Spatial Communication in Videogame Environments
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by Gregory Martin Whistance-Smith A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Digital Humanities University of Alberta © Gregory Martin Whistance-Smith, 2019 Videogame environments constitute a vast expansion of the built environment, offering new worlds to explore and new spaces for engaging in a range of activities. While often framed by their activities, these virtual spaces are also meaningful for how they communicate values and shape behaviour, much as physical ones do. Theories of embodied cognition argue that human cognitive processes are grounded in our body-based engagement with the world, and they provide a robust way into analyzing how spaces communicate to their inhabitants and interactors. Using analyses of nine videogames, this study argues that virtual environments communicate spatially through the design of their interactive affordances, and how these evoke cognitive schemas, metaphors, and frames through interactions within the space. The nine works span three types of virtual environments: spaces designed (1) as rich worlds to explore (e.g. gardens), (2) as settings for meaningful action (e.g. workplaces), and (3) as scaffolds for training new modes of perception (e.g. installation artworks). These categories address players’ differing forms of engagement with each type of space, and the comparative analyses between works (within and across categories) capture a range of spatial communication strategies by revealing important commonalities and differences between works. Together, the analyses reveal the semiotic strategies used to create meaningful virtual places, while also suggesting approaches to designing meaningful built environments of all sorts. ` This thesis was a significant undertaking that I could not have completed without support from many sources. I would like to begin by thanking my supervisor Astrid Ensslin for her insightful feedback and support at all stages of this process: I have grown so much as a scholar from your mentorship. I am also very grateful to my first reader Arlene Oak for introducing me to many approaches to studying the built environment, and for helping me transition from architecture into academic research in other areas. Going further back, the questions that drove this thesis arose during my formative years at Dalhousie University’s School of Architecture, and I would like to thank the instructors, staff, and students that contributed to its constructive and convivial atmosphere, particularly my graduate supervisors Christine Macy and Sarah Bonnemaison. Studies such as this one cannot be completed without rich source material, and I must thank the developers of the videogames analyzed here for creating exceptional works that advance the medium. This project received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and I am grateful to the Council for the added focus that their support allowed for. I would like to extend the warmest thanks to my friends and family for their tireless encouragement, and for the open ears and helpful feedback they provided as I refined the ideas in this thesis by discussing them. Finally, and most importantly, I must thank my partner Luisa Salvador Dias for her infinite love and support throughout the research and writing process; the burden was so much lighter with your warm presence and our abundant laughter. ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` A space does not mean a volume defined by walls, but an area where consciousness brings the bright light of attention into play. When a single stone is placed on an otherwise empty tabletop, it creates a particular tension. Through the medium of this tension, one’s awareness is suddenly drawn to this “space.” As if lit candles were placed one by one in the surroundings, the conscious mind, gradually illuminated, creates a space within. (Hara 2018, 105) Videogame environments have vastly expanded the built environment, offering new worlds to explore and new spaces to engage in activities as diverse as racing, dancing, fighting, collecting, and strategizing. While often framed by their activities, these virtual spaces are also meaningful as places, as new environments that communicate values and shape behaviour much as physical ones do. Theories of embodied cognition stress that human cognitive process are heavily shaped by our body-based engagement with the world, and they provide a robust way into analyzing how spaces communicate to their inhabitants and interactors. This study will analyze spatial communication in videogame environments, arguing that structures of embodied experience can be used to reveal the multifaceted communication that takes places in these virtual spaces. Three types of virtual environments will be explored: spaces designed (1) as rich worlds to explore, (2) as settings for meaningful action, and (3) as scaffolds for training new modes of perception. This tripartite distinction is proposed here to address players’ differing forms of engagement with each type of space, and to capture the breadth of spatial design approaches that support this. Together, these analyses will reveal the semiotic strategies used to create meaningful virtual places, while also suggesting approaches toward designing semiotic environments of all sorts. The virtual environments of videogames, websites, and software applications constitute an astonishing enlargement of the built environment. While we once lived solely in buildings and ` constructed landscapes, humans now spend increasing hours interacting with these concrete-yet- ephemeral spaces made possible by computer hardware. Software environments act as powerful scaffolds for writing, drawing, and any form of media manipulation. Social networks have reshaped the flow of information between people and the development of friendships and kinships. We carry smartphones with vast media libraries that allow us to have an atmospheric soundtrack to our day, and the spaces of videogames invite us to explore and engage with their vibrant worlds, weaving ourselves into complex interactive feedback loops with the elements of their environments. Alongside earlier built environments, virtual spaces can be understood as “frameworks for activities, significantly affecting patterns of use, behaviour, and expectations” (Heskett 2002, 102). Taking ‘environments’ as “the places, circumstances, objects, or conditions that surround us” (Goldhagen 2017, xxiii-xxiv), and ‘built’ as a prefix for environments created by humans and “constructed to look and function as they do because people made decisions” (Goldhagen 2017, xvi), these computer-supported spaces have exponentially expanded both the scope of the built environment and the diversity of environments that we regularly engage with. What do these new spaces offer us that we have so rapidly embraced them? Videogames are a charged subset of virtual environments: while software, websites, and social media have instrumental purposes, videogames are often viewed as imaginative places of leisure. Their interactivity is widely seen as a core trait (Bogost 2007; Laurel 2014; Murray 1997), and it gives them many commonalities with architecture, installation art, and designed landscapes. Like these older forms, videogame environments are egocentric spaces, “experienced in perceptual fragments that are built up to create a whole through the process of physical movement” (Dade-Robertson 2011, 115); navigating a space and interacting with its objects constitutes a core aspect of a person’s involvement with these works. This engagement, and a ` person’s resulting spatial experience, is fundamentally embodied: the materiality of a place, the activities it holds, and the affect of wandering through it are all framed by the affordances and perceptual biases of the human body. The sense of shelter beneath a garden trellis, the grandeur of a cathedral’s soaring vaults, and the calm of a long drive at night all leave strong impressions. Scholars across a range of fields including philosophy, cognitive science, psychology, and linguistics have explored the central role that the body takes in shaping human experience and understanding (Barsalou 2008; Clark 2008; Gibson 1979; Lakoff and Johnson 1999), and their findings provide a robust starting point for analyzing the structures of designed space and spatial experience, be it physical (Goldhagen 2017) or virtual (Begy 2010, Calleja 2011). This thesis will explore videogames as a new corner of the built environment, seeking to understand their virtual worlds in relation to physical antecedents while unpacking their unique qualities. As these spaces do not need to provide physical shelter in the way that architecture does, they can place a far greater emphasis on expression and communication. Communicating through a built environment has traditionally been a very costly undertaking, and semiotically- charged buildings have often been tied to religion or the state in the form of temples, palaces, gardens, and grand public buildings. The arrival of installation art in the twentieth century began to democratize the creation of explicitly semiotic spaces, and the ease with which individuals can now author virtual environments has meant that more people than ever are experimenting with the expressive potential of designed environments. Yet, compared to writing and image, which declare their semiotic status as meaningful figures against some kind of ground, space has received much less attention as a mode of communication in its