From Pokémon Snap to Fatal Frame, photography has long been popular in games – but some developers are taking the idea further

People love to take pictures in video games. As the game worlds we explore have become more beautiful, players have become more interested in photographing them and sharing the results. It is almost standard for open-world games in particular to include photo modes, which allow players to mimic real-world photographers by adjusting the framing, brightness and exposure. Selfie modes, meanwhile, let you add filters and change characters’ facial expressions, from Link in The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker to Arthur Morgan in Red Dead Redemption 2. There is even an augmented-reality photo mode in Pokémon Go, which lets players take posed photos of digital Pokémon in the real world.

Some games take it a step further, incorporating photography as an interaction within the game. One of the earliest examples is Gekibo: Gekisha Boy, a 1992 Japanese game that almost made it to Europe a decade later as Polaroid Pete, before its release was cancelled. It plays like a side-scrolling shooter but with a camera for a gun. The cartoonish subjects users can photograph include extraterrestrials, racist caricatures and women in various states of undress.

More recently, Grand Theft Auto V (2013) features side missions in which Franklin is asked, among other things, to film an actor having sex in a garden. Paparazzi!: Tales of Tinseltown (1995) is a full-motion video game about capturing celebrities in compromising situations. In a more family friendly take, Super Mario Party (2018) includes a mini-game called Slaparazzi, in which players vie for prime position in a photo.

You can photograph animals in their natural (digital) habitats in Wild Earth (2006), Endless Ocean (2007), and Afrika (2008). Wild Earth was turned into an award-winning motion simulator ride at Philadelphia Zoo. In Dinosaur Safari (1996), players travelled back in time to photograph dinosaurs for the “National Chronographic”. If you want to capture better-looking dinosaurs, you can take on photography missions in the park simulation game Jurassic World Evolution (2018). For animal photography on the go, Snapimals: Discover Animals (2015) is free to play on Android and iOS.

But the most famous example of pretend nature photography is the Nintendo 64 game Pokémon Snap (1999), in which Professor Oak entreats the player to photograph Pokémon on a safari, using unlockable items to coax them into poses such as Pikachu riding on an Electrode. Players could even head to Blockbuster to get their photos printed, a charmingly retro feature that is similar to one offered in 2016 by Campo Santo, which let people order prints of the photos they took in its game Firewatch.

Games often use photography as a method of collection, from Donkey Kong 64’s Banana Fairies (1999) to Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s: captured memories (2017). In Metal Gear Solid (1998), players could even use a camera to reveal Easter eggs – “ghosts” of the game’s developers. In the grand tradition of video games turning work into play, many games use photography as a school or job assignment. Bully (2006), Rockstar’s foray into school simulation, featured photography classes. Life Is Strange (2015) protagonist Max Caulfield is a photography student with the ability to rewind time.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Photography is part of the plot … 11-11: Memories Retold. Photograph: Aardman Animations

In Aardman Animations and Digixart’s 11-11: Memories Retold (2018), photography is compulsory and central to the plot, as part of an exploration of propaganda. In a first world war setting painted in the style of the French impressionists, players switch between a German engineer and a Canadian photographer who is armed with the most portable version of an era-appropriate camera the team could find. The photos were made black and white, for historical realism and to distinguish them from screenshots.

“We wanted to make a war game that was not about killing people,” says producer Lionel Lovisa, who also worked on a psychological thriller called Get Even (2017) that featured a souped-up smartphone whose camera doubled as an analysis tool. Lovisa admires games in which photography is more than pretty pictures, such as the Fatal Frame series, in which you use a camera to capture ghosts. “When you have the camera you cannot move as much, which kind of increases the scariness.”

In a forthcoming game called The Bradwell Conspiracy, photography replaces conversation. The player character is trapped in a collapsing museum, and to escape must work with a person called Amber, trapped elsewhere, by sending photos of their surroundings. This photography feature was originally complementary, but worked so well in user testing that it entirely replaced dialogue. Amber speaks, but the protagonist is silent. “Just look at how people use Snapchat and Instagram,” says its creative director Georg Backer. “Everybody uses photos these days, to communicate anything. Even my mum.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Players compete to get the best photographs … Snap Hunt. Photograph: Darkroom Interactive

But where The Bradwell Conspiracy is using photography for co-operation, another forthcoming game turns it into a competition. Snap Hunt will challenge four players to compete to get the best photos of a fifth, who controls a cryptid. “I almost imagine a celebrity,” says producer Christian Stochholm, “trying to avoid all these paparazzi.”

Stochholm was inspired by Fatal Frame and Pokémon Snap. “I wasn’t into violent games when I was younger,” he says. “Pokémon Snap kind of filled that hole. It’s like you’re playing a rail shooter, but at the same time you’re taking photos.” The camera is a convenient nonviolent replacement for a gun, a principle perhaps taken most literally by Shoot the Bullet (2005), a bullet hell game in which you clear bullets by photographing them.

Considering the growing fatigue many players have with killing things in video games and the tempting prospect of instant sharing and social media virality, perhaps more developers will use photography to let players interact with game worlds, and with other players. And thanks to the ubiquity of smartphone photography, everyone knows how to point and shoot.