Navigating Virtual Worlds The role of spatial structures in the conception of cognitive maps and routes by video game players

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Navigating Virtual Worlds

The role of spatial structures in the conception of cognitive maps and routes by video game players

February 17, 2010 Ruben Meintema, 1387871 ruben.meintema@gmail.com Institution: University of Groningen

Curriculum: Literary and Cultural Studies, RMA Course: M.A. Thesis

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List of figures

1. La tentative d’impossible by René Magritte (1928) 22 2. Sonic the Hedgehog (Sega MegaDrive: Sonic Team, 1991)

Green Hill Zone, In-game view 35

3. Sonic the Hedgehog (Sega MegaDrive: Sonic Team,1991)

Green Hill Zone, Level map 35

4. Super Mario Bros. 3 (Nintendo Entertainment System:

Nintendo, 1988) World 1, Overworld view 39

5. Final Fantasy VII (Sony PlayStation: Square Soft, 1997) Battle Mode 40

6. Final Fantasy VII. Town Mode 40

7. Final Fantasy VII. Overworld Mode 41

8. Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back (Sony PlayStation:

Naughty Dog, 1997) Warp room 44

9. Metroid: Zero Mission (Nintendo GameBoy Advance:

Nintendo, 2004) Map view 46

10. GTA: San Andreas (Sony PlayStation 2: Rockstar, 2005)

First-person view of the city of San Fierro. 50

11. Super Mario Bros. Minus World 60

12. The X-files game (PC: Hyperbole studios, 1998) In-game view 63 13. Three levels of the conventional narrative situation 64 14. Eskelinen’s four types of (narrative) situations 65 15. From interactivity to participation in computer games 65 16. Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes (Nintendo GameCube:

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Introduction

“There is no doubt about the influence of architecture and structure upon human character and action. We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us.”

Winston Churchill1

Visiting an unknown city can be a troublesome operation. Finding the way (while occasionally getting lost) takes a considerable effort of one’s navigational skills. Video games usually consist of large and elaborate spaces as well, sometimes very similar to an unknown city; the game The Getaway (2002) features a large part of Central London and the City District as a fully navigable play space. Most video games also take a considerable effort of the player and his navigational skills.

Humans (but some animal species as well) navigate through environments by depending on cognitive instruments that help them to know one’s place and find the way. Two general strategies could be deployed; constructing a cognitive route and constructing a cognitive map. A cognitive route is constructed from a subjective point-of-view. It is a memory of the trajectory between one location and another location in an environment. It is based on landmarks, and it is usually a one-way solution; it functions less when reversing the route, because landmarks could be located behind the observer. A cognitive map is a construction from an objective point-of-view, as it does not incorporate the observer but rather the locations of the environments and their interrelations.2

The Getaway has been designed to resemble a city that exists in real life, but most games feature spatial structures that are fictional and designed for performing other functions. These spatial structures, the architecture of video games, determine the player’s actions and movement. They determine the trajectory of the player through space and his exploration. Spatial structures in video games could also encourage or discourage the conception of a cognitive map or a cognitive route. In this study I will analyse the spatial structures of video games, and show how different structures demand different navigation strategies from the player. The result will be a typology of spatial structures of video games, with regard to their role in the construction of cognitive routes and cognitive maps by the player.

This is a novel approach to the subject of space in video games. Several studies like Wolf (1997), Poole (2004), and Kampmann (2007), have treated space as a perceived object that could be observed by a certain perceiving subject. This is an approach that is much indebted to the way space is perceived in fine arts and film. The studies of Taylor (2003) and Hendriks (2004) have argued for a more “player-centred” approach, which takes the experience of the player in game space into account. But these approaches do not view game space as a “navigable space,” as the Russian new media theorist has already pointed out in 2001, and problems of navigation, place determination, and spatial orientation are not addressed to in this approach. In my approach I view game space not as an object that could be perceived by a subject, but rather as an environment that could be navigated by a participant. By viewing game space that way insights could be gained about the behaviour of the player in game space, his orientation, navigation, exploration and eventually cognitive appropriation of this space.

This approach to space is not exclusive to video game studies. In fine arts a painting could be seen as to force the spectator to enter the picture and assign him a place in the space

1_{Jenny Preece, Online communities. Designing usability, supporting sociability (Chichester, etc.: John Wiley &}

Sons, 2000) xv.

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of the painting, as shown by Michel Foucault’s analysis of Las Meninas by Velásquez.3 In Film Studies especially space is being treated according to the approach in the present study; David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson argue that one of the main functions of continuity editing, and especially the 180º system, is not only to know where the characters are in relation to each other, but more importantly to know where the viewer is in relation to the story action.4 Also in films, the viewer has conduct cognitive operations in order to construct the film space. The viewer participates in hypothesis-forming about the space and his own relations to it, and Julian Hochberg compares this process, in which the viewer ‘constructs’ space on the basis of ‘textual’ cues from the film, to cognitive mapping: “The task of the film maker is therefore to make the viewer pose a visual question, and then answer it for him.”5 Warren Buckland goes further in this direction by viewing film space from a cognitive semiotic approach, and analyses how the spectator determines his position in the fictional geography of the film by using ‘textual’ spatial cues.6He furthermore uses the concept of the ‘tactile body image’ to determine the relation to the visual space of the film.7

The difference between film and video games, however, is that the video game player has to actively navigate the environment, while the film viewer necessarily has to be led through the environment by the director and the camera. Thus the need for all the above, the conception of a cognitive map and a determination of the player’s position in the fictional geography becomes more acute; without it he is not even able to play the game. Also the concept of the ‘tactile body image’ fits the context of this study perfectly, because the player’s relation to his avatar is different in this respect to the relation of the reader or viewer to a character in a book or a movie, respectively, as we shall see in §2.4.

Although cognitivist processes and cognitivist concepts play a large role in my study, my method should not be viewed as a cognitivist method. In the present study I am following a functionalist approach. In functionalist analysis the work under investigation is viewed as a human-made object, that functions to fulfil human purposes. Instead of the ‘atomistic’ approach of (neo-)structuralism, the functionalist approach aims at understanding the material structure of the whole art work (its overall form) in the light of the purposes we take it to be trying to fulfil.8We take game space to be an environment, which the player necessarily needs to navigate in order to participate in the game. Humans navigate (extensive, elaborate, and complex) environments by constructing cognitive routes and cognitive maps. The overall structure of the space, its architecture, constitutes the ‘textual’ cues on the basis of which these cognitive constructs are being produced, and thus determines the construction of cognitive maps and routes by the video game player. I will analyse the structures of game space with regard to the functions they fulfil in aiding (or consciously complicating) the navigation of the player through these environments, based on cognitive maps and routes.

This thesis itself is structured as follows. In the first chapter I will place the current study in the discourse on space in arts and literature studies in general, and in video game studies in particular. It will become apparent that ‘space’ in all kinds of forms and contexts has become a popular subject in the Humanities (and beyond), to the extent that there has

3_{Michel Foucault, The order of things. An archaeology of the human sciences (New York: Vintage Books,}

1970) 5.

4_{David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Film art. An introduction (New York, etc.: McGraw-Hill, 2008) 234.} 5_{Quoted in: David Bordwell, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson, The classical Hollywood cinema: film style &}

mode of production to 1960(London: Routledge, 1985) 59.

6_{Warren Buckland, ‘Orientation in film space: a cognitive semiotic approach,’ Recherches en communication 18}

(2003) 89.

7_{Warren Buckland, The cognitive semiotics of film (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) 70.} 8_{David Bordwell, ‘Neo-structuralist narratology and the functions of filmic storytelling,’ in: Marie-Laure Ryan,}

Narrative across media. The languages of storytelling(Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press,

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even been talk of a ‘spatial turn.’ In video game studies the subject of space has also gained more and more prominence, and a ‘spatial turn’ could be recognized in the study of video games as well. As I have pointed out above, the discourse on space in video game is unable to understand one important function of the game space: to afford, determine, and guide the spatial behaviour and the navigation of the player through the fictional environment. Neither ‘objectivist’ approaches nor ‘player-centred’ approaches are able to explain this important and basic feature of the spaces of video games. At the end of this first section I will shortly attend to the subject of time in video games, with regard to how this other important aspect determines the experience of the progression of the player through the game space.

The second section will consist of the main theoretical part of this thesis. In this section I will first explain the terms ‘cognitive map’ and ‘cognitive route’ and how they could be used in fictional and non-fictional navigation. Then I will discuss the ontology of virtual space, and how this effects the perception of the space by the viewer. The perceptual clues for navigating the space rely for a great part on the visual rendering of it. I will explain this visual rendering by discussing the ‘atoms’ of which the architectures are built, and show how this could be viewed from different ontological angles. In §2.3 then I will explain how the structure of the space is determined by the actions that are available in it. We shall see that game spaces do not mimic ‘real’ physical spaces, but that they have a logic entirely of their own. The possible actions determine the structure of the designed space, but also the behaviour of the player in it, so this is a crucial aspect for the construction of cognitive maps and routes. The final subsection will be devoted to the relationship between the player and his avatar, as the avatar is the ‘tool’ through which the player acts in the fictional world. It shall be argued that this relationship works differently in games than in other media, due to medium-specific characteristics, and that these result in a ‘quasi-physical’ relationship.

In the third section is then I will finally attend to the spatial structures in the video games themselves, while insights gained from the previous theoretical section into account. I will propose a typology of two basic spatial structures, with a number of eight subtypes and two kinds of complications on these types, with regard to the function of player navigation. In §3.1 I will discuss Fragmentary spaces without continuity, which consists of a level-based structure without spatial continuity between levels. In §3.2 I will attend to Fragmentary spaces with linear continuity, a kind of level-based structure that keeps the levels somehow together, but that fails to produce a single navigable space. In §3.3 then Fragmentary spaces with non-linear continuity will be analysed, which allows for navigating back and forth through a level-based spatial structure. In subsection §3.4 I will first come to treat Continuous space with cuts, a space that is not level-based and thus forming one single whole, but that is still separated by obstacles that divide up the environment. Continuous space without cuts then is the ideal of many game designers nowadays, and this type will be treated in §3.5. In §3.6 I discuss a type of continuous space without boundaries. Continuous space without boundaries is very uncommon, but it functions as a device for ‘magical’ or ‘astronomical’ effects. In §3.7 and §3.8 I will attend to three possible complications of these basic structures; Alternative spaces and Heterotopias, respectively. In Alternative space there is a parallel world added to the game environment, and in Heterotopias there is a spatial anomaly, that does not fit the structure or logic of the rest of the game space.

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game space, I will attend to examples in which these boundaries are intentionally transgressed.

I will conclude this study by synthesizing the results of the different sections, and providing a multi-layered answer to the main research question of the role of spatial structures of video games on the construction of cognitive maps and cognitive route by video game players. I will furthermore offer a perspective of further research based on this study, for example connecting the results of this study with a cognitive approach that investigates the cognitive behaviour of players, and a connection of this study to a narratological approach into the spatial structures of the stories of video games.

§1: Across media, across dimensions

In this first section §1 I will lay out some of the main strands of the discussion on video game space. This is in order, because it is needed to draw a map of the present discourse on game space, so that the gaps could be filled and unknown territory could be explored (to use a spatial metaphor). In §1.1 I will first offer a broad orientation on the subject of space as it has been discussed in relation to linguistics and historical and sociological theory. I will also show a broad overview of how space works in other media, like literature, film, sculpture, architecture, music. I will furthermore compare the way a fictional world is evoked in literature and in games, and the special role of the concept of ‘rules’ therein.

After this broad introduction of the subject of space across media, I will focus once again on video games, and analyse the discussion on this subject within the context of gaming. Because of the relevance of space to this new medium, there already exists a relatively large body of writing on this subject. However, I will show how the discussion has failed to produce an approach that is able to deal with practical problems of player navigation, although attempts have been made in this direction. My academic contribution to this discourse will be the realization that games are not simply spaces that could be perceived, but that they are really environments that could only be understood by participation, exploration, and appropriation.

After that I will devote my attention to that other dimension of games; time. Without time, the space of the game would be static and non-interactive. Any study of game space would be incomplete when the subject of time would be neglected, because the experience of the player of this space is always linked to his movement (by participation and exploration) through this environment, and movement is always involving both spatial and temporal dimensions. Furthermore, it shall be argued in §1.1 that games have characteristics of both ‘spatial’ and ‘temporal’ forms, just like film. But game time has been viewed too much from the perspective of film time. There has been a critique on this view on game time, and it has been proposed to look at time from a player-centred perspective. The temporal experience is then linked to the advance of the player through the game space, so that also this aspect of video gaming has been traced back to the subject of space. Knowing your place in the game’s environment thus also involves knowing the moment in your advancement.

§1.1: Space across media

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and butterflies can perceive.”9 Nabokov imagines this personal experience to be a re-iteration of a moment far back in pre-history: “the beginning of reflexive consciousness must surely have coincided with the dawning of the sense of time.”10 In other words, time is intrinsically human, and space is a kind of perception that stands lower on the evolutionary ladder.

But space is still the basis of our entire perception and conception, including that of time. One could observe above that Nabokov refers to time as an “environment.” Likewise, the cognitive linguists George Lakoff and Mark Johnson have shown how temporal conceptions are always essentially spatial. In our everyday language there are roughly two different conceptions of time: the moving observer metaphor and the moving time metaphor.11 Both are essentially spatial. In expressions like ‘Time is flying by’ the moving time metaphor is clearly used, and in utterances as ‘I am leaving the past behind me’ the speaker makes use of the moving observer metaphor. The latter conceives time as a path that the subject travels. Not only time but also other concepts are spatially conceived in our everyday language and everyday perception. That means that we are still inherently spatially oriented animals.

In studies of language and culture, space has become an important theme. The French philosopher Michel Foucault writes: “The great obsession of the nineteenth century was, as we know, history: with its themes of developments and of suspension, of crisis, and cycle, themes of the ever accumulating past, with its great preponderance of dead men and the menacing glaciation of the world. […] The present epoch will perhaps be above all the epoch of space. We are in the epoch of simultaneity.”12 With simultaneity, time collapses back into one single moment, and history and time are laid out spatially. If Foucault is right, and space is the dominant theme, instead of time (or history), then we could also understand the utterance of Nabokov better, who was more interested in the ‘realm’ of time, being a child of the nineteenth century.

We could also understand texts better that are “obsessed” with space; observe how Lakoff and Johnson redirect the conception of time back to spatial conceptions. Foucault himself already mentions Gaston Bachelard, who has produced an experiential account of our lived spaces.13 Henri Lefebvre’s work has also been highly influential in the discourse on space in culture and society, as he develops a Marxist approach to social space.14 Doreen Massey has taken this approach further, as she has developed a Feminist approach to social space.15 Edward Soja has attempted in this vein to construct a spatial hermeneutic for the study that he calls “postmodern geographies.”16In the sociological theory of art and literature, Pierre Bourdieu has conceptualized social processes in spatial terms, instead of conceptualized space as a manifestation of social relations. He has theorized the literary “field,” that could be “demarcated,” and in which writers could take “prises de positions.”17

In historiography, a discipline that has originally been associated with time, space has also become a major theme since the ground-breaking work of Pierre Nora; his monumental Les lieux de mémoire. In this project by multiple historians, spaces and spatial objects are regarded as remnants of the past, and as constructions of spatial history.18 This approach has

9_{Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, memory. An autobiography revisited (London 1967) 19.} 10_{Ibidem, 18.}

11_{George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the flesh. The embodied mind and its challenge to western}

thought(1999) 141-143, 145-146

12_{Michel Foucault, ‘Des espaces autres.’}

13_{Gaston Bachelard, The poetics of space (New York: Orian Press, 1964).} 14_{Henri Lefebvre, The production of space (Oxford; Blackwell 1994).} 15_{Doreen Massey, Space, place and gender (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994).}

16_{Edward Soja, Postmodern geographies: the reassertion of space in critical social theory (London: Verso,}

1990).

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also been highly influential, and publications as Simon Schama’s Landscape and memory19 and David Matless’ Landscape and Englishness20 are inspired by this spatial perspective. These and many more examples of a spatial approach in studies in several fields have led some authors to believe that there has been a “spatial turn” in various academic disciplines. Along the lines of Foucault, Thomas Keirstead argues that there has been a ‘crisis’ of time and narrative, and that a spatial language is emerging in contemporary theory, “with its mappings, its re- and deterritorializations, its refrains of displacement and dispersal, discursive fields and subject positions.”21

The various art disciplines have also classically been divided into roughly spatial arts and temporal arts. This distinction has first been conceptualized by the German Enlightenment poet and thinker G. E. Lessing, who objected to using strategies and structures from painting in the writing of literature (drawing on the classical work of Horace). In his famous analysis of the sculpture group Laocoon he argues that painting and sculpture have an extension in space, while poetry and literature have an extension in time, and that these different characters require different strategies.22 Sculpture, painting, photography, and architecture are static forms, and have are spatially extended: they take up real space, so they could be displayed in a museum. Art forms like theatre, music and dance are dynamic, and they do not have a stable spatial extension: they are performed, and do not ‘exist’ as such before and after their performances. They could thus also not be displayed in a museum.23 Several art movements have consciously tried to break through this theoretical division, such as the “performance-art” movement.

But film is also a rather difficult case in this theoretical division, although not consciously like performance art. On the one hand film is a temporal object, which begins at 0.00.00 and ends at 1.26.40, for example. Films are displayed in cinemas, where a projector ‘performs’ the film for an audience in much the same way as in theatre. The projected image does not have an extension in space. But on the other hand films can be stored as film rolls, and also film museums exist.24 Video games are in much the same position as film. They could be stored and distributed (often in the same DVD-cases as commercial films are stored). They do not yet have a museum, although expositions of games have already been organized.25 But then again a game is not a game when it is only looked at, and not played. Game play is first of all action, or performance, as shall be argued more extensively in section §2.2 and §2.3. In that way the performative (and in that context temporal) aspect is even more prominent than in film. Games in that respect are to be positioned closer to music and theatre, which are also ‘liquid’ forms. The importance of spatial analysis of video games is thus not to be found on the level of the medium, because the medium is spatially and temporally ambiguous like film (and is perhaps even more ‘performative’), but on the level of the signifié, or the diegesis; the fictional world that the medium tries to project while trying to hide itself. The fictional worlds of video games are always some kind of ‘environments’ that are made to traverse by the player. At the end of this section I will delve deeper into the

19_{Simon Schama, Landscape and memory (London: Harper Collins, 1995).} 20_{David Matless, Landscape and Englishness (London: Reaktion Books, 1998).}

21_{Quoted in: Stephen Dodd, Writing home. Representations of the native place in modern Japanese literature}

(Cambridge and London 2004) 12.

22_{Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Laocoon: or, The limits of poetry and painting (London: Ridgeway, 1836).} 23_{Sigrid Leyssen and Koen Vermeir, ‘De film en zijn museum. Over de esthetiek van het verleden,’ in: Bart}

vandenabeele and Koen Vermeir eds., Transgressie in de kunst (Budel: Damon, 2004) 46-62. Literature and poetry, however, do not fit this categorization, as they could be both stored in libraries and other collections, and they could also be read out loud in public and orated.

24_{Ibidem, 46.}

25_{Ruben Meintema, ‘Next level: Art, Games & Reality’, Gamed.nl (18 March 2006). Online available at:}

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production of the fictional world of a video game, but right now it is needed to complete the discussion on the divide between spatial and temporal forms across the arts.

Also in the traditionally ‘temporal’ art forms the spatial turn has manifested its influences. Theatre has been conceptualized as a space that is enclosed by three walls, with the addition of a fourth imaginary wall.26 And even music has been conceptualized and visualized in modern music theory as a “musical space,” with high and low tones, a tonal centre, etc.27

In literature, the oral mode of this art form has been characterized as a fundamentally temporal mode, and the written form has been characterized as the spatial variant. When listening to an oral performance of a story, the spoken words are divided from each other in time, so the ‘temporal’ medium of oral performance is used. But when reading a written story, the words on the page are divided from each other by spaces, literally and figuratively. Written (or printed) text is a predominantly ‘spatial’ medium. The 19th-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauper has laid the basis for this distinction. He has argued that auditive perceptions of the ear are primarily bound up with time, and that visual perceptions of the eye are predominantly concerned with space. So speech must be tied to time, and writing must be tied to space. This view has known supporters even in the present time.28 Marshall MacLuhan goes even further than the speech/writing distinction, and argues that printed text differs fundamentally from hand-written text. Print isolates the sense of sight, and MacLuhan argues that the medium of print encourages ‘mathematically correct spatial thinking’ even further than writing. He then analyses the spatial representation of Shakespeare’s text King Lear and argues that this is the first literary work that constructs a mathematically correct three-dimensional space, which incorporates a stable ‘point-of-view.’29 In that way, it is the literary equivalent of Masaccio’s Holy Trinity, the first painting that uses a correct linear perspective.

So with respect to the medium, conventional literature would also be a spatial form. But when we would regard literature from a narratological perspective, it would be conceived as a temporal art form. The narrative, as a projection of a fictional time frame on a non-fictional time frame, is basically a temporal form, as I have argued before.30 On the level of the non-fictional time frame, literature is ambiguous in its tendencies toward spatial or temporal prominence, but on the level of the fictional world literature requires at least a minimum of space, otherwise the narrative events would exist in a vacuum. The narrative events are situated in the fictional world that the work of literature is trying to conjure. The fundamental difference with gaming, however, is that the space is visual and non-interactive. This means that gaps and discontinuities may exist, as they are invisible for the reader, while in gaming they would cause a diminishing of realism and immersion.

A work of literature conjures a fictional world by the semantic universe, i.e. by all the possible interpretations that the semantic units (or; words) allow. Within this semantic universe, a narrative universe may be carved out, centred around the “textual actual world”

26_{Gay McAuley, Space in performance: making meaning in the theatre (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan}

Press, 2000).

27_{Stefano Mengozzi, ‘Constructing difference: the Guidonian hand and the musical space of historical others,’}

in: Karl Fugelso and Carol Robinson ed, Medievalism in technology old and new (Cambridge 2008) 99.

28_{Michael Kubovy, ‘Should we resist the seductiveness of the space:time::vision:audition analogy?’ Journal of}

experimental psychology: human perception and human performance(14:2 (1988) 318.

29_{Marshall MacLuhan, The Gutenberg galaxy. The making of typographic man (Toronto: University of Toronto}

Press, 1962) 16-17.

30_{Ruben Meintema, ‘Time/ space/ narrative: A theory and method of film-to-video-game adaptation,’ paper}

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that the text proposes to project.31 When we are reading the text, we begin by determining certain rules for reading it. We have an agreement with the text (or author, or narrator) that we do not interpret the semantic domain according to a non-fictional reading, but according to a fictional reading. Just like children in a game of make-believe, who determine the rules to pretend that “these buckets full of sand are cakes, … I am the sales lady, and you are the customer,” we start reading fictional literature by determining the rules to pretend that “the facts told by the narrator are true, and the world he describes is the actual world.”32

But in games rules and fiction do not work in the same way as in literature. In fact, in many cases rules and fiction oppose each other. For example, when the rules of a game allow for saving and reloading, this contradicts the rules of the fictional world of the game that try to convince you that you are in a perilous situation that is life-threatening. According to Juul, games exist between real rules and fictional worlds that often oppose each other. But on at least one point rules and fictional worlds converge: game space. The space of the game acts a part of the rules, because it determines, affords, and limits the player’s movement and action, but it is also part of (or consists entirely of) the fictional world, because it acts as the diegetic space of the story.33 The game’s space and the game’s fictional world coincide. This means that the fictional world is dependent on the space; when the space is ‘broken,’ the player’s immersion in the fictional world is also ‘broken.’ A rupture in the space is also a rupture in the fictional world. This would be another reason why an analysis of the (fragmentarity and continuity of) spatial structures of games is relevant, next to the relevance for the conception of cognitive routes and maps.

§1.2: The present discourse on space in video games

Like in the discourse of other disciplines in the humanities, in Game Studies the subject of space has also gained more prominence. Video games have been regarded as spaces, and are being studied with regard to their spatial properties. This approach could already be observed in the discussion between the game scholar Henry Jenkins and literary scholar Mary Fuller Nintendo and New World travel writing from 1995, in which a common theme of spatial exploration and appropriation was discussed in games and Renaissance English literature. But in the new millennium this view has become a widely accepted paradigm, to the point that there has already been talk of a “spatial turn” in Game Studies.34

Space has been recognized as one of the defining and essential properties of video games, and games in general. Espen Aarseth, Henry Jenkins, Bernadette Flynn, and Georgia Leigh McGregor all posit spatiality as an essential characteristic of video games, crucial to understanding the medium correctly.35I agree that space is one of the crucial characteristics of games, and an approach with regard to space could produce an understanding of several practical and theoretical problems in Game Studies. Up until the present, very useful contributions have been made to the topic of video game space. However, despite how useful the writing until now has been, there are several things lacking in the approach to video game space, as I already mentioned in the introduction. I will here examine and analyse the discourse on video game space, and then criticize it on the points where additions and

31_{Marie-Laure Ryan, Possible worlds, artificial intelligence and narrative theory (Bloomington and}

Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991) 111-112.

32_{Ibidem, 23.}

33_{Juul, Half-real, 188-189.}

34_{Kücklich, ‘Perspectives on computer …,’.}

35_{Georgia Leigh McGregor, ‘Situations of play: patterns of spatial use in video games,’ in: Situated play:}

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different perspectives could be implemented. These consist of the transition from an ‘objective’ approach to game space to a ‘player-centred’ approach, and the transition from an approach based on the perception of space to an approach based on the conception of space.

The discourse on space in video games has predominantly focussed on the issue of spatial perception instead of spatial conception. The cognitive scientists John O’Keefe and Lynn Nadel have argued that while humans have the ability to perceive three-dimensional space hard-wired in their brains, humans can not directly perceive an entire environment. But humans are able, just like other animals like birds and rats, to build a ‘cognitive map’ or a ‘cognitive route’ of the environment, so that they can conceive the space that is too large to be perceived immediately.36 This is also true for the environments of video game space, which are also too big to be perceived immediately. Despite this, the discourse has focussed more on spatial perception than on spatial conception. Furthermore, the use of cognitive maps and routes in video games is crucial for the player, because in most games he has to adopt some kind of strategy of way-finding because the spaces are so elaborate and complex. However, this point has been overlooked by most scholars of video games space.

In several writings it has been argued that the way space is built in video games has strong similarities with the way has been produced in visual arts and film. For example, Steven Poole argues that space is produced by way of the linear perspective, much as in Renaissance painting. Bo Walther Kampmann also has a similar argument, but extends the field of comparison to Modernist art and film.37Mark J.P. Wolf develops a typology of video game space on the basis of on- and off-screen space.38 This account is not so much inspired by spatial analysis of the visual arts, but more on spatial analysis in film studies (although also in film studies the bodily experience of the viewer has been studied). There is a crucial difference between space in visual arts and film and space in video games; the space of a painting or film is in the first place meant to look at, while the space in a video game is also meant to traverse. That means that the understanding of the space should also focus more on the way the player conceives it in order to traverse it, instead of only on the way it looks. We should direct our attention to the spatial conception instead of only the spatial perception.

Furthermore, the role of the player in this account of spatiality is underdeveloped. The player is supposed to traverse the space, so he should also have a stable link to the spatial structure of the video game. Laurie Taylor has argued that the treatment of space in video games should not be based on a geometrical account of perspectives and visuality, but should instead focus on a spatial structure which incorporates and embodies the player as well. She describes this as an experiential view of game space. The player should have a stable link to the game world, and a stable position in this game world. When this link is unstable, the space of the video game would fall apart, according to Taylor.39 But Taylor is still thinking on the same level as Poole, Kampmann, and Wolf, as she treats the perception of the game space, instead of the conception of the game space. Although she already makes the transition from purely visual space to tactile and participatory space, she does not make the transition from spatial perception to spatial conception.

Martijn Hendriks argues in a similar vein as Taylor that any account of space in video games should always include, incorporate and embody the player. It is therefore also an experiential view on game space. His analysis is not inspired on Jacques Lacan as was 36_{John O’Keefe and Lynn Nadel, The hippocampus as a cognitive map (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978) 74.} 37_{Bo Kampmann Walther,, ‘Space in new media perception – with continual references to computer games and}

game graphics’, Hz journal 6 (June 2005). Online available at: http://www.hz-journal.org/n6/kampmann.html (accessed November 2007).

38_{Mark J.P. Wolf, ‘Inventing space: A taxonomy of on- and off-screen space in video games,’ Film quarterly 51,}

1 (Autumn 1997) 11-23.

39_{Laurie Taylor, ‘When seams fall apart. Video game space and the player’, Game studies 3 (December 2003).}

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Taylor’s, but on Michel de Certeau and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. His argument goes not in the direction of maintaining a stable link between player and world, but in the direction of how the player experiences the game world as a “lived space.”40 In the thinking of Hendriks the beginnings of a transition to the view of game space beyond the screen, and in the conception by the player could already be observed. But Hendriks does not make this transition yet. He is more concerned with the experience and immersion of the player of and in this space.

The Austrialian scholar Darshana Jayemanne also pays attention to the experience of the player in the game space, and argues that his experience is diffused instead of concentrated. The perception of game space would because of that have more similarity with architectural tactile space than with visual space in visual arts, and Jayemanne here goes against what Poole and Kampmann would argue. Jayemanne’s essay also goes in the direction of game space as lived space.41 But just as Hendriks, he does not mention the conception of the game space by the player.

Henry Jenkins, however, is one of the few scholars who envisions the game space as a whole, and takes steps toward a conception of game space. In his highly influential article ‘Game design as narrative architecture’ he discusses spatial story-telling in video games. According to his view, narrative in games is laid out through constructed spaces. Game designers do not simply tell the story, but they design the places that afford narrative events and narrative video gaming. Jenkins then discusses four types of spatial story-telling in video games.42 Because a story is conceptualized as a whole by the recipient, the narrative spaces are also conceived as a whole by the player. This is an important step toward an analysis of spatial conceptions and spatial structures in video games. But Jenkins’ approach is more inclined toward the analysis of (spatial properties of) narrative, than of (narrative properties of) space. Furthermore, although Jenkins treats game environments in their entirety, he argues from the perspective of the designer, who uses space to tell a story, instead of from the perspective of the viewer, who cognitively treats the space into a story.

In Jenkins’ later article on game space, ‘The art of contested spaces,’ there is more attention to the role of the player in game space, and the effects it could have on the player’s experience. In this article, Squire and Jenkins once again ascertain that space is the essential component of video gaming. But space is being connected to one of the other recurring themes of Jenkins’ work: video games as art. So the spaces of video games are characterized according to artistic influences: Realistic spaces, Expressionist spaces, Romanticist spaces, Surreal spaces, Atmospheric space, and Social spaces.43 But although the player’s experience is more incorporated in this analysis of game space, the above types are not actually spatial structures. It is more a contemplation of the artistic influences on level design.

A study that takes great steps toward a conception of game space based on spatial structures is Georgia Leigh McGregor’s ‘Situations of play: patterns of spatial use in videogames.’ McGregor ascertains the importance of spatiality in the understanding of video games, and argues, like Squire and Jenkins, that all video games are in some way about

40_{Martijn Hendriks, ‘De geleefde ruimte van het digitale spel: Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto 3 [The lived space}

of the digital game: Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto 3]’, in: Bart vandenabeele and Koen Vermeir eds.,

Transgressie in de kunst(Budel: Damon, 2004) 21-28.

41_{Darshana Jayemanne, ‘Spielraum: games, art and cyberspace’, DAC (2003). Online available at:}

http://www.msstate.edu/fineart_online/Backissues/Vol_17/faf_v17_n08/reviews/jayemanne.html (accessed October 2007).

42_{Henry Jenkins, ‘Game design as narrative architecture’, in: Noah Waldrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan eds, First}

Person. New media as story, performance, and game(Cambridge and London 2004). Online available at:

http://web.mit.edu/cms/People/henry3/games&narrative.html. (accessed October 2008).

43_{Kurt Squire and Henry Jenkins, ‘The art of contested spaces,’ in: Lucian King and Conrad Bain eds., Game on}

(London: Barbican, 2002). Online available at:

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contested spaces. She then turns to architectural theory, and implements the patterns of spatial use in real life to the patterns of spatial use in video games. These spatial patterns are Challenge spaces, Contested spaces, Nodal spaces, Codified spaces, Creation spaces, and Backdrops.44 This typology will be discussed in more detail in §2.3. McGregor intelligently discusses spaces in their entirety, so she does not stick to spatial perception instead of spatial conception, and she incorporates the role of the player in her conception of games space. But although she recognizes the functions of games space, she projects the functions ‘real’ architectural space on game environments, while I shall argue in §2.3 that game spaces have functions entirely of their own. So the structures of game environments are missed in this study.

James Newman has made the most valuable contributions to a perspective on spatial analysis of spatial structures, and the spatial conceptions that could be produced on their basis. Newman writes that players have to use some kind of cognitive mapping to navigate and find the way in the sometimes elaborate game spaces. He hereby refers to the spatial structures of some games, as he discusses the conventional level structure.45 In this thesis I will elaborate this approach, and analyse the basic structures of video games which include the conventional level structure, and I will argue how these structures could give rise the conception of cognitive maps and routes. In that way Newman’s observations would be placed into context.

Newman also mentions the importance of contiguity of the game space, that is often broken by the use of teleports. I will discuss this also in §3.3.2 and §3.6. But in sharp contrast to McGregor’s argumentation, the patterns of game space are necessarily different from the patterns of real life space, because game spaces have a different function for the player, such as finding the way in a maze-like spatial structure that elicits exploration. In this thesis I will expand Newman’s approach. I will discuss a typology of spatial structures, but my aim is not to see how these structures are similar or different to spatial structure in reality. It is rather to see how they could influence the conception of cognitive routes and maps by the player, so that he can navigate the environment.

My contribution to the discussion on space in video game will thus consist of a perspective that is first of all not directed to spatial perception but to spatial conception, because the game space could not be perceived in its entirety and in its essence by the player. The structures of the game space are of crucial importance to this conception, because they consist of the ‘textual’ cues on the basis of which the player conceives his cognitive constructs.

§1.3: Video games in four dimensions

In this subsection I will discuss some aspects of video game, with regard to its relevance to spatial structures. As I mentioned at the beginning of section §1, game space is an environment that requires participation, interaction and exploration in order to be conceived, and thus movement of the player through space. As the player moves through space, he also moves through time. The place where the player is located is also connected to the moment in the time it takes to complete the game. Thus, the player’s movement through the environment also has a temporal aspect

Game time, however, has been viewed predominantly from an ‘objective’ perspective, based on the structuralist analysis of time in cinema. Parallels between the ‘objective’ 44_{Leigh McGregor, ‘Situations of play…,’ 538-540.}

45_{James Newman, ‘Chapter 7: Videogames, space and cyberspace. Exploration, navigation and mastery,’ in:}

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approach of game space of Poole, Wolf, and Walther, as discussed in §1.2, could be observed here. Jesper Juul argued that the temporal divide in narrative (between ‘story time,’ the signifié, and ‘plot time,’ the signifiant) does not exist as such in video games. Story time and plot time take place at exactly the same moment, otherwise the player would not be able to influence the events that are happening in ‘story time.’46This is an argument similar, albeit in different terms, to that of the Russian media scholar Lev Manovich, who has argued that the screen of new media like the radar (or the video game) depicts events that take place in the present, otherwise the user would not be able to act on the basis of its information.47 The argument of Espen Aarseth, who argues that games and stories differ on the point of temporal orientation to the present and the past, respectively, should also be seen in this vein.48

But as we have seen in the previous subsection, Jenkins regards the story of the video game not as laid out in the time of the game, but rather in the space or the architecture of the game. That means that also from a narratological perspective, the place of the player in the space in the game is parallel to the moment in the story in the game. The American game scholar Michael Nitsche has criticized what he calls the ‘formalist’ approach to video game time, which is parallel to the structuralist approach based on film studies. He further discusses the ‘experiential’ approach, which is connected to the time the player spends in the game. Nitsche attempts to synthesize these approaches in a combined perspective on video game time. Instead of formalistically viewing the time the player has spent, or experientially viewing the position of the player in the time he takes to complete the game, Nitsche proposes to view game time in its connection to game space. The position or advancement of the player in the total playing time is then connected to the position of the player in the game space. Nitsche: “Space can serve as an architectural structure element and temporal conditioning.”49

Space and time are intertwined in games. The continuity of the spatial structure determines also the continuity of temporal experience and the movement through the game. “Spatial continuity does not imply temporal realism but consistency.”50 This statement reminds us of the very thoughtful insight of Newman; video game spatial structures are not experienced as realistic if they resemble spatial structures of reality, but when they could be explored consistently and conceived as contingent by the player. We shall see in §3.5 that time adds to the experience of continuity and seamlessness of the game space

With Nitsche’s article the circle from space to time and back has been completed. Time in games is conceived in strong connection to game space, much like Lakoff and Johnson’s spatial conceptualization of time, which we discussed at the beginning of this section. This insight is simultaneously a strong claim for the essential spatiality of video games, and a claim for the immersive properties of continuous spatial structures of video games, and their importance in the conjuration of the fictional world of the game. In this Master Thesis I will delve deeper into these spatial structures, so that the understanding of playing performance and playing experience could be enhanced.

§1.4: Concluding remarks

The existing discourse on video game space has progressed in a direction that is useful because it takes medium specificity increasingly into account. Several steps have been taken 46_{Jesper Juul, ‘Games telling stories?’ in: Joost Raessens and Jeffrey Goldstein eds., The handbook of computer}

game studies(Cambridge and London 2005) 222-223.

47_{Manovich, The language of new media, 99.}

48_{Espen Aarseth, ‘Quest games as post-narrative discourse,’ in: Marie-Laure Ryan ed., Narrative across media.}

The languages of storytelling(Lincoln and London 2004) 369.

49_{Michael Nitsche, ‘Mapping time in video games,’ in: Situated play. Proceedings of DiGra 2007 conference}

(2007) 147.

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to achieve this. First of all, the approach that is too heavily indebted to film studies and visual arts has been replaced by an approach that attempts to take the player into account. The analyses of the construction of linear perspective and the status of off-screen space are no doubt useful, but does not account for the specific appropriation of this space by the percipient/user of a video game.

The first step was to recognize that the player needs to be embodied in this space as well by way of his avatar, and thus in a much more literal way than in the situation in literature and cinema. The second step was to recognize specific levels of spatial engagement, which goes explicitly beyond representation into spatial practices and ‘lived space.’ The third step was to acknowledge that game space is not homogeneous but could in fact be categorized on the basis of different structures. The fourth innovation (following this line of thought, not necessarily this chronology) was that these game structures were not implementations of spatial structures in reality, but that they follow an internal logic of the video game, and that the spatial structures could function in the game as explorative, challenging, and immersive.

The final step that I would like to take is to analyse the spatial structures on the level of the spatial conception instead of the spatial perception. A game environment is too large to be perceived, and should necessarily be conceived by the player. In this thesis I will investigate how spatial structures could afford, guide, and limit the spatial conception of the player, and influence the construction of either a cognitive map or route.

I will also take the next step, and investigate a large array of possible spatial structures in existing video games. Each video game could possibly be categorized in one of the types that I will discuss in this thesis. This analytical discussion will take place in §4, and will function as a practical argumentation for my theoretical contribution as well. But next will follow the theoretical foundation for this approach to video game space.

§2: An approach to video game space

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§2.1: Cognitive maps and routes in video games

As we have seen in §1.2 the approach to video game space has moved from an ‘objective’ approach to a ‘player-centred’ approach, but scholars have thus far neglected to view game space as something that should be conceived and participated in, instead of only something that should be looked at perceived. The French philosopher Henri Lefebvre has already distinguished between “perceived space” and “conceived space” in his book The production of space.51 The latter is the space as it is conceived by city planners, architects, project developers, geographers, etc. The former is the space as it is perceived by the subject, the user of the space. Game developers have had a conception of the game spaces that they are designing, and this conception is implemented in the actual video game. But the player has no direct access to this conception, because, usually, game environments are too large to be overseen by immediate perception, just like real environments. This means that the player has to build up his own conception of the game space (that is nevertheless based upon his perception and movement through this environment). Environmental psychology, behavioural geography, and cognitive studies have all attended to the question of how this process actually works.

The British cognitive scientists John O’Keefe and Lynn Nadel have shown why there is a crucial difference between spatial perception and spatial conception. With spatial perception there is a perceiving subject and a perceived object. But with spatial conception there is an environment that could not be perceived directly, but that has to be conceived. So there is also no perceiving subject and perceived object, but rather there is a conceived environment in which there is a participant.52In video games this situation is no different. The game space could not be perceived in its entirety, only parts of it, so the space has to be conceived by the player in order to successfully navigate it. The player is not the subject of the space as an object, but rather he is a participant in the game environment that surrounds him.

The spatial perception refers to the space that the player could perceive, so it is the space that is on-screen. Wolf considers in his article ‘Inventing space: Toward a taxonomy of on- and off-screen space in video games’53for the most part the on-screen space. The part of the space that is off-screen is not considered to be part of the spatial conception of the player, only to be out of the spatial perception of the player. According to the Dutch-Belgian art collective JoDi, there is no off-screen game space; there is only the on-screen space that is produced by what they call “perspective machines.” By continuously changing the perspective, the illusion of dynamic three-dimensional space is created.54 This point will be further elaborated in §3.2. Newman points to the fact that off-screen space could be perceived auditively or tactilely, albeit not visually, with the help of devices such as the ‘rumble function’ and surround sound: “The important consequence is that the game space is afforded a greater holism and the player is encouraged to remember that the gameworld persists outside and beyond the window of the screen.”55 Alexander Galloway agrees with the notion of the possible conception of off-screen space, as modern video game designers attend to “the construction of a complete space in advance that then is exhaustively explorable without montage” resulting in a “fully rendered, actionable space.”56 This is a realist perspective on

51_{Andy Merrifield, Henri Lefebvre. A critical introduction (New York and London 2006) 109.} 52_{O’Keefe and Nadel, The hippocampus, 74.}

53_{Wolf, ‘Inventing space’.}

54_{Francis Hunger, ‘Perspective engines: an interview with JODI’, in: Andy Clarke and Grethe Mitchell eds.,}

Videogames and art(Bristol and Chicago 2007) 156.

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the ontology of virtual space, which will be discussed in section §2.2. Although Galloway misses the nuances discussed in §2.2, that space is produced by the player as well, he is right to believe that there is an off-screen space that could possibly be conceived by the player. In order to navigate the space, this is a requirement.

There are several ways to conceive of a certain space. Michel de Certeau has distinguished between two ways in which people tend to describe their apartment from the top of their heads: the map and the tour. The tour describes the space from the ‘egocentric’ perspective, as if a narrator guides you through the apartment: first you have the hallway, then you turn left into the kitchen, and then you walk straight through to the bathroom, etc. The map is a description that does not imply a moving ‘egocentric’ perspective, but rather an ‘objective’ perspective: the hallway is in the middle of the apartment, with the kitchen to the southwest, and the bathroom to the northwest, and the bedroom is in the northeast corner, etc.57For video games this distinction is very useful, as the player also conceives of the game space either in terms of the map or of the tour. Jenkins and Fuller in Nintendo and New World travel writing (1995) have argued how a video game turns a ‘map’ into a ‘tour,’ as the designed space of the designer is appropriated by the player through his exploration and spatial practices.58The Dutch scholar Sybille Lammes has deployed the theory of De Certeau to the game of Civilization, and suggests that in modern games the concepts of map and tour have converged, and could not be readily separated anymore.59

The philosophical concepts of ‘maps’ and ‘tours’ bear very much similarity with the scientific concepts from cognitive psychology of ‘maps’ and ‘routes.’ The ‘map’ is a “unitary and absolute” representation of space, in which the relations between locations are represented, and the tour is an “egocentric and relative” representation of space, in which the relation between the subject and objects in space are represented. Most neural mechanisms work to produce the latter type of spatial conception, but at least one neural mechanism works to produce a mental unitary and absolute spatial conception.60 O’Keefe and Nadel have investigated how certain parts of our brain, especially the hippocampus, produce cognitive maps of our environment. These cognitive maps are the cognitive foundation of our ability to conceive of a space that could not be directly perceived. O’Keefe and Nadel discuss the spatial behaviour of animals like birds and rats, and of primitive peoples. It appeared from a famous experiment with rats in a maze that these creatures base their spatial behaviour on maps instead of on tours. A rat was placed in the beginning of the tunnel, while the snack was located at the other end of the tunnel, which bended off to the right. When a sunray-shaped maze was added to this tunnel, a straight route to the snack appeared. The rats took the new tunnel that led straight to the goal, instead of the tunnel that they previously used but that detoured to the goal. This means that the rats remembered the location of the goal in a cognitive map, instead of the route to that goal.61 Other experiments revealed that rats could also use cognitive routes to navigate through a space, but it also appeared that rats would rather go the same place from various directions, than that they would reach several places through the same route. This proved the dominance of cognitive maps over cognitive routes.62 The distinction between routes and maps is artistically illustrated by the Dutch artist Frank Dresme with his art work 360º. This work consisted of a number of three-dimensional maps of his hometown Amsterdam, the city in which he got lost repeatedly. So he drew a

57_{De Certeau, The practice of, 117-121.} 58_{Newman, Videogames, 108.}

59_{Sybille Lammes, ‘Playing the world: computer games, cartography, and spatial stories,’ Aether. The journal of}

media geography(summer 2008) 91.

60_{O’Keefe and Nadel, The hippocampus, 2.} 61_{Ibidem, 71.}

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series of maps that consist of the landmarks that he encountered on his routes through the city. But this kind of route-map could probably not be used outside of an artistic context. The disadvantages of routes are that they are relatively inflexible; the chain of the entire route would break down if one landmark would be missing or altered. Furthermore, the route has a distinct goal and intention for constructing it, while the map could be used for several purposes.63

The cognitive research of O’Keefe and Nadel is extremely relevant for the study of spatiality in games. For example, we could examine what kind of spatial structure is most efficient for the production of a cognitive map in the mind of the player (and play with this process; withhold information for example that the player has to fill in himself, or lead the player in the wrong direction, or structure the space in such a way that would most challenge the hippocampus of the player). Furthermore, the differences in spatial behaviour between men and women64 could be implemented in the spatial structures of video games, so that games could fit with several target groups better.

Also, the spatial behaviour and spatial reasoning seems to be different in different cultures and in different languages. In some languages the spatial orientation is conceived in an absolute way, while in other languages the spatial reasoning is conceived in a relative way. In languages like Dutch and Japanese, the spatial reasoning is relative, which means that the orientation is always relative to the speaker. An object is located next to the speaker, or behind the listener. In other languages, like Guugu Yimithirr (that the Aboriginals speak), in which the orientation is absolute, objects are described to be north of the speaker, for example, or southeast of the addressee.65 It has also been found that spatial orientation is different in Polynesian peoples, like the Pulawatans. The Pulawatans do not conceive of travelling as a moving traveller going through the static environment, but rather as a static traveller through which the environment moves.66 This is consistent with the concept of Dream Time of the Aboriginals, who also conceive of travelling in the same way. Finally, it would be interesting to investigate the spatial behaviour in video games by deaf people. Deaf people would miss a lot of auditive clues as to where opponents and objects are located, but on the other hand their spatial insight is usually stronger than hearing people, due to the spatial character of sign language, and their heightened attention to visual clues.

So this cognitive research would be interesting, because it would give more insight in the spatial abilities of the player, which could then be adjusted according to the effect that should be reached by the designer, and furthermore because games could better be adjusted to different target groups. But the third and most important reason why this research would be interesting is because different spatial structures would require different spatial conceptions. In the video game Wonder Boy in Monster Land (1988) for example, the fictional world is divided up into 9 different areas, which are not retraceable when completed. This makes it relatively harder to conceive of the space as a whole. This spatial structure is of the type of ‘fragmentary space with linear continuity,’ as discussed in §3.2. Indeed the game is quite linear; there is almost always only one direction to go, so there is not much need for either a cognitive map or a cognitive route. But the last level is a maze, so here the spatial abilities of the player are put to the test. The maze is built from pathways that lead to several T- or Y-junctions. Usually, only one of these directions of the junction is correct, and if the player chooses the wrong one, he is thrown back to the beginning. This maze does not allow the player to construct a coherent cognitive map, because the spatial structure is not internally

63_{O’Keefe and Nadel, The hippocampus, 87-89.}

64_{As discussed for example in Iris Young, On feminist body experience. “Throwing like a girl” and other essays}

(New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).

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consistent; passages that are located beyond the place where you started the movement, could lead you back to this exact same place. So in this space the player needs to construct a cognitive route; he has to remember landmarks in the maze, at which he has to make a right or left turn, or up or down. There is only one correct way through the maze, so by trial-and-error the player has to find this route and remember it. A map is not relevant here, because a conception of the relations between different places in the space is not needed (in fact, these relations are illogical, so a map would also be impossible to draw). In games with other spatial structures, like the ‘continuous space without cuts’ or ‘seamless spaces,’ as discussed in §3.5, the relations between places in the space are very relevant, and the player has to remember certain places in the game space to which he has to return at a given time. In this type of game, the conception of a cognitive map by the player should be encouraged. Of course, the designer could well play with spatial structures that require different spatial behaviour by the player.

In this thesis I am going to analyse the ‘textual’ side of this cognitive process. The player does not construct a cognitive map or a cognitive route out of nothing; he needs visual, auditive, and tactile cues from the game, as well as the opportunity to interact with and explore the environment through available actions. The visual clues will be discussed in this §2.2. The actions that the player has at his disposal will be discussed in §2.3. On the basis of these cues and these actions, the player is able to construct a cognitive map or a cognitive route.

§2.2: The ontology of video game space: ‘Liquid Architecture’

Om niet achter te blijven ga ik wandelen. Voorzichtig door de straten want de stad bedenkt zich

slechts een bocht op mij vooruit. Ik nader de leegte van de nog niet ontstane stad schoorvoetend.67 In order to not to stay behind I start walking. Carefully through the streets because the city thinks itself only one corner ahead of me. I approach the emptiness of the not yet existing city hesitantly.

We have discussed the importance of the analysis of conceptions of game space, instead of keeping the analysis limited to the analysis of the perception of game space, because game spaces are environments that could not be perceived immediately. But without perception, the conception of game space would also not be possible. The two sources of spatial conception are perceptual clues and possible actions. In this subsection I will discuss the perceptual clues that make up the environments of games, show of what kind of atoms the spaces are built up, and discuss their ontological status.

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exists before the player enters it, and keeps existing after playing. The realist perspective is represented by Galloway’s view, as discussed in section §2.1 about conceptions of off-screen space. The moderate constructionist perspective views game space as a space that is performed, by the player as well as by the computer. Before and after the actual play, the game space collapses back into one and zeros. This view is represented by Steven Poole, who argues that “If architecture is frozen music, then a videogame is liquid architecture.”68 _The

game space thus only exists when it is performed, like music. I will adhere in this thesis to the moderate constructivist perspective, hence the title of this subsection ‘Liquid Architecture.’ An example of the extreme constructivist view will be shown at the end of this chapter.

For the German philosopher Immanuel Kant space was one of the two primary categories of the mind (along with time). For Kant these mental categories exist before the sensory perception. This also means that the mental category of space always precedes the perception of space. So the space that we think we objectively perceive, is actually produced in our own minds. For the Danish game scholar Kampmann this is one of the reasons that led him to his constructionist view of spatial perception in computer graphics.69 The constructionist perspective on space could be traced back to Kant’s thinking, and to cognitive thinking as well. This is because space is produced in the first place in the mind. In video games, space is produced by an artificial mind: the computer, but also by the perceiving subject/player. The player enters a part of the space of the video game, and then the computer calculates how it should look on the screen. The player then uses these visual cues to produce the space in his own mind. The manner how this actually works in video games is poetically described by the above poem ‘De stad bedenkt zich’ by the Dutch poet Maria Barnas.

In this poem we could observe how the city ‘thinks’ itself at the moment that the subject of the poem enters it. It is the participating subject that creates the city and brings it into existence by travelling through it. So one could also argue that the subject is the creator of the city in this poem, and that it is actually about solipsism. But it is also the city that acts as the creator of itself. In the poem ‘Er staat een stad op’ (A city stands up), which is also the title of the poem collection, the participating and perceiving subject is in an elevator, and watches the city as she goes down. Here also the logic is turned around, and it is shown as if the city itself stands up, much like the spatial orientation of the Pulawatans and Aboriginals in §2.1. Here also the city acts on its own. Space in video games is also created only when you encounter it. The amount of space that is out of view, is also out of existence. It exists on that moment only in programming code, in ones and zeros. When the player goes around the corner, the computer ‘thinks’ the space in existence on the basis of how the programming code says it should look behind that corner.

This production of video game space is also well illustrated in visual arts, in the painting La tentative d’impossible from 1928 as seen in image 1. It is as if the painter, as a character in the painting itself, is producing the image in ‘real-time.’ But he is slightly late. We see him making it, so there is a ‘lag’ in the production of space. It should be ready exactly on the moment that we turn the corner, but now we see it being produced before our eyes.

68_{Steven Poole, Trigger happy. Videogames and the entertainment revolution (New York 2000) 226.}

69_{Bo Kampmann Walther, ‘Space in new media perception – with continual references to computer games and}

Navigating Virtual Worlds The role of spatial structures in the conception of cognitive maps and routes by video game players