It's Pitch Black. You Are Likely to be Eaten by a Grue

IT IS PITCH BLACK. YOU ARE LIKELY TO BE EATEN BY A GRUE.
ANDREA @RESMINI :: WORLD IA DAY 2014 BRISTOL
It is pitch black.
You are likely to be
eaten by a grue.
Lessons from videogames
WORLD IA DAY 2014 BRISTOL
ANDREA @RESMINI

[] Entrance to the cellar Score: 32 Moves: 47
The room is unwelcoming.
The door to the cellar is locked.
It is pitch black.
You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
> attack door with pitchfork
What? It is pitch black. You haven't
played this game before, have you?
> what is a grue?

(lights out. Two voices read the dialog above)

Only confirmed photo of a grue in the wild
What is a grue? Well, we don't really know. But
grues were invented as a substitute for the
bottomless pits that used to litter even the
attics (unpractical) in textbased exploration
games such as Zork. They were practically means
to control game dynamics and game space: if it
was pitch black, grues were going to get you, and
you had to either leave in a hurry or light a
torch.
So let me light a torch to get the grues running,
and we will try to explain what we can learn from
how and why video games create and manipulate
game space.
(lights on)
Let us start with the core question.

what is a game?

STORY, PROVIDES NO INTERACTION
Fullerton, T. (2008). Game Design Workshop. Morgan Kauffman
I'll be using the framework laid out by Tracy
Fullerton in her “Games Design Workshop”, as it
focuses on the elements of structure, story and
interaction, which are key points for any
conversation that addresses user experience.
Fullterton points out there are different
artifacts related to the idea of “play” and
“game” that differ in how they handle key
elements. The most basic one is a story. A story
provides no interaction.

TOY, PROVIDES NO GOAL
Then we have toys. Toys turn storytelling into an
interactive experience but they still provide no
goals.

PUZZLE, PROVIDES GOAL
Puzzles provide a goal, so we have a slightly
more structured experience, but we still lack a
necessary element.

PUZZLE, PROVIDES GOAL
GAME, YOU CAN WIN
That element is unbalance. Games generate an
outcome: someone wins and someone else loses. No
winners, no game.

what is a game
made of?
So we have an idea of how to assess if something
is a game or not. The next step is to understand
what is a game made of?

Prince of Persia, Broderbund
To illustrate this, I'll use the Prince of Persia
videogame. Not the original one written and coded
by Jordan Mechner for Broderbund in 1989, but ...

Prince of Persia The Sands of Time, Ubisoft–
… the UBISOFT 2003 PS2 reboot. Mechner was
involved anyway, and honestly it shows.

In many ways, it was a groundbreaking game even
though other offers had better graphics, or
better controls, or better interactions at the
time.
Much of its charm came from how elegantly its
different building blocks were integrated.

formal
dramatic
spatial
But what are these building blocks? Fullerton
introduces two larger categories or broad areas:
formal elements and dramatic elements. I add to
the list, and will explain why, spatial elements.

Formal
Formal elements are the practical building
blocks, if you will.

games structure
procedures
They include rules and procedures you necessarily
follow to play the game, and ...

games require
players
... players and ...

games provide
resources
... resources. If you have roamed a level in
SuperMario for more coins or frantically run
across some 3D nightmare landscape for some sort
of medikit, you know what a resource is. Here's a
hint: they are scarce. Evil designers make them
so.

games thrive on
conflict
One very important formal element is conflict.
Games thrive on conflict. Someone has to win.
Someone has to lose.

games have
boundaries
Check Huizinga's Homo Ludens A Study of the Play Element in Culture–
Objectives are another formal element, and
Fullerton also considers boundaries as one of
them. This is where I depart from her model. I
consider boundaries, or what stands for
boundaries, to be one of the spatial elements of
games.

Dramatic
Then we have dramatic elements. In the case of
Prince of Persia, the whole story revolves around
the Sands of Time.

While in the original game they were simply a
formal element (you had 60 minutes to beat the
game), a resource, they get a whole different
treatment in the reboot. They also become a
fundamental part of the story.

how does a game
connect
emotionally to its
players?
The sands also become one of the dramatic
elements, those that emotionally tie a player to
the game mechanics provided by formal elements.

The Walking Dead
The role of dramatic elements cannot be
underestimated. What sets this specific scene
from The Walking Dead game apart from similar
games is not its mechanics, but rather the way it
plays out to our emotional engagement. Many other
games include using a controller to push a door
close, but here you have zombies.

through the use of
dramatic or
narrative elements
So dramatic or narrative elements, the
storytelling if you will, is what makes you want
to go back (or not) to the game.

it certainly allows
play and
challenges players
While as we said the basic dramatic element is
involving players ...

it provides a
premise
... a game always provides a premise, a way to
set up a narrative thread and a coherent
environment.

This is true even if we consider games that have
become in time so abstract or commonplace that we
don't really see the premise anymore. Monopoly is
really a game about real estate and capitalism in
the America of the 1930s. Chess is about warring
armies.

it works through
characters
Then a game works through characters, be these
pawns representing roles on a numbered board,
kings and queens, or ...

Flappy Birds
... really plump birds.

it weaves a story
Through premise and characters, every single game
weaves a story.

these narrative
elements structure
and contextualize
formal elements
within the game
Dramatic elements contextualize and structure
formal elements within the game, and make them
different, and more or less successful at
engaging players.

ANDREA @RESMINI :: WORLD IA DAY 2014 BRISTOLhttp://mestadelsbilder.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/g-is-for-grue.jpg
Grues, for example, are a great way to make
players proceed into areas of the game only if
some formal elements have been triggered or
obtained. In this case, light, a resource. Did I
mention torches are probably scarce?

a game is a formal
system that engages
players in structured
conflict and resolves
its uncertainties in an
unequal outcome
At this point, we could have a pretty satisfying
definition for “game”, again mostly following
Fullerton. Key words here are conflict,
uncertainty, and unequal. You don't want to play
a game if you already know how it's going to end,
right?

but what about
those boundaries?
But then, aren't we leaving something out?

Spatial
We sure are. Here's a rendition of the palace in
which the whole of the formal and dramatic
elements in the Prince of Persia reboot are
played out. This is where you spend the 11 to 30
hours it will take to resolve the story of the
prince into an unequal outcome. Isn't this a set
of very important elements? What are rooms and
walls and precipices and waterfalls? Where is
playing actually happening?

are grues found
everywhere?
Think about the Zork game. Are grues everywhere?
Not at all.

ANDREA @RESMINI :: WORLD IA DAY 2014 BRISTOLhttp://mestadelsbilder.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/g-is-for-grue.jpg
?
That would defy their purpose as a game element
in the first place. You only find grues in the
pitch black areas you haven't explored yet.

Pope Guilty, http://www.flickr.com/photos/popeguilty/2696780797/
Humans vs Zombies at Indiana University
This is a map outlining the boundaries for a
zombie game which was played on campus at Indiana
University. Within the borders, you can be a
zombie and have fun. Outside the borders, in the
red areas, you could get shot by a particularly
nervous citizen who has seen too many a bmovie.
And generally have a lot less fun.

A game of hide and seek: does this game have
boundaries? Borders? What are its spatial
elements? They sure are there, but if you exclude
the pole or base, they are all procedural. You
sure know if you are playing, and probably
running to the airport and flying to Antarctica
would be considered cheating.

Look at the way this grandma restructured the
sofa to have a good game of go fish, the two
opposite areas, the position of the players, and
the screen.

And boardgames. On this table, you have an abbey
in the Middle Ages. That table is now a microcosm
taking you somewhere else, where different
space/time rules apply.

And you can go all the way, and fight dragons in
Skyrim. Even without any Oculus Rift visors, this
can get pretty “elsewhere”.

PHYSICAL VIRTUAL
What we have here, is a constant shift from
physical to (apologies) virtual. All the same,
these games all structure their different game
spaces as an essential component of play.

boundaries are
both physical and
conceptual
This is because boundaries can be both physical,
and conceptual.

ANDREA @RESMINI :: WORLD IA DAY 2014 BRISTOLNandadevieast, http://www.flickr.com/photos/agnihot/4937763060/
Procedural boundaries
A game of hopscotch. Played in physical space,
but do you have walls or signs in the sand here?
Staying within the lines and playing out the
right sequence is the challenge that the game
provides you with.

ANDREA @RESMINI :: WORLD IA DAY 2014 BRISTOLTanzen80, http://www.flickr.com/photos/tanzen80/6140025125/
Emotional Boundaries
Playing videogames on portable devices on the
subway. Who's playing here? What about the
others?

ANDREA @RESMINI :: WORLD IA DAY 2014 BRISTOLchloester, http://www.flickr.com/photos/etherealdawn/4599010666/
Emotional Boundaries
And what about a bunch of friends playing
videogames together? And the odd person in the
group who doesn't play but has to comment on
every push of a button? Are they playing? Where
are the boundaries here?

a game is
a closed system
That was the missing piece from our previous
definition. A game is a closed system.

a game is an
invitation to play
and to enter the
magic circle
It's a magic circle, in which we willingly
suspend reality and walk for a little while in
different shoes, following different logics for
different goals. Not many of those who played
Doom got to kill aliens as their daytoday job,
right?

games happen in
space
For a magic circle to exist, we need a specific
space for games to be structured.

this space defines
the very nature of
the game itself

could you have
games without
having game space?

(no. all games
happen in space)
And this space is an essential element. No game
space, no game.

Functional Abstract Space
Playing charades, Travismcclain.blogspot.com
Even abstract games, such as charades for
example, necessitate of game space. Not only
that, but the game itself structures space and
imposes constraints. You could play charades over
Google Hangouts, but you couldn't play across the
full extent of a football field (without a lot of
running, that is).

this space is both
mathematical and
experiential
This game space has a dual nature: it is both
mathematical, made up of cells and lines or
algorithms, and experiential, related to our
engagement.

discrete
vs
continuous
Space in games exhibits a few basic
characteristics. It can either be discrete or
continuous, for example.

Discrete or Continuous

discrete
and
connected
When space is discretely partitioned, it is also
usually connected.

Prince of Persia, Map Screen
When Discrete, Connected
Many games, even when they allow a certain degree
of free roaming, actually use this hub and spoke
model. Here's the map of the Prince of Persia
reboot reboot (it was actually a reboot of the
reboot. I have no idea how you should call it)

strictly bounded
vs
loosely bounded
You can have strictly bounded spaces, or loosely
bounded spaces.

Bounded vs Unbounded
Think of tennis vs hide and seek. But also
SuperMario vs Skyrim.

mono
bi-
three-dimensional
Then, space in games can be mono, bi or
threedimensional. The monodimensional idea of
game space is particularly interesting.

ANDREA @RESMINI :: WORLD IA DAY 2014 BRISTOLhttp://maxqubit.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/ganzenbord_6-1.jpg
A typical monodimensional game is the traditional
game of the goose board game.

Guitar Hero, Activision
But Guitar Herotype games are also
monodimensional. Game play happens along a line,
there's no going back. Note that some include
circular board games, say Monopoly, in this
category.

Now, bidimensional is tricky. Clearly boardgames
that do not use a game of the goose layout are
bidimensional. But what about pool? It appears
to be bidimensional, right, but can you make a
ball jump? Sure you can. Football is also 3D, or
Call of Duty, and so on.

Let's try out tictactoe. It's a simple game, so
we can apply these pairs easily.

Space is discrete. You have 9 cells, clearly
delimited.

It is also connected. You make sense of the game
by lining up tokens or checks across the
different cells, according to established
patterns.

It is also clearly bounded. It doesn't matter if
your “x” is square center or slightly off. Every
cell is either 1 or 0: you are either in or not,
and this reinforces the discrete nature of cells.

TIC-TAC-TOE
3D Tic-tac-toe, jacquesamerica.com
And it's bidimensional, right? A
threedimensional tictactoe would look like
this, and probably be slightly more complicated
to play.

V. Lodin, M. Olovsson, M. Nilsson, J. Magnusson, I. Anic
Mapping the Zoo area - Exercise
In one of my courses, students got to work with
game space. We wanted to see if and how game
space was impacting the game experience. Prince
of Persia – The Sands of Time was our game. Here
you see a sketch of an area in the game, the Zoo.

Adapted from McGregor G.L. (2007). Situations of Play: Patterns of Spatial Use in Videogames
Challenge Space
the game
environment
directly challenges
the player
The students started out by mapping game space
according to a model proposed by Georgia
McGregor. McGregor categorizes game space
according to the way it engages the player. In
Prince of Persia, students found challenge
spaces.

These are all the areas, quite a lot of them,
where the prince has to show off a little of his
acrobatics.

ANDREA @RESMINI :: WORLD IA DAY 2014 BRISTOLMario and Luigi
Challenge space is a staple of platformers.

Contested Space
the game
environment is the
setting for conflict
between entities
Then they found a good deal of contested spaces.

The game pitches the prince against a rather
large number of foes. One more chance to show off
that vaultthenstabthenfinish trick that took
ages to master. These areas are distinct and
different from those that represent challenge
space. The two never overlap.

CONTESTED SPACE
Battle for Middle-Earth
Contested space is a staple of strategy games.
Here is Battle for Middle Earth.

Nodal Space
social patterns of
spatial usage are
imposed on the game
for structure and
readability
Then they found nodal spaces.

The magic fountains where the prince gains a few
more notches on his healthbar for example.

NODAL SPACE
A leap of faith in Assassin's Creed 2, Ubisoft
Nodal spaces are aplenty in videogames. They
represent a specific actionable potentiality that
is encoded in an object or place for clarity of
play. A very good example is the leap of faith
ledges in Assassin's Creed. While you can jump
off any tower and roof, these are the only places
from which you can leap and survive, and they are
well marked so you don't get confused and make a
mess out of you.

a different
understanding
of game space
This way of deconstructing game space was
extremely fruitful. One of the immediate
consequences was that the students were able to
identify a spatial rhythm to the game, that was
reflected in its dramatic and formal flow. Game
space was driving the narrative in more than one
way. Before getting into that tho, I want to
introduce what a few groups did. They applied
Kevin Lynch's spatial primitives to the game.

ANDREA @RESMINI :: WORLD IA DAY 2014 BRISTOL MNSU.EDU
KEVIN LYNCH, SKETCHES
Districts
From http://krypton.mnsu.edu/~tony/courses/431/Vocabulary.html
They started out with districts. Do we have
districts in Prince of Persia?

ANDREA @RESMINI :: WORLD IA DAY 2014 BRISTOLDoug Walsh, PoP The Official Strategy Guide, Bradygames–
We sure do. The game is built around the concept.
The Hall, the Zoo, the Baths, the Caverns, the
Prison, the Tower.

Edges
Then they checked for edges. Structures that keep
you on a path, such as the banks of a river, or
the continuous curtain of buildings along a
street.

They found plenty.

Paths
Next was paths. A road, a gravel track in a park.

Here came more to support the initial findings in
respect to the general nature of game space:
regardless of how complex the architecture
looked, you usually had one way to get across a
certain section of the game, and no ways to go
back.

ANDREA @RESMINI :: WORLD IA DAY 2014 BRISTOLIco
Paths are a big feature of games. Here's Ico.
Great game by the way.

ANDREA @RESMINI :: WORLD IA DAY 2014 BRISTOLMirror's Edge
Here's Mirror's Edge. As an extreme parkour slash
cyberpunk courier, you go from roof to ledge and
from crane to water tank. All safe paths in the
default mode for the game are marked red.

Note that Prince of Persia is a tad subtler here,
and figuring out the path is part of the
challenges that the game throws at players.

Nodes
Nodes. Nodes are points of interest. Places where
things happen or might happen. For example, the
intersection of streets.

Prince of Persia has its share of nodes. Both at
game level, and at room / space level. An area is
a node for the game: within that area, you
usually have a number of nodes as well.

Landmarks
Finally, the students checked landmarks.

And while you could argue that you have
arealevel landmarks guiding you around, and
usually showing up in the visions the Prince has
of upcoming challenges, the real landmark in the
game works exactly like those Lynch describes in
his seminal book.

You see the Tower of Dawn a number of times
throughout the game, and the narrative makes a
point of constantly pointing you towards the fact
that the tower is the ultimate destination.

Throughout this process we sketched, we took
notes, we played the game. I can assure you
nothing is more humbling than playing anything
that involves controllers with a pack of
twentysomething. A sobering experience if any.
When we were done, we had a couple of workshops
and went through what we had learned about game
space and its role within the game.

Minecraft, Mojang
While the game presents a realistic if fantastic
environment, it is definitely not a sandbox game
the way Minecraft is. Everything is strictly
scripted and there is no free wandering around.
Prince of Persia is much more similar to a theme
park ride than to the Sims.

LA Noire, Rockstar
We are not even close to games such as Rockstar's
LA Noire or UBISOFT's own Assassin's Creed
series, where a main storyline can be abandoned
at will, and some of the scripted events evolve
through game time (for example, a chase).
Space is the only metric for advancement in
Prince of Persia, and with the exception of the
palace defense traps, nothing ever happens if the
player doesn't move forward through game space.

ANDREA @RESMINI :: WORLD IA DAY 2014 BRISTOLhttp://maxqubit.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/ganzenbord_6-1.jpg
From this perspective, Prince of Persia is a
glorified (and spectacular at times) game of the
goose. It's monodimensional, and it is defined by
a rigid structure of dramatic elements that
unfolds through a rhythmic succession of
alternate spaces: challenge spaces, mostly built
around the edge and path spatial primitives, are
always followed by contested spaces, where nodes
and districts become prevalent. You might have a
little exposition there, and then the cycle
repeats itself.

EXPLORE
GAMEPLAY: STRUCTURAL ARC
STORY
COMBAT
EXPLORE
Basically, the structural arc of the game, its
narrative, advance in sync with the player's
exploration of its space. Once all space has been
explored, the game is over.

EXPLORE
PROGRESSION THROUGH SPACE / TIME / STORY
STORY
COMBAT
EXPLORE EXPLORE
STORY
COMBAT
EXPLORE EXPLORE
STORY
COMBAT
EXPLORE
The game is simply a repetition of this 1hour
mini arc over and over.

how have we been
fooled here?
This rhythmic structure is so evident when you
deconstruct the game, that some of the students
claimed they didn't enjoy playing it that much
when they figured it out and they knew what to
expect next. That was interesting. What was
fooling us then? Because when you play the game,
especially if you consider it's more than 10
years old now, it's actually a rather good game.

this is a quest
The short answer is that this progression through
space to tell a story is nothing new. We call
this narrative “quest”, and we have been using it
for quite a long time to tie together loose
figments into a coherent narrative. It's the
Odyssey, the search for the Graal, or the Lord of
the Rings.

the end of the
narrative coincides
with the end of
places we visit
We know that the story ends when we have reached
the castle, defeated the dragon, saved the day.

Zork is nothing different from this point of
view. Only, its world is bidimensional. In some
versions, threedimensional. It allows much more
freedom than Prince of Persia does. Still,
exploring the world means exploring and
uncovering the story. Giving meaning to whatever
actions we are carrying out in game space. That's
why Prince of Persia is a satisfying game:
because its internal narrative is tightly bound
to its spatial structure, and it delivers
precisely what we expect it will do. And it does
it well. With a twist at the end I won't give
away, in case someone wants to play it.

information is
turned into meaning
by weaving a
narrative through
space
From the point of view of professionals or
researchers dealing with new media, videogames
but also websites and mobile apps, here we have
information turned into meaning by weaving a
narrative through a spatial structure. Without
space, there's no story. Without the story, game
space is meaningless and fruitless. And the
balance works splendidly.

why is this spatial
understanding of
games important?
I wouldn't stop there though. There's an
important point that has to be made. Spatial
understanding is at the root of our engagement.
But understanding these peculiar spaces and the
way they are built, the way they work, can
provide us with interesting insights into how to
structure our experiences with informationbased
digital / physical ecosystems.

because navigable
space can represent
both physical
spaces and abstract
information spaces
Navigable space is not restricted to games.

because spatial
understanding is
something that comes
to us naturally
We navigate through both physical and abstract
spaces naturally.

and this narrative
is contagious
See J. Kallay's Gaming Film
And the spatiallybound narrative that comes
along with new media is terribly contagious. It's
like the Snow Crash virus in Neal Stephenson's
novel. It spreads fast.

Zombieland
And while we have a lot of videogameinspired
movies, and a lot of movies using videogame
logic, I would love to highlight a different
angle today, and have a conversation on how
information, meta information that does not
physically belong to the scene, is entering movie
space and it is doing it “naturally”. There's
plenty of examples. Here's a couple of
screenshots from Zombieland, where the trick
works pretty well, with ...

Zombieland
... characters crashing through the credits, for
example. But more recently, Cumberbatch and
Freeman's “Sherlock” deserves a mention. In the
series, we have at least three different
representations of this metainformation creeping
into scenic space. We need to thank director of
photography Steve Lawes and director Paul
McGuigan for that.

Sherlock
Mobile phone messages and such first of all.

Sherlock
It is interesting to note that while we get a
fairly stylish and absolutely abstracted display
of information directly on the 4th wall, most of
the times at least, McGuigan feels compelled to
always show a mobile phone being used, on a
table, or in the hands of the characters.

Sherlock
Similarly, when Sherlock and John are reading
John's blog, we have a full inscene treatment of
the article, down to the fonts and layout. This
is very much inline with anything you can see in
House of Cards as well, or back to movies such as
Panic Room (which had credits working pretty much
like those of Zombieland, if less refined).

PHYSICAL VIRTUAL
Using our initial model, the one I used for
boundaries in games, these embedded pieces of
information would be roughly positioned slightly
after the middle point. Going for “virtual”
(apologies again), but connected to the physical
world. We still need to see the phone. For now.

Sherlock
Then we have Sherlock's deductive reasoning. His
thoughts made visible. These are much more
disembodied and at the same time much more
“inside” movie space. Words float around and
attach themselves to people and objects. This is
a different approach.

Sherlock
When in an episode we have a drunk Sherlock, we
visually see his deductions go both blurry and
imprecise, ...

Sherlock
... and his chain of thought collapse and derail.
Is this the client or what?

PHYSICAL VIRTUAL
In that model, we are much more leaning towards
“virtual” (aagh) here. Still, we get it, right?

Sherlock
We have no issues connecting the abstract pieces
of information that are thrown at us, as they are
physically anchored to the story. This works. So
we get to see Sherlock upping the ante and
totally reverse this. In another episode, he's
chatting with / interviewing a number of women
using multiple computers (not multiple accounts,
we are still not there).

Sherlock
Only most of the scene is played out in
Sherlock's own mental rendition of this
multisided conversation as a courtroom (he's
investigating, after all). We definitely moved
along the continuum, but we are playing it
backwards: this is a mental space that becomes
“real”. Pretty much like a videogame.

PHYSICAL VIRTUAL
We moved even closer to “virtual” (lordy). And we
did that in a mainstream, and very successful,
crime series. This is no Gibson. Something is
changing. In his “The Language of New Media”, Lev
Manovich stipulates that we can “be there” either
through immersion, and skeumorphic actionable 3D
spaces, or through navigation, a more reflective
databaselike modality. Ten years have passed. My
take is that we are seeing these cultural
structures blending and morphing. We increasingly
grok actionable abstract spaces, and videogames
are more than partially responsible for this.
When you play your next game, pay a little
attention to how game space plays you. And always
carry a torch. You'll need it for the grues.

thank you

It's Pitch Black. You Are Likely to be Eaten by a Grue

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It's Pitch Black. You Are Likely to be Eaten by a Grue