First-Person Video Makes the Beautiful Game Even Prettier

The rise of affordable consumer video technology, from the GoPro to Google Glass, has ushered in a revolution in real-life first person perspective video. Now we can finally watch a professional match from the vantage point of a Major League Soccer player.

On December 13, American left winger Brad Davis sported a GoPro Hero 3 during the Brian Ching Testimonial Match, an exhibition celebrating the playing career of the Houston Dynamo legend. The game featured some of the biggest stars from the Dynamo, MLS, and the US Men’s National Team, including Dwayne de Rosario and Landon Donovan, the highest scoring American player in World Cup history.

It’s a light-hearted, fun affair—Donovan, rather outrageously, is playing goalie—but the unprecedented view is an awesome experience. The camera is admittedly shaky, despite stabilization technology, but the end result is a weird sense of immersion that you simply don’t get from a traditional top-down view. For the first time, you see what the player sees.

The GoPro video reminded me of an acclaimed Nike commercial directed by Guy Ritchie, cleverly edited in what feels like true first person. It’s a mesmerizing trip, especially for anyone who’s dreamed of being a world class athlete. What soccer fanatic hasn’t fantasized about scoring in a World Cup?

It made me wonder what the future of watching sports might look like. Would we be able to toggle between views as if we were playing a video game like Counter-Strike, perhaps while wearing an Oculus Rift?

It was video games of course that first brought the masses the concept of FPS with Id Software’s PC classic, Wolfenstein 3D, later followed by the timeless Doom. Countless clones would follow and FPS would remain a mainstay in gaming culture. Today, the kids are still fragging, often on consoles, with games like Call of Duty and Halo. Unlike any other perspective, FPS is the closest thing we have to virtual reality.

Which is what makes real-world first person so sweet, in a Being John Malkovich sort of way, living out our fantasies vicariously through, in this case, some of the best players in the world. And given the perspective’s inherent limitations, we’re able to better appreciate the chaos of the competition and the guile of the athlete as armchair quarterbacks and fans of sport.

The intersection of first person gaming and real life has been a long time coming, so far limited by technological constraints. Three years ago, filmmaker Freddie Wong showed just how blurred those lines were becoming with his viral YouTube sensation, First Person Shooter.

The natural progression then is a first person film, minus the gaming, which arrived soon after in the form of a Biting Elbows music video called ‘Bad Motherfucker.’

But now with the rise of cheap consumer grade products, first person perspective has transcended the realm of fancy effects and editing into actual reality. Thanks to the generally accepted law of the Internet, rule 34, which states that pornography or sexually related material exists for any conceivable subject, it was only a matter of time before we got first person porn, courtesy of Google Glass.

Widespread adoption of Google’s wearable computer will certainly push first person video past the proverbial tipping point, allowing for the seamless creation of content, while the rise of VR devices like Oculus Rift will provide us with ever more immersive ways of experiencing it.

Like Google’s fleet of robots, it’s a future that’s incredible yet also terrifying. Why leave the house if my StreetView, from the vantage of my couch, is as beautiful, if not more, than the actual thing? Why enjoy real soccer when you can play as the best players in the world? I can only hope that we can better answer those questions when the time comes. For now, I’m happy to enjoy the view.

@sfnuop