I’m Drew Ward, the linguist who wrote the linked to pages on the CALLE site. This debate over the use of the word tense has been something that’s been coming up quite a bit lately and perhaps reflects a change in recent years among university professors in what they are and are not teaching students. A few years ago the challenge with the term tense was that it was being used too broadly to refer to anything and everything “temporal” (including aspect and such). The problem today seems to be the polar opposite and is just as full of problems. As mentioned above, the current popular approach is to limit the use of the word tense to only those situations in which verb morphology is inflected to convey time information.
This view unfortunately can’t work. In fact, if you applied this sort of thinking to English, not only would we not have future tenses, but we’d have neither past nor present tenses either. Expression of verbal information in English requires two functional units working together (usually an auxiliary + a specific subordinate form — for instance aspect requires either DO+VERB or BE+VERBing). Tense is expressed via combination of the verb form of the left-most auxiliary in a verb construction (whatever auxiliary is nearest the subject) in tandem with some temporal adverbial which can be either explicit (tomorrow, yesterday, at 3pm, this one time when I was a kid) or implicit via context or logical order.
No verb form in English can be called an X-tense form because none of them have only that function. However, there are three general forms that tend to be default verb forms for expressing tense. The first form (usually called present tense form) is unmarked for tense and used for expressing certainty. Examples include “I am typing now (present tense)”, “Santa Claus comes tonight (future tense)”. Absent of additional time-marking (explicit or implicit), this form defaults to “present”.
The second form is the praeterite. The praeterite is traditionally called “the past tense” form but this is only one of its functions. The praeterite can be used to express the certain past (indicative) or the uncertain present (subjunctive). Like the unmarked certain form, absent of other time-marking or mood-marking, the default for the praeterite is “past tense”.
The third form (often referred to as “future tense form” is the unmarked uncertain form, or unmarked modal. This form can be used to express any tense as allowed by the modal used (can, may, might, have, must, be able, be going, etc.). The big difference with this form is that the argument of the verb is uncertain and generally relies on some added qualification as denoted by the modal used for whatever is attested to to come to fruition. Modal forms generally express either present or future tenses and again do so with some added implicit or explicit time marking. Absent of additional temporal marking though, the default tense for this form tends to be future.
This debate in general comes down to petty arguments over terminology, but since tense is nothing more than a way of describing temporal contrast as the relative position and distance of two temporal references along the timeline of an utterance, and those range from far distant past to far distant future (with the only “single tense” being present which is always an ever-changing point “now”), to say that any language has more or fewer tenses than any other is honestly asinine if not in the least just closed-minded and ignorant. If we as human beings can talk about future, we have future tenses (same for present and past). How that information is conveyed though may be drastically different from one language to the next.
The distinction you are making is not inherently necessary. It depends on the game in question. Here are some basic terms and how they would apply:
solitaire — any of various card games that can be played by one person
"Solitaire" has been adapted for usage in board games that allow one player to play on their own but is still technically considered exclusive to card games. It is really only used for "puzzle" or "challenge" style games where you are trying to accomplish a particular goal based on a set of rules (i.e., the game). It would not be remotely appropriate for running through an FPS on your own just to learn the details of the map.
single-player — A single-player video game is a video game where input from only one player is expected throughout the course of the gaming session. "Single-player game" usually refers to a game that can only be played by one person, while "single-player mode" usually refers to a particular game mode that is designed to be played by a single player, though the game also contains modes that can be played by several players simultaneously.
There is no suitable distinction between a single-player game that refers to competing against AI versus a single-player game similar to solitaire. Multiplayer is merely the opposite of single-player:
multiplayer — A multiplayer game is a game which is played by several players.
Which brings us to the definitions of various players:
player — A player of a game is a participant therein. The term 'player' is used with this same meaning both in game theory and in ordinary recreational games. Normally, there are at least two players in a game, but one-player games exist and are collectively known as solitary games (such as the Solitaire card game and many video games).
Most players are human players but it is technically correct to refer to any active, independent competitor as an "AI" or "computer" player. The key distinction between an AI "player" and just some "AI" built into the game for the purposes of challenge is whether the participant fulfills the same role as a human player would.
What this means for the terms of single-player and multiplayer is that the game can be designed to support built single-player and multiplayer modes (see above) and those player seats can be filled by human or computer players.
Typically, however, the menu options in games need to distinguish between a game full of human opponents and a game against AI opponents. This terminology is very game specific and although the industry has some conventions there is no technically correct way to label things. The conventions I see most often:
- A computer player added to a game with multiple human players is refered to as an "AI" or a "computer player" (amongst other terms; e.g. "bot"); the mode is still called multiplayer.
- A single human playing against computer players is typically referred to as a single-player mode or practice mode unless that player simply chose to fill up all of the multiplayer seats with computers. Then they are still playing in multiplayer mode. but this is sometimes referred to as a single-player game.
- A single player playing against a set challenge is now commonly referred to as single-player mode or "campaign mode" (amongst other terms; e.g. "story mode").
To directly answer your question:
a human player with no opponents
This is referred to as single-player or solitaire, depending on the content of the game.
a human player with a computer/AI opponent
This is referred to as single-player or practice or multiplayer depending on how the game was started. If it is a unique game mode that is completely seperate from the normal multiplayer mode and you have a standard singleplayer mode then you will need a term similar to "practice mode".
If "practice" is unsuitable you could use any of the following:
- AI mode
- Bot mode
- Vs Computer (and rename multiplayer to Vs Players, Vs Humans, etc.)
multiple human players
The best term for this is multiplayer. Other terms for it exist but are only really used when more than one multiplayer mode needs to be distinguished.
Best Answer
"First person", in the context of an utterance, is the speaker. In literature, first-person perspective would mean the main character would be written as "I". Visually, in first-person perspective, the view of the camera is precisely the view of the main character.
"Second person" is the listener. In literature, this means the main character is written as "you". The second-person perspective in an interactive visual medium is rare because it would be the perspective of whatever the main character was interacting with. But occasionally it has been used: for example, a certain stage of in the NES game Battletoads, where you fight with an enemy but view the action through the eyes of the enemy.
"Third person" is someone else, neither the speaker nor the listener. Neither "I" nor "you" would be used by the narrator of this story to describe the main character. Visually, third-person perspective is a view from some other place. The camera can move independently of the action of the main character or the things around him. Or the camera can remain stationary.