Trigger Happy
looking directly at it for a fraction of a second, we would confirm that its outline really is round and not elliptical.
Videogames presented in a first-person viewpoint thus far have failed to overcome these problems, and their hyperbolic claims to a sort of “realism” must therefore be qualified. Perspectival limitations are far more salient and noticeable in first-person shooters, which unlike most paintings are predicated on fast, aggressive responses. To avoid marginal distortions, for instance, videogames, like paintings, keep the angle of vision artificially narrow. But this has the side effect of removing from the player’s arsenal one of his most valuable real-life abilities in a hunting or evasion situation: that is, to apprehend things, especially sudden movement, with peripheral vision. Furthermore, the clumsy apparatus with which the gameplayer has to wrestle in order merely to look in different directions— moving a mouse or joystick—can never compete in terms of speed or intuitiveness with our natural, almost unwilled eye movements. As the field of view in a Quake-style videogame is artificially restricted vertically as well as horizontally, it takes a conscious decision and a mechanical fiddle just to glance down at the floor directly in front of you, to
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