Patterns Of Play

In this post, I will talk about “situations of play”, based on a paper by Georgia Leigh Mcgregor, a student from Sydney studying in the University of New South Wales, who like me is exploring the spatial implications of inhabiting a video game. I will discuss ideas and themes related to this post while covering my topic which explores the way we perceive video game environments in comparison to real world architecture in reference to our perception of time and the way social encounters affect and are affected by all this.

To play a game, you need some sort of contexts. These contexts have been fabricated and designed specifically to facilitate gameplay. This much has been made abundtley clear until now. Most game spaces are fictional; even if they happen in real places. Take for instance the landing of Omaha Beach in Medal of Honor and in reality. Both events are not exactly the same because in the game the developer needs to infuse a sense of fun that revolves around the rules of the game. Hence, the space itself will be different, even if it is reminiscent of the real place. However both events are real. The landing in Omaha Beach for the player is a real event, even though the world itself is not. The rules, the player is playing with are real as well, even if the virtual space itself is fictional. Hence all the engagements, interactions and encounters that are real are revolving around a space which is a work of fiction that is made to convince and appear as tangible as possible. In turn “Game space also feeds back into real space, where their intersection forms what can be termed as played space.” – Mcgregor.


Hence, the argument we have here is that game space, is indeed architectural. It is a space that facilitates events and behaviors much like real world architecture. The only difference is that the person inhabiting these virtual spaces are fictional characters which work as an extension of the user limited to specific behaviors that are fabricated and controlled by the developer.


These behaviors, according to Mcgregor form a list of “patterns” that use “architecture as a tool to unpack spatial conditions in video games.” She continues to explain the idea that game “space and architecture in reality express simple patterns of use that underlie a range of sophisticated activities that occur there.”- Mcgregor. It is no secret that in games our actions can be grouped into patterns, because they are so specific. They trigger the fundamental rules of the game because they are literally the buttons of the game; the things that make you “do” things. This engagement is basically an essential part of the “fun” in the game. What allows you to throw, kick, punch, run these are all the things that the player is playing with in order to enjoy. Hence, these rules are indeed patterns. The other argument that we have here is regarding the fundamental relationship between architecture in games and in real life… That in real life at some outlandish level, we are still limited to patterns because of the physical and mechanical behavior of our bodies. I outlined this difference in one of my pervious articles when I was comparing the spontaneous behaviors that architecture is trying to facilitate in reality and how in games it is more easily controlled through the implementations of controlling movement for the sake of play. We also saw in my interview with the Lead Level Designer from City Interactive how in making the game “sniper,” a lot of the environment was scripted in order to keep it alive. All the social engagements were a form of carefully outlined patterns of behavior that relate to the behavior of the player. Yet, the mere fact that architects try to predict movements and actions of users in buildings suggests that architects are aware of a pattern of use in reality at some level. “The activities of people in cities and buildings can be seen by patterns”-Robert Venturi.


Georgia brings up a children’s playground, which like games, tries to control the movement of the user in such a way as to infuse a sense of fun. Cedric Price’s Fun Palace, tried to do the same by giving the user absolute freedom into what he would hope would infuse a similar value he termed “delight.” Mcgregor argues that “A children’s playground is a spatial challenge; to negotiate their spaces is to go up, over, under and through extraordinary configurations of multi-colored components. A cricket pitch is a contested space on which a ritualized battle is played out, a competition that adheres to a set of special rules. A domestic house is a set of socially coherent nodes, where function is set out in familiar spatial arrangements of kitchen, bedroom and bathroom. To create or change a building is another form of activity”-Georgia. Hence it is clear that at some sophisticated level (in comparison to games) we are still using patterns when we use our spaces. A more direct example of patterns in spaces can be found in archetypal elements such as doors and windows that we open and close, even, periodically; when we leave for work/when we come back home. What I am interested is how these patterns may affect our perception of time. For instance a playground infuses fun which in turn, can create an environment where time seemingly “flies,” we have all experienced this! Or conversely waiting for ages in a doctor’s office which seems live forever. Breaking patterns, can be looked at as “special events” which create a sense of landing on time, in games I termed this as plot nuclei or the timeline effect. There is also control from external architecture; I mentioned the tall and narrow buildings clustered in Amsterdam, which make time seemingly move faster as you typically pass more houses walking down the street in comparison to other cities.


Now I have already mentioned a noteworthy author, Jespuur Juul, who in summary; claimed we as gamers occupy two types of space; or what Mcgregor labeled “game space and construct space.” This phenomenon is a clear example of how in turn we occupy two types of time; game time and real time. In games the world can revolve around a different clock than the one we are occupying in real life. This is one of the most fundamental examples of how time in games is controlled and how it in turn plays with our perception of time in games, and especially in the real world. Because playing a game and turning off your computer and returning to real life can often cause a sort of “awakening” to the gamer of how fast time moved in reality (it usually sucks).


I have outlined in one of my posts in the past how in the real world, this notion of the perception of time is indeed controlled in super-markets, in streets etc. But before I dig deeper I would like to establish that “game space is architectural in every sense of the word”- Mccgregor. Ernest Adams argues that game space is “imaginary space, it is necessarily constructed by human beings and therefore may be thought of as the product of architectural design processes” And indeed game worlds are spatial construct, made by distinct decisions that relate to contexts and the users themselves. Mccgregor has her take on this issue;


“Game space is a man-made construction, a built space often composed primarily of architectural elements. The architectural object can represent intangible concepts, operating as metaphor that contains and locates concepts in game space. As an integral part of game structure and organization, game space acts as a framework defining where we play and helping to configure gameplay.”


Therefore by extension, the developer has complete control over the way we perceive time in a game, in a sense even more so than reality, because in a game the developer has more direct control over what the player can physically do, where as in real world architecture behaviors can only be desired by the architect and rarely directly controlled.


More interesting, (and relating to my topic), Mcgregor continues, “architecture is about more than just building; it encompasses the activities that occur within them, including social interaction.” A notion I have been long exploring, the idea that architecture extends past its physical geometry and enables social interaction to occur. In game space, this is all directed towards gameplay. According to Alexander Galloway a professor of cultural and media at NYU, game spaces are held by a “cybernetic relationship between computer and hardware.” Mcgregor paraphrases “this relationship is manifest in gameplay in the action, reaction and interaction of player and game. Game space must be interpreted according to how it affects gameplay. The patterns of spatial use look at how game space and gameplay work together.” Thus it is seen how inherit in every game space is the gameplay, and by extension one cannot live without the other.


But to truly understand how social engagements occur in both game space and real space it is important to highlight the types of spaces that we find in games. The way these spaces have been defined was by relating them to real spaces.


Mcgregor explores the first which she labels “screen mediated games.” These types of games are perhaps the most common, where an interface on a screen is interacted by the player through a set of controls accessed physically by the player, and through speakers and perhaps even a microphone aurally. The screen frames the interface and thus acts as the base of the game itself. Mcgregor explains; “Game space also extends beyond the screen in what Mike Jones calls the macro mise-en-scene [18], so that game space is framed within the screen by the virtual camera. The artificial world is contained and bordered, isolated from real space. Played on consoles, computers and handheld devices screen-mediated games are historically dominant and remain the prevalent form of spatial projection.” She continues “Despite its separateness, screen-mediated game space is dependent on the conventions of real space and our experiences in it. Taking Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s notion of embodiment, in which body image is task orientated and where spatiality relates to situation not position, Bernadette Flynn argues that players are conditioned by their bodily experiences in real space [10]. Movement and navigation in game space reflects their counterpart in reality. Game players inhabit game space in a subjective manner and bring to the game world their corporeal history. Spatial practice in games then becomes a cultural act. This suggests a way in which designers and players, through their unconscious familiarity with socially encoded environments, bring spatial and social practices to the game world.” Thus it is interesting to see how game space is clearly dependent on real space yet poses the illusion of independent. This may also help explain the way in which the perception of time in games may be completely mis-interpreted. Furthermore, it is interesting to see how players from different sides of the world inhabiting completely different spaces may interact socially on screen in the same space and feel completely convinced.


There are of course games which push the boundaries of framed space in screen mediated games physically into real space. These are labeled “pervasive games” where mobile technology maybe superimposed in the actual room in what Carsten Magerkurth calls “location aware games which regard the entire world, the architecture we live in, as a game board.” Mccgregor brings forth two examples of this sort of game


“Triangler (TNO 2007) is a collaborative outdoor mobile game using GPS systems where three teammates attempt to form equilateral triangles with their bodies in the environment, enclosing enemy players. Players negotiate real world hazards as they follow player positions on their mobiles, where game space shares a direct relationship to real space.


Another form of pervasive gaming that overlays game space onto real space are augmented reality games like Human Pacman (Cheok et al 2004) which places virtual items into the real world. Using wearable computers and head mounted displays Human Pacman superimposes game objects and game patterns onto a predefined area of urban space. Players see both the real environment and virtual cookies, collected by physically entering the space that appears to contain the object. Gameplay requires the player to act within the real world and game space corresponds dimensionally to real space.”


The last type of game Mccgregor brings forth is “Ubiquitous games” which literally recognize the edges and boundaries of the framed space as a concept in the real space. An example of this, is the tamaguchi, a simulation of a pet that lives inside the contained frame of the console, interacting with it and possessing the illusion through diverse scripted animations to the player that it is recognized by this pet. Mccgregor labels this phenomenon as embedding and explains “Embedded game space can also occur when virtual objects are used within a specially constructed play space. An augmented tabletop game that uses a physically modelled landscape in conjunction with virtual inhabitants embeds gameplay in a contrived reality. Game space is placed within an artificial real space.”


Whats interesting in embedding is that unlike the screen-mediated games, ubiquitous games are mostly real-time and physically interact with real world rules perhaps. Hence all the social interactions possess a more aware realization on behalf of the player as it is as if the characters (such as the tamaguchi) are actually occupying space in the real world. Mccgregor brings up an even more compelling example;


“Another example is Pixel Chicks (Mattel), whose advertorial catch cry is a 2D girl living in a 3D world. Here a pixelated digital character is displayed over a plastic molded house, projected above the furniture. The pixel chick sits, walks and interacts with the real space of her synthetic home. Artificial game space is given an artificial real space.”
It is no secret and I established this in my storyworlds article that games consistently borrow things from the real world and re-apply them in the game space. Some of these types of games even go as far to physically inhabit the real world as we have seen. And as far as patterns of spaces is concerned we may see that games are very often reusing and modeling patterns found in the way people inhabit real space in game space. ¬¬¬
Mccgregor puts these patterns into a list:


“The prevalent patterns of spatial use are:


• Challenge Space: where the environment directly challenges the player.


• Contested Space: where the environment is a setting for contests between entities.


• Nodal Space: where social patterns of spatial usage are imposed on the game environment to add structure and readability to the game.


•Codified Space: where elements of game space represent other non-spatial game components.


• Creation Space: where the player constructs all or part of game space as part of gameplay.


• Backdrops: where there is no direct interaction between the game space and the player.”


Whats similar between all these patterns is the desire of the player to defeat the foe by the application of the game rules. And these patterns that we see go to show that there is a “strong correlation between where we play and what we play”- Ulf Wilhelmsson. And even more so the environments control how the game can be played and how the rules applied, such as physical movement. That is also not to see the environments ability to enclose game space cannot be turned into something meaningful that evokes a strong ambiance and do not necessarily have to be static but can even be turned into backdrops of cities and dynamic environments.


Mccgregor points out that the patterns of special use in games, are not necessarily prescriptive however, just like in real architecture;


“Rules give the game a range of possibility of play, how players actually use that space can vary from what the designer anticipated. Just as real spaces can be used differently from their intended purpose; patterns of game space can change through emergent gameplay. In reality skateboarders turn the safety of the shopping center into a challenge space, in virtuality players of Battlefield 2 can ignore the fighting for the sheer spatial thrill of base jumping. The patterns of spatial use are not prescriptive.”


This all goes to show that designed spaces in games truly implies architecture in every sense of the word, and can truly evoke interesting social interaction in many shapes and forms. Time as a fundamental variable, also, in architecture can be controlled more directly in comparison to real life allowing for the game to become more immersive. But most importantly in regards to this post we have seen how Jespuur Jules notion of players inhabiting game space and real space as a fact rather than as a concept. That games have this interesting ability to influence real space beyond the screen, and that video games have the ability to really utilize space to infuse fun.