(Not) Game Genres, pt. 15: Graphical/Spatial Game Characteristics from Understanding Video Games

Taxonomy of Virtual Spaces

This is a continuation of my long-running series examining game spatiality systems that may be related to but are distinctly different from game genres.

This post covers the system of graphical/spatial game characteristics defining the geography and representation in a gamespace presented in the book Understanding Video Games.

Understanding Video Games, 4th edition (Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Smith, and Tosca, 2020)

The authors of this text are Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen (CEO of Serious Games Interactive and dibl), Jonas Heide Smith (head of digital communication at the Statens Museum for Kunst), and Susana Pajares Tosca (Associate Professor and co-founder of Game Studies journal). The book is intended as a textbook to introduce students to game studies and the concepts of of analyzing game history, game aesthetics, games as culture, games as narrative, and serious games.

Video Game Aesthetics

The chapter on video game aesthetics opens by exploring the concept of a gamespace, defined as "the entire space (or world, or universe) presented by a game." This is similar to my definition of a gameworld, although a game may contain numerous gameworlds which may have different visuo-spatial configurations (see my link for an example of different gameworlds in Contra).

A gamespace is defined in part by its physical laws (pg. 126) (what I've described as the underlying dynamics that determine the rules of action of a virtual environment), perspective (how the player perceives the gamespace), dimensions (2-D or 3-D), space type (what I call gameworld topology), off-screen space (can off-screen elements affect the on-screen player?), scroll (what I call frame mobility), and exploration (can player explore gamespace at their own pace?).

Graphical/Spatial Game Characteristics 

Basic Graphical/Spatial Game Characteristics (adapted from pg. 131)

According to the authors, aspects of gameworlds, except for physical laws, may be defined using the graphical/spatial game characteristics in the chart above. The following compares this system to my own Taxonomy of Virtual Spaces.

• Perspective (1st person/3rd person) - My work does not focus on a game's ocularization. This section does refer to "isometric perspective" and describes "top-down perspective" and "bird's-eye perspective" as the same thing (pg. 131). My own work uses Projection Angles and defines a top-down camera angle as about 60° and bird's-eye camera angle as 90° (keeping in line with the Game FAVR system). I find estimated camera angles are less ambiguous than terms like "top-down."
• Dimensions (two/three) - The authors account for 3-D gamespaces that are "faked" with 2-D methods. Examples include Wolfenstein 3D with its 3-D world populated by 2-D sprite enemies, Sim City 2000 creating a sense of depth with isometric projection, and Moon Patrol using parallax scrolling to create a sense of a deep and distant background behind the gameplay. My system differentiates continuous spatial systems (of two or three dimensions) and discrete spaces of nodal networks (like a game of chess).
• Space Type (torus/abstract/free) - This aligns with what I call gameworld topology. The authors use Torus to describe both topologies that I define as toroidal and cylindrical (games with wraparound screens). It is unclear what is meant by Abstract and Free in the chart above, as these terms do not seem to be extrapolated on in the book's text. In fact, it describes torus space as "abstract" (pg. 136). The text does describe different types of multiscreen games (going beyond early single-screen games like Pong), mirroring my characteristics of Frame Mobility that define the Framing Device. Unconnected Levels include games where new game screens are not necessarily connected to the previous screen, like Bomb Jack and Pac-Man. I define these as Fixed Frame or single-screen games. I argue that games like Donkey Kong imply that the game levels are connected as a single building that Mario must climb (Donkey Kong is seen climbing out of the screen to the next level). Zone-Based Multiscreen Spaces fall under what I call Discrete (or Page Flip) Frame Mobility. This includes games like Atari's Adventure. Seamless Multiscreen Spaces fall under what I call Smooth Scroll Frame Mobility.
• Off-Screen Space (Dynamic/Static/None) - None would include single-screen games with no off-screen space. Static means that off-screen space is "passive" and cannot affect the player. Dynamic means that off-screen space is "active" and can affect the player, such as in a strategy game with fog of war.
• Scroll (Vertical/Horizontal/Free/None) - The text claims that "horizontal scroll was common in many arcade games of the 1970s and 1980s" (pg. 139). I'd argue that horizontal scrolling was extremely rare in the 1970s, with few examples like Sega's Bomber (1977). The text does not offer any examples games that date from the 1970s. The characteristics for this category are similar to my terms defining Frame Mobility Direction of the Framing Device. Vertical and Horizontal match my characteristics of the same names. Free is what I call Any Direction. None matches what I call Fixed Frame.
• Exploration (Forced/Free/None) - This is a concept I don't specifically explore in my taxonomy. My concept of auto-scroll frame mobility is an example of Forced Exploration, but so is any game level with a time limit.

Conclusion

I should add this system to my post about Comparing Visuospatial Configurations and Terminologies. The system expressed here covers much of the same ground as the Evolution of Spatial Configurations in Video Games by Clara Fernández-Vara, José Pablo Zagal, and Michael Mateas (the same system that I analyzed earlier in this series). The authors of this book chose terminology that is generally more common than the terms used in the earlier Evolution of Spatial Configurations system (gamespace instead of gameworld, dimensions instead of spatial representation, scroll instead of spatial configuration). The book cites other works by Fernández-Vara in the bibliography, but not this paper.

I am surprised by the aforementioned errors found in the book (horizontal scrolling common in the 1970s, no explanation of abstract and free space types), especially since I have the 4th edition of this book. However, my biggest issue with this system is that it cannot easily account for the inherently hybrid nature of digital games. There is mention of "faked" 3-D gamespaces inhabited by 2-D characters, but no accounting for a gamespace that features multiple different types of visuo-spatial configurations in one game (like my example from Contra). I don't know what they'd do with a game like Wario Ware.

(Not) Game Genres, pt. 12: Comparing Visuospatial Configurations and Terminology

Taxonomy of Virtual Spaces

Over the past several posts in my (Not) Game Genres series, I've reviewed numerous systems for analyzing video game space in comparison to my Taxonomy of Virtual Spaces system. This post serves as an overview of the Taxonomy and a summary of the previous posts together in one place.

Each chart below presents the 

Mark J. P. Wolf's Elementary Spatial Structures of Video Games first published in "Inventing Space: Toward a Taxonomy of On- and Off-Screen Space in Video Games" from Film Quarterly (Fall 1997, vol. 51, no. 1). [previous post part 1 and part 2]

Steven Poole's Construction of Space in Video Games from Trigger Happy: The Inner Life of Video Games (2000). [previous post]

Espen Aarseth and his team's Multi-Dimensional Typology of Games from "A Multi-Dimensional Typology of Games" (in DiGRA '03 - Proceedings of the 2003 DiGRA International Conference: Level Up, 2003). [prevous post]

Clara Fernández-Vara and her team's Ontology of Spatial Configurations from "Evolution of Spatial Configurations In Videogames" (in DiGRA '05 - Proceedings of the 2005 DiGRA International Conference: Changing Views: Worlds in Play, 2005). [previous post]

Dominic Arsenault and his team's Game FAVR from "Game FAVR: A Framework for the Analysis of Visual Representation in Video Games" (in Loading… Journal of the Canadian Game Studies Association, vol. 9, no. 14, 2015). [no individual post, but discussed here and here]

The Game FAVR system is designed to analyze game visuals, and explicitly does not concern itself with game spatiality. Even so, I've adapted the core structure of Game FAVR (especially with the Three Image Planes) as the basis of my own system to analyze the visuospatial configuration of a virtual environment.

Gameworld

The gameworld is the defining qualities of a game’s virtual environment, as defined here by its topology and spatiality. A game may, and often does, feature several gameworlds divided into separate “worlds,” “levels,” or “campaigns,” depending on the game’s terminology.

The Topology of a gameworld deals with how the game's world is mapped out and what happens when one reaches the edge of the world. There are several single-screen "wraparound" games, most notably Pac-Man (Cylindrical) and Asteroids (Toroidal). Additionally, some smoth-scrolling games use these types of topologies, including Defender (Cylindrical) and Bosconian (Toroidal). These topologies aren't just for 2-D games, either. Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro's horror game demo P.T. also features a Cylindrical topology where the player's path is on a loop. Other spatial systems lump these different topologies under the "wraparound" concept, though Poole does note that games like Asteroids are Toroidal.

As yet, the only game I've found that uses Cubic topology is E.T. for the Atari 2600.

To me, the spatial structure of the gameworld is expressed through the player's affordances in navigating that world, what Clara Fernández-Vara and her team call the "Cardinality of Gameworld." A game's visuals (what Clara Fernández-Vara would call "Spatial Representation") may appear three-dimensional, but a player's movement may only be restricted to a two-dimensional plane, or only a limited grid of discrete spaces.

The Continuous/Discrete Spatiality dichotomy is the only point where Aarseth's system intersects with my own.

This miscellaneous category expresses additional details about how the player understands the gameworld, such as the presence of a Mini-Map or Non-Euclidean Geometry. Gameworlds are also classified by presence and type of Gravity, though this quality has more affect on the player's ability to navigate in a game rather than giving a sense of spatiality. I will probably move this aspect into the player's affordances.

Wolf is the only other author to note that "mapped" spaces (mini-maps) are important to a player's sense of a game's space. A mini-map provides information about what is happening off-screen, allowing the player to think about an entire environment as a whole rather than just what is in front of their eyes. Wolf also makes mention of non-Euclidian geometry, without specifically using that term.

Framing Device

The frame, or the game screen, is the player’s window on the game world. This defines how the frame pans across or trucks through the environment and what directional controls the player has over the frame. 

The frame's mobility across the gameworld deals with what Clara Fernández-Vara and her team call the "Spatial Configuration." The directions the frame may move across the gameworld is what they call the "Cardinality of Gameplay." These are both different from the "Spatial Representation" (if the game looks like it has 2-D or 3-D objects) and "Cardinality of Gameworld" (the axes along which a player avatar may move through the gameworld). Personally, I find the terms Cardinality of Gameplay (defined as "how the player can move around the gameworld") and Cardinality of Gameworld (defined as "the way in which the player can navigate the space") unclear, as the terms "move" and "navigate" are not explicitly defined and differentiated.

Image Planes

Similar to the guidelines of the Game FAVR, each game image is divided into the conceptual planes of Agents, Environment, and Background/Foreground.

The agents are any interactive characters or objects in the game, including the player avatar and projectiles. The environment is the tangible space where agents navigate through and around. Background/foreground was chosen as more commonly understood terminology to replace Game FAVR's “off-game environment.”

Projection methods are formal, detailed qualities about how the objects in the image plane are “drawn” to the screen. This is close to what Clara Fernández-Vara and her team refer to as "Spatial Representation." The Game FAVR deals with formal qualities of game visuals and my system closely mirrors it. I adapted detailed, standardized terminology used in computer graphics from  "Planar Geometric Projections and Viewing Transformations" by Ingrid Carlbom and Joseph Paciorek (in Computing Surveys, vol. 10, no. 4, 1978).

The apparent projection angle is either Dynamic or fixed at a specific angle above the horizon line. Each fixed projection is measured or estimated for the frame and rounded to the nearest 15° increment between 0° (horizontal view) and 90° (overhead view) (see Figure 8). From the initial qualitative research performed, many games use , 90°, 35° (the standard dimetric (or "pixel isometric") projection angle), 15°, and 0°. The Game FAVR is the only other system that deals with projection angles.

Conclusion

Other systems analyzed here focus solely on the spatiality of digital games. The Game FAVR explicitly serves as a tool for analyzing the graphic presentation of digital games. My Topology of Virtual Spaces is designed as a tool for analyzing the visuospatial qualities of digital games and, unsurprisingly, uses many non-overlapping details of the above systems to achieve this goal.

(Not) Game Genres, pt. 11: Clara Fernández-Vara's Evolution of Spatial Configurations in Videogames

Evolution of Spatial Configurations In Videogames

The following text is adapted from my paper, "A Taxonomy of Virtual Spaces" (Rowe, unpublished):

Clara Fernández-Vara and her team at Georgia Tech (José Pablo Zagal and Michael Mateas) took issues with Mark J. P. Wolf’s Elementary Spatial Structures of Video Games ("Inventing Space: Toward a Taxonomy of On- and Off-Screen Space in Video Games," Film Quarterly, vol. 51, no. 1, 1997) (as described in part 6 and part 7 of this series of blog posts) when they developed their definitions of spatial properties of digital environments. They felt that, “his analysis lacks a historical perspective, and the strict comparison to film misses what the intrinsic properties of the digital medium bring to videogames” (Fernández-Vara, Zagal & Mateas, "Evolution of Spatial Configurations In Videogames," Paper presented at the DiGRA '05 - Proceedings of the 2005 DiGRA International Conference: Changing Views: Worlds in Play, 2005). The team worked on their own vocabulary for defining the spatial configurations of video games as part of the Game Ontology Project that had just started. The team focused only on defining how computers generate visual spaces procedurally, so they explicitly excluded any games that import spaces from other media (such as text adventure and full motion video games).

Their analysis focused on the relationship between the game space and the screen: “The screen is the basic unit of space in videogames, since it frames the interface” (Fernández-Vara et al., 2005). The screen is more than a window onto the digital world, it is also the yardstick by which the entire space (which they dub the “gameworld”) may be measured. A gameworld that extends beyond the limits of a single screen is segmented into screen-sized fragments.

The team also focuses on defining game features by their cardinalities: the spatial axes those features are restricted to. Gameplay is defined by the cardinality of player movement. Spatiality is defined by the cardinality of the gameworld. Separately from both cardinalities, the spatial representation may be in 2-D or 3-D. Finally, how the screen frame moves across the gameworld may be defined as single-screen (entire gameworld shown on one screen), discrete (entire screen refreshes to show a new location), or continuous (smooth-scrolling).

Ontology of Spatial Configurations in Videogames, as presented in "A Taxonomy of Virtual Spaces" (Rowe, unpublished). Note that the "(includes wraparound)" note for Continuous Spatial Configuration should instead by added to Discrete Spatial Configuration.

This Ontology of Spatial Configurations (my term, not the Georgia Tech team's) has been an influence in my own work, especially the concept that the screen is the "basic unit of space" in digital games (which I posted about previously). My own approach differs on several counts, as shown in the following comparison of the Ontology with my own Taxonomy of Virtual Spaces.

Spatial Representation

This refers to the whether the game's world is presented as either a 2-D or 3-D environment. This does not take into account how the player navigates through said environment, which falls under Cardinality of Gameworld. The Ontology includes isometric projections (referred to as "perspective" in the Ontology) in the 3-D category, as they present the appearance of three-dimensional forms.

My theory posits that a sense of spatiality is strongly related to both a player's affordances for navigation in a virtual space and the visuo-spatial configuration of that space. Together, these aspects define the spatial paradigm that may be used as a guide for the knowledge and techniques for creating games of a specific artistic style.

In my Taxonomy, the concept of Spatial Representation is taken up by the Projection Methods used for the various Image Planes that make up an image (the conceptual Agents, Environment, and Background/Foreground planes). This system is heavily based on the Game FAVR system developed by Dominic Arsenault and his team at the University of Montreal (Arsenault, Côté, & Larochelle, "Game FAVR: A Framework for the Analysis of Visual Representation in Video Games," Loading… Journal of the Canadian Game Studies Association, vol. 9, no. 14, 2015) and goes far into details beyond 2-D or 3-D Spatial Representation.

Cardinality of Gameworld

This refers to the dimensions along which the player avatar may navigate through a game's space. This may or may not match with the dimensions of Spatial Representation.

My Taxonomy mostly focuses on how a player avatar is able to navigate through a virtual space, For example, Zaxxon presents a 3-D Game Space that the player flies through, but Q*bert's pyramid of cubes is really a 2-D, Triangular Grid of Discrete Game Spaces, with the unusual background layer a character may jump into to meet their doom.

Cardinality of Gameworld in the Ontology matches closely with my categories of 2-D and 3-D Continuous Spatiality in my Taxonomy. The Taxonomy further accounts for layered 2-D spaces and node networks of discrete spaces (such as in chess and the afore-mentioned Q*bert).

Spatial Configuration

This aspect strictly with the screen as a framing device on the gameworld. The Georgia Tech team defines this as "the dichotomy between discrete and continuous spaces."

This dichotomy considers how the virtual space is contained within [the] frame, whether the gameworld is encompassed within a single screen, or extends beyond its limits. In the second case, the representation must be segmented, and the player will experience that space in a fragmented way.

This segmentation can be realized either in a discrete or a continuous way. Discrete segmentation occurs when the screen contains one fragment of the gameworld, which the player navigates; when she reaches the limits of that fragment, the screen refreshes to a different segment of that space... This segmentation may also affect the gameworld, e.g. the player character can move from one segment to another, but the enemies will not follow the character to the next segment (e.g. Prince of Persia, PC, 1989). On the other hand, the space is represented continuously when the screen is showing with a scroll... or moving the point of view of the player as she moves around. (Fernández-Vara et al., 2005)

This game screen is what my Taxonomy calls the Framing Device and the closest thing to Spatial Configuration is Frame Mobility, which is loosely influenced by this very Ontology and by the Game FAVR system developed by Dominic Arsenault and his team at the University of Montreal (Arsenault et al., 2015).

"Single-Screen" spatial configuration is Fixed Frame.

"Discrete" spatial configuration is Discrete Frame Mobility. This is sometimes referred to as "page flip" scrolling, like in Pitfall or Adventure on the Atari 2600.

"Discrete" spatial configuration also includes "wraparound" single screens (there is an error in the Ontology of Spatial Configurations chart I copied from my document, above). These are what I define as Cylindrical or Toroidal Topologies.

"Continuous" spatial configuration is Smooth Scroll Frame Mobility.

"Locked Scrolling" is Auto-Scroll Frame Mobility. This is what the Game FAVR system refers to as "Authoritarian Framing Mobility."

Note the major difference here between the Georgia Tech team's concepts of discrete and continuous spaces and my Taxonomy's concepts of discrete and continuous spatiality, which I adapted from Noah Wardrip-Fruin's How Pac-Man Eats (2020) and wrote about explicitly at the end of my previous post in this series. 

Cardinality of Gameplay

This section deals with the axes along which the player is able to move the frame across the gameworld. This specifically excludes single-screen games, as the frame in that case is fixed and the entirety of the gameworld is presented on the screen.

One-Dimensional Gameplay is where the player may move through the world along a single axis, such as in side-scrollers and vertical shooters. This is akin to how I define the 2-D Frame Mobility Direction by the axis along which the frame may move (Horizontal Axis Only, Vertical Axis Only, or Diagonal Axis Only (like Zaxxon) and how many directions the player may move along that axis (One Direction or Two Directions).

Two-Dimensional Gameplay allows for scrolling along both the X and Y axes. This is equal to my 2-D Frame Mobility Direction definitions of Horizontal and Vertical Axis or Any Direction. Additionally, I have a category of Horizontal or Vertical Axis to account for the peculiarities of some Nintendo NES/Famicom games (such as Metroid).

Three-Dimensional Gameplay is accounted for in my 3-D Frame Mobility Direction classifications of moving the camera by Yaw, Pitch, Roll, and Into the Z-Axis.

Conclusion

The Georgia Tech team's Ontology of Spatial Configuration was a strong influence on my own work, although their Ontology and my Taxonomy are notably different. By their own words, the Georgia Tech team set out to define "basic spatial configurations" using "a few basic features" (Fernández-Vara et al., 2005). Conversely, my system is intended as a formal system to inform production and detailed analyses of digital games as aesthetic objects.

(Not) Game Genres, pt. 10: Espen Aarseth's Multi-Dimensional Typology of Games

Espen Aarseth is an academic who has long been an evangelist for the importance of the concept of virtual spatiality to understanding digital games. I've posted about Aarseth previously in regards to digital games as texts. Aarseth is well-known in game studies for the concept of "ergodicity" in games.

Aarseth tackled the subject in question in "Allegories of Space: The Question of Spatiality in Computer Games" (in Cybertext Yearbook 2000, edited by M. Eskelinen and R. Koskimaa, Jyväskylä Finland: University of Jyväskylä, 2001). In it, he argues that, "the problem of spatial representation is of key importance to the genre’s aesthetics," and that spatiality is, "the defining element in computer games." He analyzed the evolution of digital games with regard to spatiality and concluded that computer games could be classified by how they implement spatial representation. At the end of the article, he lamented that he could not do the task himself, so "a thorough classification… would need much more detailed analysis than there is room for in this study."

A Multi-Dimensional Typology of Games

In 2003, Aarseth partnered with Solveig Marie Smedstad and Lise Sunnanå to write "A Multi-Dimensional Typology of Games" (in DiGRA '03 - Proceedings of the 2003 DiGRA International Conference: Level Up, Utrecht The Netherlands: University of Utrecht, 2003), presented at the first DiGRA conference. As quoted from the paper, this is an attempt to codify a model for classifying different "games in virtual environments." Aarseth et al classify games across 15 "dimensions" that are grouped under five different headings: Space, Time, Player-structure, Control, and Rules.

For my analysis, I focus on the heading of Space, which the paper describes as follows:

Space is a key meta-category of games. Almost all games utilize space and spatial representation in some way, and there are many possible spatial categories we could use, a typical one being the distinction between 2D and 3D games. However, this distinction seems to be mostly historical, since the early games were mostly 2D and the modern games are usually 3D. Also, it does not allow for a good representation of board games, which are two-dimensional in movement, but three-dimensional in representation. This problem holds for many computer games as well.

From this description, the Multi-Dimensional Typology specifically does not deal with the dimensionality of the space presented on the screen (2-D or 3-D). The paper derides the distinction as "mostly historical," with modern games tending to fall into the 3-D category. With the rise of indie games, nostalgic interest in older game styles and aesthetics, and the emergence of new game platforms (such as smartphones), 2-D games have remained in vogue in the years since this paper was published. 2-D spatiality is now a tool for game developers to use in order to best present their creation, rather than a concession to technological limitations.

Aarseth's &co's define three dimensions under the heading of Space: Perspective, Topography, and Environment. Each game may be classified by where it falls on each of these conceptual dimensional axes. 

Perspective: Omni-present, Vagrant

The perspective is considered omni-present if the player is free to view the entirety of the game space at will, like in many strategy games. Some of the game may be blocked by "fog of war," for example, but the player may still move around, typically as a disembodied camera.

The perspective is considered vagrant is the player's view is restricted to following a game avatar. These games may be classified by their visual perspectives as either 1st person or 3rd person.

Aarseth's "perspective" dimension deals with the ocularization of the game - who's eyes do we see the game through? Dominic Arsenault and his team at the University of Montreal include this concept of ocularization in their Game FAVR analysis system ("Game FAVR: A Framework for the Analysis of Visual Representation in Video Games," Arsenault, Côté, & Larochelle, 2015), based on the works of François Jost ("Narration(s): En deçà et au-delà," Communications, 38, p. 192-212, 1983) and Stam, Burgoyne, & Flitterman-Lewis (New Vocabularies in Film Semiotics: Structuralism, Post-Structuralism, and Beyond, London/New York: Routledge, 1992) in creating tools for studying storytelling in films. Arsenault et al modified the methods to account for digital game scenes like menu screens that do not appear in films.

My typology deals with the construction of virtual spaces and navigation through those spaces, not with ocularization.

Topography: Geometrical, Topological - 

A game with continuous freedom of movement is geometrical. The example of Quake Arena allows for player movements "in all directions, with millions of alternative positions, and the player's position in the game-world can be moved one miniscule increment at a time." This is what I call Continuous Spatiality in my own taxonomy.

A game with discrete, non-overlapping positions to move between is topological. The example given in chess, where only one piece may occupy any of the 64 discrete squares on the chessboard. This is what I call Discrete Spatiality that may be further categorized into Grid or Node Network. A chessboard is an example of a grid.

Environment: Dynamic, Static - 

A dynamic environment is one where the player can manipulate and modify it during gameplay (such as constructing bridges and digging in the dirt in the game Lemmings).

A static environment cannot be changed by the player. A player opening and closing doors in an environment merely changes the status of those doors, thus the environment would still be considered static. Similarly, environments where the player may build buildings (Warcraft or Age of Empires) without meaningfully changing the environment still count as static.

My typology deals with the construction of a spatial phenomenon experienced by the player, not the ability to change an environment. This dimension does not match anything in my system.

Figure 1 from "A Multi-Dimensional Typology of Games" showing titles organized along three dimensions of Perspective, Topography, and Environment

The other Multi-Dimensional Typology dimensions deal with other aspects of games, such as how time flows, number of players, adversaries, and the ability of the player to save their progress.

The dimensions under the Space heading and my Taxonomy of Virtual Dimensions do not have any overlap except for the concepts of Continuous and Discrete Spatiality. I describe the differences between the two as follows in my paper, A Taxonomy of Virtual Dimensions (Rowe, unpublished):

Two of the earliest contenders for the title of “first video game” are Christopher Strachey’s Draughts (1951) (Figure 4) and Willy Higinbotham’s Tennis for Two (1958). Each title is pioneering in its own right: Draughts is probably the first game a computer game program and the first computer game with graphics on a cathode ray tube while Tennis for Two is the first known two-player action game. Analyzing these two games for their presentation of spatiality would help us articulate what is important about these two works.

Draughts has what Noah Wardrip-Fruin would describe as Discrete Spatiality. The entire game space is “divided into non-overlapping spaces, and each game action involved moving a piece from one discrete space to another with no in-between position available or meaningful” (Wardrip-Fruin, How Pac-Man Eats, 2020). Each square on the checkerboard is a separate point in space. The checkers do not move between the points as there is no “space” to move through. Many strategy games work in this same manner today. Sprites may animate as if they are moving between spaces, but the game only treats them as being in one space or another, never overlapping multiple spaces.

Conversely, Tennis for Two is the first example of Continuous Spatiality in a digital game, which “requires that there be many potential positions in the virtual space (so many that moving between them creates a feeling of continuousness)” (Wardrip-Fruin, 2020). It is also worth noting that time in the game is discrete (time tracked by alternating game turns of any length) or continuous in each example.

Winter 2023 Research Review and Spring 2023 Plans

 Winter 2023 Review

• Studied statistical analysis and how to use such techniques in research
• Became proficient in statistical software SPSS
• Literature review on engagement and presence in digital games.
• Game feel: analysis and literature review on jumping in digital games.
• Game Genres: analyzed early game genre systems as counterpoint to my own research, may form a possible null hypothesis against my own theory 
• Atari
• Mattel Electronics
• "The Gamester" Paul Kordestani
• Game designer Chris Crawford
• Game scholar Mark J. P. Wolf
• Wrote a two-part analysis of Wolf's spatial structures of video games and compared my Taxonomy of Virtual Spaces to Wolf's system and similar systems by Clara Fernández-Vara and Dominic Arsenault.
• Added case data for (almost) all game titles mentioned in the game genre reviews (above) into my NVivo "Video Game Space and Motion" research database (ongoing work). Also coded all cases with genre data from above sources. Currently at 98 items.
• Added platform data as an attribute to game title entries in research database.

Preliminary cluster diagram of coding similarity, "Video Game Space and Motion" (Rowe, unpublished)

Spring 2023 Plans

My theory posits that a distinct way that humans experience digital games as aesthetic objects is through the embodied, "cyberkinaesthetic" experience of navigating virtual spaces.

The visuo-spatial configuration of a virtual space is the geometry of that space (defined by dimensionality, metrics, and extents), and the methods used to project that space onto the screen (or pair of screens, for binocular vision) of the game apparatus that serves as interface with the player.

A player has certain affordances within the game's field of action allowing them to take actions with other actors and navigate within virtual space. These affordances are moderated by the dynamics that determine the rules of interaction within the virtual space.

A game's spatial paradigm is defined by both the visuo-spatial configuration of its virtual space and the player's affordances for navigating that space.

I will be pushing my research toward defining specific spatial paradigms in my existing body of data.

• Fine-tune Taxonomy of Virtual Spaces based on analysis of what attributes should be included or removed in order to be informative for my research. Make edits to Taxonomy document to match.
• Complete existing qualitative analysis of game spaces for a broader selection of digital game titles using Taxonomy of Virtual Spaces.
• Analyze player navigation in the above games and develop system for codifying the results.
• Use statistical analysis to find patterns of similarity that signify Spatial Paradigms, Spatial Refinement, and Paradigm Shifts.

(Not) Game Genres, pt. 7: Wolf's Elementary Spatial Structures of Video Games (part two)

Continued from the previous post (these post titles are getting too long).

Wolf's spatial structures of video games, from "Inventing Space: Toward a Taxonomy of On- and Off-Screen Space in Video Games" (Film Quarterly (Fall 1997, vol. 51, no. 1) and republished in The Medium of the Video Game (2001)), was an inspiration for my own "A Taxonomy of Virtual Spaces" (Rowe, 2021, unpublished). Before I delve into the differences between my own taxonomy and Wolf's, I'll review Wolf's work through the eyes of two other scholars who influenced my work: Clara Fernández-Vara and Dominic Arsenault:

Clara Fernández-Vara and her team at Georgia Tech took issues with Wolf’s methods, stating that, “his analysis lacks a historical perspective, and the strict comparison to film misses what the intrinsic properties of the digital medium bring to videogames” ("Evolution of Spatial Configurations in Videogames," Fernández-Vara, Zagal, & Mateas, 2005). The paper rightly ignores Wolf's structures 9 (split screen) and 11 (mini maps) as these are augmentations to spatial representation, not a specific structure of playable game space. They also exclude structure 1 (text description) and full-motion recorded video as the team was not interested in games that "import spaces from other media" (2005).

The Georgia Tech team's paper declares that "the screen is the basic unit of space in videogames, since it frames the interface" (2005). I've adapted this into my own research as it provides a measuring stick usable in so many games, especially 2-D games. However, I can't agree with excluding games with text descriptions of spaces and full motion video from my research. I am working toward a method of understanding the aesthetics of games that can also be applied to other forms of digital media. Excluding the entire swath of text adventure games (interactive fiction), full-motion video games, and countless other games with "imported spaces" from other media would leave a massive gap in the system's usability.

Dominic Arsenault and his team at the University of Montreal took issue with Wolf’s spatial structures, citing that, “Wolf’s focus on historic, early 2-D game spaces led to him creating fine details between different types of scrolling spaces, but little detail for later 3-D game spaces” ("Game FAVR: A Framework for the Analysis of Visual Representation in Video Games," Arsenault, Côté, & Larochelle, 2015).

The University of Montreal team notes that much of Wolf’s spatial structures are focused on “scrolling spaces,” or what they call the Framing Mechanism Mobility. This deals with the player’s ability or inability to access off-screen spaces (if there are any) within the digital game, which as I discussed in the previous post, was the focus of Wolf’s essay. This means that Wolf’s categorizations give mostly superficial definitions of the spatiality presented within the screen’s frame. Like Arsenault’s example, Wolf lumps all 3-D spaces into the same category, no matter what method is used to project a 3-D space onto the screen. In Wolf's defense, he does have a detailed section of "Ways of Representing Three-Dimensional Space" (2001, pp 70-75) that concludes the article. However, the section doesn't differentiate between, say, 1-point (Maze Wars), 2-point (Battlezone), and 3-point (Quake) perspectival methods or pre-recorded film and video clips (Dragon's Lair, Myst) or the different ways they may affect the player's sense of space.

The four image planes of the Game FAVR system (2015)

The Game FAVR system developed by Arsenault’s team is specifically designed to define graphics, not spatiality. It uses a multidimensional approach to define by categories of ocularization (through what “eyes” the game world is presented), frame mechanism (how the frame moves across the game space), and plane analysis (how the agents, in-game environment, off-game environment, and intangible interface are projected to the screen). I took a similar multidimensional approach in the structure of my own taxonomy of virtual spaces, focusing on spatial construction as conveyed through graphics. A sense of space is mostly conveyed through graphics, so much of the methodology (like plane analysis) works equally well for my purposes.

As example, here is a direct comparison between my taxonomy and Wolf's classification:

1. No visual space; all text-based - I classify this spatial structure's image planes (to borrow a concept from the Game FAVR) of agents, environment, and background/foreground elements are all "rendered" in text description (something that neither the Georgia Tech nor the University of Montreal systems account for, by their designs).
2. One screen, contained - This is a fixed framing device with no mobility (in other words, the game "camera" doesn't move).
3. One screen, contained, with wraparound - Wraparound screens imply one of two types of topology, either cylindrical (wraparound two edges of the screen, like Pac-Man) or toroidal (wraparound all four edges of the screen, like Asteroids). Rarely, there are other topologies (like the cubic topology of E.T.).
4. Scrolling on one axis - This is a framing device with smooth scrolling 2-D mobility in one direction along either the vertical axis (Xevious), the horizontal axis (Super Mario Bros.), or a diagonal axis (Zaxxon). Xevious and Zaxxon are examples of auto-scrolling framing devices (what Game FAVR calls authoritarian).
5. Scrolling on two axes - This is a framing device with smooth scrolling 2-D mobility in any direction (Gauntlet). I have other specifications for games like Metroid where, due to technical restrictions of the Famicom/NES hardware, the game space may be vertical scrolling or horizontal scrolling, but not both at the same time.
6. Adjacent spaces displayed one at a time - This is a framing device with discrete 2-D mobility (sometimes called "page flip"). Some have single axis mobility (Pitfall!), others have two axis mobility (Atari's Adventure).
7. Layers of independently moving planes (multiple scrolling backgrounds) - Wolf describes two different cases here. The first is a background layer or layers (often in orthogonal projection) scrolling at a different rate than the player avatar in parallax motion to create an illusion of depth (he wrongly gives examples of Zaxxon and Super Mario Bros. - neither of which use parallax motion. Moon Patrol and Sonic the Hedgehog would be good examples). The second case is and example of a layered space, where there are multiple 2-D planes of gameplay that the player avatar may move between. Either there is a jump layer above the typical gameplay plane (Bump n' Jump, Pac-Mania) or the avatar may move into a background layer (Super Mario Bros. 3, Warioland).
8. Spaces allowing z-axis movement into and out of the frame - Wolf gives examples like Tempest and Night Driver. I call this a framing device with 3-D mobility in the Z-axis only.
9. Multiple, nonadjacent spaces displayed on-screen simultaneously - This is just split-screen multiplayer (Spy vs. Spy, Super Mario Kart, Final Lap). Multiple frames on a single screen do not make a new spatial structure, in my thinking.
10. Interactive three-dimensional environment - This is a catch-all category that I discussed above.
11. Represented or “mapped” spaces - For the most part, Wolf refers to a mini-map, which I note as a spatial modifier in my taxonomy (Rally-X, Bosconian). It can enhance the player's understanding of the game world in its entirety, but isn't really a navigable, playable space unto itself. The map usually appears at the edge of the screen (Defender) or replaces the gameplay frame (Spy vs. Spy) or the map is diegetically displayed in the game world (Myst). In some cases, the game is still playable with the overlay (Doom), but that is not the intended way to play.

Wolf also includes "god's eye" map games like SimCity and Caesar II in this category. I consider these to be games with an environment image plane that may have use plan orthographic (SimCity (1989)), dimetric (SimCity 2000 (1994)), or trimetric projection (SimCity 4 (2003)), or three-point perspective (SimCity (2013)), or numerous other projection options.

Video game imagery is hybrid in nature. Images are montages constructed from various visual elements, overlaid upon one another, transforming and animating, and often projected to the screen in different techniques for reasons of clarity, technical limitation, or stylistic choice. Such a complex and varied visual form for displaying space cannot be described with only eleven categories. It requires a multidimensional approach that accounts for the various conceptual planes (to borrow from Game FAVR) of an image in order to document, classify, and create a framework for studying its expression of a virtual space.

(Not) Game Genres, pt. 6: Wolf's Elementary Spatial Structures of Video Games (part one)

In my last post, I analyzed a system of video game genres developed by game scholar Mark J. P. Wolf and published in his book, The Medium of the Video Game (2001). This time, I am switching to the topic of spatiality, a chapter subject that Wolf included in The Medium of the Video Game, but was previously published as the article "Inventing Space: Toward a Taxonomy of On- and Off-Screen Space in Video Games" published years earlier in Film Quarterly (Fall 1997, vol. 51, no. 1).

Film Quarterly (Fall 1997, vol. 51, no. 1)

This means that 25+ years ago, Wolf devised a taxonomy of digital game spatiality, much the same as my current research. I previously analyzed Wolf's taxonomy in my own unpublished essay, "A Taxonomy of Virtual Spaces" (Rowe, 2021). Our works don't completely agree, but certainly applaud his early stabs in the dark at defining something so nebulous and undefined as game spaces.

He based his analysis of the spatial structures of digital games on his background of film and television theory, but made a prescient call that "video games are certainly deserving of their own branch of theory" (Wolf, 1997). Within a few years of that quote, game studies (or ludology) started to be recognized as an academic study and the first journals dedicated to the subject started to be published.

Wolf felt that video game theory would likely be "in close kinship to film and television theory" (1997), and much of early game studies reflects this notion. When he first published the essay, many game developers sought to converge digital games with cinema. 1997 was in the midst of the "Silliwood" (Silicon Valley/Hollywood) era when studios invested heavily in making "interactive movies" using full motion video (FMV) of live action actors mixed with digital elements. The fad boomed with the proliferation of CD-ROM drives, but most FMV games simply weren't very good. It isn't easy to create a dynamic and interactive world from pre-recorded film clips and many of these games were sold more for spectacle and star appeal than for substance. [As a personal aside, I got my start in the industry in 1996 as a tester for Voyeur II by Interweave Entertainment and later worked for DreamWorks Interactive, publisher of games like Steven Spielberg's Director's Chair. So, my game design career is a product of this Silliwood era.]

Inside Adventure's Blue Labyrinth and Black Castle image from "Space in the Video Game" (The Medium of the Video Game, Wolf, 2001)

As Wolf's essay title alludes, he was interested in how games create a sense of space, both on and off the screen, to create a sense of a cohesive world. He notes how, in games, these connections between spaces may create impossible, non-Euclidean worlds that cannot exactly be mapped on a rectangular topology (such as the example of Atari's Adventure, shown in the image above from Wolf's revised 2001 version of the essay, where screens have impossible connections to one another and an entire multi-screen labyrinth is "inside" of a smaller castle object). He likens these spaces to similar "impossible" spaces in film and television, the the TARDIS from Doctor Who. 

Wolf's 11 Elementary Spatial Structures of Video Games

1. No visual space; all text-based
2. One screen, contained
3. One screen, contained, with wraparound
4. Scrolling on one axis
5. Scrolling on two axes
6. Adjacent spaces displayed one at a time
7. Layers of independently moving planes (multiple scrolling backgrounds)
8. Spaces allowing z-axis movement into and out of the frame
9. Multiple, nonadjacent spaces displayed on-screen simultaneously
10. Interactive three-dimensional environment
11. Represented or “mapped” spaces

I'll go into more details on Wolf's spatial structures and compare them to my own spatial topology in the next post.