Third-person shooter

Third-person shooter (TPS) is a genre of 3D action games in which the player character is visible on-screen, and the gameplay consists primarily of shooting. Tomb Raider is generally credited as being the game that gave rising to the subgenre and considered widely influencial to gaming of the Fifth generation era. The 3D nature of the games to come gave rising to what was called The 32 bit Console wars wars because of Third person gaming competition. Though shooting games have traditionally been "third-person", the term "third-person shooter" came into use after the widespread popularity of first-person shooters, in order to distinguish them from their counterparts. Other genres like run and gun and some rail shooters such as Space Harrier may fit the definition of third person shooters, but are very seldom termed such. Fade to Black, MDK, and Jet Force Gemini are some early examples of games that bear similarity to modern third-person shooters.

Its distinction as a genre is recent, brought on by a growing convergence of gameplay concepts between third-person and first-person action games. After the rise of first-person shooters, an increasing number of third-person action games have adopted control methods derived from their first-person counterparts, where one 2D input (usually the left joystick or set of keys) is used to make the player character move, and another (the right stick or mouse) is used to aim and turn. Games that helped popularize this trend include American McGee's Alice and Max Payne. In more recent years, camera design has also changed to bridge this gap as well. Resident Evil 4 is seen as a key game in this transition. While third-person 3D games traditionally kept the view centered on the character, Resident Evil 4 moved the character to the side, with the view centered on the character's aim, just as in a first-person game. This "over-the-shoulder" camera design has become increasingly popular in games like Gears of War, Stranglehold, and Infernal.

These conventions have led to games which may be mechanically indistinguishable from first-person shooter, but which are excluded from the genre by their camera view, making the "third-person shooter" terminology very useful. Despite this, the term may still be correctly applied to any 3D shooting game in third-person, even if this is less common. Like first-person shooters and run and gun games, the term is rarely applied to games that do not focus on traveling on foot.

The reasons for a third-person view are various. A visible on-screen character can help the player to empathize with the character, and can help to emphasize the character as a personality rather than a vessel for the player. Third-person games are also less prone to give players motion sickness, since they have a large on-screen avatar to focus on. A third-person view may also give players a better sense of the character's bodily extremities, more awareness of their position relative to their surroundings, or simply a greater sense of the character's physical movements. In Japan, first-person camera design is seldom used compared to the West, so third-person shooters offer a compromise to bring western game design styles to the Japanese audience (as in Lost Planet).

Third-person design has disadvantages, as well. Camera control has long been an issue, particularly in closed spaces, where the distance between the camera and character cannot be fixed. Some also feel that view is detrimental to a sense of immersion, and limits the player's ability to imagine themselves in the role of the player character.