Camera & Input
Where the eye sits and how intent reaches the character — the two problems the medium solved late, solved badly, and has never stopped revising.
Nothing in this family predates 1996, which is the point: while play was flat, the camera was a non-question and input was a switch. Two of the entries here originate in Super Mario 64 alone. Trailing Follow Camera treats the viewpoint as a character with collision and intent. Graded Analog Input ends the era of on/off movement. Both exist because Analog Free-Roam 3D Movement created a problem nobody had needed to solve. Resident Evil answers the same problem in the opposite direction with Fixed Cinematic Camera — pre-authored angles, cheap on hardware and expensive on nerves.
Aiming follows viewing. Ocarina of Time's Contextual Lock-On Targeting fuses camera and combat by letting the system pick what matters. Rainbow Six introduces Iron-Sight Aim-Down-Sights as a mobility-for-accuracy trade. Alien Resurrection ships Dual-Analog Move + Look in 2000 to open ridicule and is now the default posture of the entire medium. kill.switch pins the camera to the shoulder, and Half-Life: Alyx eventually replaces the whole apparatus with the player's own neck.
Running underneath is a fight about ownership. Metal Gear Solid's Directed In-Engine Camera Language argues that the camera is a director's instrument, borrowing cuts and dollies from film. Gran Turismo's Photo Mode argues the opposite — the camera belongs to the player, who is now an audience with a tripod. Nintendogs and Wii Sports both attack the question from beneath by removing the intermediary entirely, making the finger and the arm the input. Every camera decision since 1996 is a position on how much of the frame the player is trusted with.
The family, in order of arrival
Every mechanic in this family
Inherited from other families
Mechanics outside this family that parent something inside it — where the cross-pollination happens.