Virtual cinematography in games needs a new understanding of the relationship between camera movements and player experience to be able to mature both scientifically and technologically.
With a better knowledge of such a relationship and how it differs from the classical direction-veiwer relationship in movies, it will be possible to identify more clearly the objectives of interactive virtual cinematography and perhaps to redefine the way we even talk about it.
With this in mind, I run an experiment to explore player preferences on different cinematographic aspects of camera positioning and animation in a 3D game.
I will be presenting this work at the International Conference On The Foundations Of Digital Games this May in Crete, you can read here the abstract and you can find the complete article in my publications page.
Cinematography is a key aspect in the development of modern computer games. The quality of the visuals depends, not only on the accuracy of the rendering, but on the way that the scene is presented to the player. Which element should be included in the frame, from which point of view and in which positions are all aspects that have been widely stud- ied in classical cinematography. However, it is still unclear how the principles developed for the film medium are ap- plicable to an interactive medium such as computer games. This article presents a study, which explores the interplay between cinematography and player experience. The results of the experiment demonstrate the existence of an impact of the cinematographic behaviour of camera on both player’s affect and her in-game behaviour. Furthermore, this impact is dependent on the game mechanics highlighting once more the difference between classic cinematography and game cinematography.