Game Cinematography: from Camera Control to Player Emotions

Building on the definition of cinematography (Soanes and Stevenson, Oxford dictionary of English. Oxford University Press, Oxford/New York, 2005), game cinematography can be defined as the art of visualizing the content of a computer game. The relationship between game cinematography and its traditional counterpart is extremely tight as, in both cases, the aim of cinematography is to control the viewer’s perspective and affect his or her perception of the events represented. However, game events are not necessarily pre-scripted and player interaction has a major role on the quality of a game experience; therefore, the role of the camera and the challenges connected to it are different in game cinematography as the virtual camera has to both dynamically react to unexpected events to correctly convey the game story and take into consideration player actions and desires to support her interaction with the virtual world. This chapter provides an overview of the evolution of the research in virtual and game cinematography, ranging from its early focus on how to control and animate the virtual camera to support interaction to its relationship with player experience and emotions. Furthermore, we will show and discuss a number of emerging research directions.