Establishing and Evaluating Cinematography Principles in a Third Person Computer Game

Sammanfattning: As the computer game industry continues to develop, there is a growing demand for games to look as aesthetically pleasing as possible. Because of this, use of cinematographic principles in computer games has become commonplace. This study aims to evaluate and compare cinematography principles regarding framing, distance from the player avatar, and moving the camera when the player avatar is obstructing the view on screen in a third person computer game. Important cinematographic principles were chosen for comparison based on previous research and suggestions by professional game developers. A qualitative user study was performed, where seven expert level participants tested, compared and discussed different camera methods that fulfilled different cinematographic principles in a test scenario. Findings showed that there was a preference towards framing that gave more focus to the surrounding scene rather than the player avatar, that using classic cinematography principles may make the player avatar appear too close, that an ellipsoidal camera orbit may give a stronger sense of stability than a spherical camera orbit, and that players prefer to be able to frame the camera manually to suit them rather than an automatic solution.