/game text vs whom the player inhabits or represents.
You are standing west of a White House. You see a mailbox.
>OPEN MAILBOX
It's packed full of junk mail. You really ought to empty it out more often so the postal worker doesn't become cross with you.
The IF standard second person is default and likely grew out of D&D and other games with a game-master describing what’s happening to players; usually the parser is the GM telling you what you see and asking you what you want to do in the situation, assuming that you are imagining yourself role-playing the main character which can be AFGNCAAP or a more specific PC either defined by the story (you are you, but as a Belgian Nun with ninja skills) or as a character the game lets you define or roll-up like Choice of Games and RPGs.
A slight variation is parser-as-character. While some parsers might have a bit of a personality and engage in parser-snark [1] the usual role of the parser is narrator/GM. However, some games will personify the parser as an actual character in game or in the player’s head - Violet is probably the best example - and may have its own agency, potentially refusing some commands. This makes sense they are referring to “you” since they are conversing with you and asking what you (and potentially the character played by the parser) should do and not just a disembodied voice in the game.
The less-common tenses can have authorial advantages.
I'm standing west of a White House. There is a mailbox here.
>OPEN MAILBOX
There's a leaflet in the mailbox. It's just junk mail addressed to my Uncle. They must not have submitted a change of address form after he passed away. Typical.
First Person kind of reverses the positions of player and parser in that the PC is doing stuff on the player’s recommendation as if the player is the consciousness or the voice in the character’s head. Again, this is a good fit for a more specifically authored and potentially noncompliant character with their own agency such as in Rameses and part of the gameplay might be convincing the PC to accomplish some tasks. It’s also good if the plot requires the protagonist to potentially engage in behaviors the player might not - such as the protagonist is a hired assassin and the author doesn’t want the player to to feel guilty about plot-required murder. It’s not implied that the events are happening to you and perhaps not choices you would make.
Some first-person games might also just stylistically prefer to use first person because it can also eliminate the detached “voices in your head” duality in the interior monologue, removing the parser voice completely and replacing it with PC internal monologue that might read more naturally than a cricket on your shoulder telling you what you’re feeling.
First-person may also be used diegetically in a conversational IM-style or phone game where there is a protagonist and “you” as separate characters having a literal conversation - Lifeline is a quasi ARG where the protagonist is messaging you (the player as a real person) from a remote location for advice on how to stay alive in a dangerous situation. There was also an IFComp game (sorry I can’t remember the title) where the player is texting or on the phone with a friend who is clearing her stuff out of her ex-boyfriend’s apartment and seeking advice on where to look next and support for how nosy she should be searching through his possessions.
The adventurer stood in front of a mailbox west of a White House.
>OPEN MAILBOX
He decided to check the mail. Nothing but bills and a postcard for his deceased uncle. The adventurer made a mental note to fill out some kind of form at the post office later to remedy this.
Third Person is the standard POV most non-interactive fiction is written in. It allows even more distance from the protagonist(s) and allows a sense of objective authorial removal. The player might control multiple characters but doesn’t necessarily have a physical role in the story, or they might be an omnipresent consciousness in a story which may have simulationist elements.
These are examples and not necessarily “how it has to be done”. Often changing POV and tense can be a tool for the author. In Cannery Vale the story switches from second person (implying the player is an author writing a book) to third-person novel-format when the player-author-PC “writes” the book about a separate fictional protagonist in a separate narrative doing things the player/author likely wouldn’t.
The dry humorous response style that Infocom used a lot, and made it’s way into Inform’s initial default messages “You jump on the spot, fruitlessly” until the default messages in Inform were specifically made more generic since that tone doesn’t apply in every game. ↩︎