Real Spaces vs Virtual Spaces and Discussion

When id-software released Wolfenstein 3D, they released much more than a game; they gave the opportunity for gamers to be immersed into a virtual world. This was made possible not just by the fact that Wolfenstein was a first person shooter, but by the fact that it was released as shareware, implying that other people could modify the game or make new games using the engine, allowing there creativity to flourish in creating spaces of there own. With the spread of the internet, new games began to arise and players for the first time began to really integrate socially into the world of gaming, inspiring new communities and using shooting as a method of communication and integration of creative thinking and new worlds. Suddenly anybody could develop, and mods began to release quickly. Id-software allowed for first person shooters to become an inspiration and form of integration for players from all around the world. 

This was also seen in counter-strike which till today is recognized as the most popular online first person shooter. The spaces in counter strike are nothing like the real world. 

“To consider counter-strike as architectural artifacts would be like describing a ghost town.” –p43 space time play

Instead counter-strike works in a whole different way. Playing this game is moving through a series of spaces that would normally be disconnected as it provides a diversity of maps where players battle each other. Hence players jump around different maps, (most of which are created by other players) found in different servers and battle each other in various arenas. 

The spaces themselves are highly thought out, every door opening, every vent shaft every corner is carefully considered to give both opposite teams equality in vantage points. The spaces mimic ordinary real-life spaces but are morphed such as to provide fun. Whilst at the same time, the game is highly strategic where players need to constantly communicate with one and another on the map to surprise and tactically take the enemy down. Hence, through first person shooters, games began to jump out of the screen into the real world not just through social online communities but also real-time through microphones and loudspeakers.

“This gets close to the very foundations upon which architecture in our mediated world will have to be based: giving access to environments that are real and virtual at the same time. To do so, architecture will need a theory that combines both architecture’s physical and medial aspects.” p43 space,time,play

Hence the question that this brings forth is regarding spatiality in computer games. In some senses the central element that games try to articulate is spatiality, and we can see this in most every shooter; the main notion that these games are concerned with is spatial illustration and mediation. Hence it is possible to classify games by observing the way they establish spaces. 

“More than time (which in most games can be stopped), more than actions, events and goals (which are tediously similar from game to game) and unquestionably more than characterization (which is usually nonexistent), games celebrate and explore spatial representation as a central motif and raison d’etre.” –p.44 space, time, play (allegories of space). 

But why on earth do we refer to all these architectural environments as spaces? Why do we not label them rooms or places? 

Anita Leirfall, a cyberspace theorist has this to say:

“Cyberspace should be seen as a system of signs. In fact the ‘sign space’ is an example of an operation which reduces or limits the richer and more extensive –or all embracing- notion of three dimensional space. A place is always a limitation of, or in, space. Place can never exist independently of its spatial origin. It must stand in a necessary and inevitable relation to space to be considered a space at all. (…) every attempt to give a definition of space will face the problem of circularity, while the definition must presuppose space as already given in its definition!” (Lierfall 1997, p.2)

Much like Jespuur Juul who recognized how players situate themselves in multiple environments whilst playing, real world and game world. Lierfall believes that cyberspaces and virtual spaces are in fact real “regions of space” which unlike to many of our mindful presets are not riddled with autonomous qualities. 

“This is an important point. “Cyberspace” and other such phenomena (e.g computer games) are constituted of signs and are therefore already too dependent on our bodily experience in and of real space to be ‘hallucinated’ as space. Moreover; the fact that they are not real space but objects and places is the only reason we can perceive them at all. If this were not true – that is, if they were not objects but real space (somehow) computer mediated – then we would not be able to tell them apart from real space unmediated.” Space, time, Play p.45

Defining spaces has never been an easy topic, and for so very long we have been trying to put our fingers on the types of spaces that we know. Henri Lefebvre categorized spaces between real physical space to abstract space and social space and distinguished between representational space (i.e the environment in which the computer screen is situated) and represented space (i.e the space inside the computer screen). Lefebvre strongly believed that all space was socially constructed by the society (ibid. p38). 

Whilst represented space is symbolic and rule based, and riddled with metaphors and logical systems, a reprentational space whilst seeming to be completely free of social rules is still in our minds a conceptionilized space, and at the end of the day a refinement from real physical space (i.e natural space) which is man free. Hence, our conceptualization of space and our manifestation of physical spaces (i.e as can be seen in cities) are in fact riddled with rules and logical systems. These systems are man-made, they are how we choose to configure our spaces and this is easily seen in computer games where these rules are a real sought experience.

The dilemma with computer games is that they are both representations of space and representational spaces in themselves, as they are both “conceptual and assoicitative.” Thus spaces in computer games are something new, a hybrid of metaphors and associations but at the same time an arena of spaces for sought experiences. 

The problem lies when we continuously define spaces in computer games as virtual spaces, because it creates a mental image of a space that is completely detached from our own. When in fact “the difference between the spatial representation and real space is what makes gameplay –by-automatic –rules possible. In real space, there would be no automatic rules, only social rules and physical laws.” And it is those real spaces in which the virtual spaces have been made to be played and enjoyed and as we are developing our architecture and our world, we begin to see that it is not necessarily just true that virtual spaces cannot exist without real spaces, but that some real engineered spaces could not have existed without virtual spaces… (i.e http://www.razkeltsh.com/#!__2011-great-court/slideshow9=0)

And then we have games that really get a hang on how to control the player by controlling their sense of real world time... I just read an article online http://insertcredit.com/2011/09/22/who-killed-videogames-a-ghost-story/, the notion of how games have the ability to play with the players perception of "real time" and use that to create suspense riddled with all the usuals such as challenges and rewards. Hooking the player is control :) Control over the player is control over their perception of the real environment as much as the virtual environment...