Ludotopia: Spaces, Places, and Territories in Computer Games
Ludotopia: Spaces, Places, and Territories in Computer Games
Espen Aarseth and Stephan Gunzel (eds)
Transcript, 2019.
ISBN: 978-3837647303
Espen Aarseth and Stephan Günzel’s Ludotopia: Spaces, Places, and Territories in Computer Games is an edited collection which seeks to apply philosophical theories of space to the study of games, bringing together work begun at workshops held in Copenhagen, Denmark and Salford, UK in 2010 and 2011. Each contributor aims to bring an understanding to how spatiality affects play and players. This aim is naturally ambitious, the spatial has an effect on almost every aspect of games, however, Ludotopia excels in providing readers with thoughtfully focussed chapters which offer explorations of, among others: dwellings, player embodiment, borders, and maps. This success is in part due to the structure of the collection; being split into three differing sections which individually tackle spaces, places, and territories. This allows for a general theming to run through each section without feeling too prescriptive on what content is permitted into the overall volume, although, readers will find discussions on intersections between the philosophy of space and class, gender, race, and sexuality absent from the chapters. This omission, while substantial, is likely the result of a collection which is conceived from specific workshop rather than a wider distribution found in a call for papers, and as such highlights a possible path forward in the use of the spatial in the study of games rather than an indication of lack in this title.
The first section, ‘Spaces’, guides the reader through arguments which focus on a game’s space as a vessel for the embodiment of either the player or the more abstract notions of philosophy and narrative. Each contribution draws the reader to the conclusion that game spaces are malleable and multiple, able to accommodate the player’s existence in a number of ways as well as reflecting and containing the many theoretical positions on the spaces of the external world.
The positioning or transportation of players within a game, is explored in Stephan Schwingeler’s ‘Playing with sight: Construction of Perspective in Videogames’ and Teun Dubbelman’s ‘The Art of Being There: Artistic Practices of Presence in Narrative Media’, respectively. Both are examinations of how players are embodied either by the camera via the use of art history terminology in Schwingeler’s chapter or by the avatar/implied author through the understanding of narratology in Dubbelman’s piece. While questions of how space might present the more abstract nature of philosophy is found in Stephan Günzel’s ‘What do they represent? Computer Games as Spatial Concepts’ and Karla Theilhaber’s ‘From Background to Protagonist: Spatial Concepts in ‘Portal’ and ‘Echochrome’’ which both explore alternative ways of viewing spatial theory. Günzel uses game space as a tool in which to understand spatial concepts, while Theilhaber uses spatial concepts to understand the shifting identity of space from static setting to protagonist. Positioned at the end of the section is Sebastian Domsch’s ‘Space and Narrative in Computer Games’ which explores space as an organising principle for video game narratives as opposed to time, which is traditionally preferred by narratology.
‘Places’ brings together five chapters which are united in discussions of the effects of both external spaces and game spaces on each other. This could be the effect of and on the human, either on an individual level or societal one, or the force exerted by the ‘real’, historical or fictional counterparts of the video game adaptation. While the first section examined space as reflecting the external within itself, ‘places’ is concerned with the inherent relationship and links to the world outside games. This section includes ‘There’s No Place Like Home: Dwelling and Being at Home in Digital Games’ by Daniel Vella, an excellent essay that focuses on games which invite players to stay within a space rather than move through it and beyond. Vella uses spatial theorists from Gaston Bachelard to Yi-Fu Tuan to theorise the way dwelling is presented through gameplay and is subsequently experienced by players. The chapter highlights a common emphasis of games, to keep the player moving, which has been challenged within the industry in the case studies Vella presents Minecraft, and Animal Crossing, but has left a gap in academic study which prioritises theories of movement. Comfortably placed alongside explorations of dwelling is Souvik Mukherjee’s ‘Videogame Wastelands as (non-)Places and ‘Any-Space-Whatevers’ which uses Marc Augé and Gilles Deleuze to argue that the spaces in games such as Fallout 3 and S.T.A.L.K.E.R are metaphors for a player’s experience of game spaces. ‘The Game and ‘The Stack’: The Infrastructural Pleasures of Pokémon Go’ by Bjarke Liboriussen observes how AR games such as Pokemon Go are mapped onto existing spaces via Benjamin Bratton’s Stack model of urban space, viewing game space not as divorced from the world outside of the game, but as connected to both spaces in history and contemporary urban spaces. While ‘Ludoforming: Changing Actual, Historical or Fictional Topographies into Ludic Topologies’ by Espen Aarseth, is concerned with space as translated, what contractions or manipulations occur to present a representation which is still playable. The section is closed by Michael Nitsche’s ‘No End of Worlds’ which examines the movement of gameplay from the confined frame of the ‘digital’ into the external ‘real’ spaces of our everyday life through augmented reality systems and extensions of the game world.
The final section, ‘Territories’, is perhaps the most abstract and eclectic collection of chapters in the book, however, they all have an interest in either maps, methods for orientation, or borders that are either explicitly or implicitly stated within a game’s space. It is this interest which draws together the following chapters to culminate in a section which views the production of space whether that is the production of borders, levels, or maps as having a relationship with the lived experience of players.
The section begins with Mathias Fuchs ‘Itineraria Picta: Itineraria Scripta’ which details ways in which players are orientated within space. Fuchs looks at the difference between written, and pictorial constructions of maps and how they are combined in games to provide orientation to players, before introducing the bodily inclusion of avatar hands in first person games as a third method. ‘Distance and Fear: Defining the Play Space’ by Sebastian Möring uses Heidegger’s notion of fear in Being and Time (1927) to introduce a novel way of exploring the tension of play space as players juggle proximity to objects of fear which threaten their virtual life. The section continues with Niklas Schrape’s ‘The Rhetoric of Game Space: Lotman’s Spatial Semantics as a Method for Analysing Videogames’. Schrape utilises Yuri M. Lotman’s spatialised narrative theory which views the hero of a narrative as a ‘mobile character’ able to cross fictional borders to analyse Global Conflicts: Palestine (2007). ‘Morphology and Meaning in Castle Wolfenstein 3D’ by Paul Martin looks to architecture theorists Bill Hillier and Julienne Hanson to interrogate Castle Wolfenstein 3D’s design of level 6-3 which uses interconnecting swastikas as an Easter egg for players who either mentally map their movements or those who can access a different perspective. Martin argues that the relationship between a level and the player’s experience of that level can be theorised using the urban planning work of Hiller and Hanson. The final chapter of this section and the entire volume is ‘Combinatorial Explorations: A Brief History of Procedurally-Generated Space in Videogames’ by Mark J.P. Wolf. In this chapter Wolf details where procedurally generated space has been used in gaming’s past from Rogue (1980) to No Man’s Sky (2016). As the final contribution to the volume, Wolf provides reader with a glimpse into a technology which has spawned an entire game genre and provide territories to the player that continually expand or refresh themselves. It is fitting that the note the collection chooses to end on is that of exponential possibilities, which reflects what the lens of spatiality has provided and continues to provide to game studies theorists.
In review, each chapter efficiently and coherently applies spatial theory to games or external theories to game spaces. The result is an impressive display of the reach of the spatial lens for game studies. It presents the study of space as usefully fragmented and flexible, acting as an enticing view of the possible avenues for future academic work. Readers interested in game studies or spatial theory should find much of interest in the body of work shown throughout Ludotopia. Unfortunately, due to the nature of academic publishing, especially edited collections, there has been an extensive time gap between the Ludotopia workshops and the publication of this volume. Combined with the rapid pace at which the discipline of game studies and the game’s industry moves, there are moments in a handful of the chapters where the lack of engagement with recent scholarship and games have left a gap. It is to the credit of the contributors and the editors that this is only a handful of occasions. Thus, while the editors make the bold claim that the volume intends ‘to lay the groundwork’ for the philosophically-inflected study of space in computer games, in reality it is perhaps better seen as building on the foundations of earlier work (much of which has been undertaken by Ludotopia’s contributors).
It should also be mentioned that regrettably there is only one female contributor to the volume, Karla Theilhaber’s ‘From Background to Protagonist: Spatial Concepts in Portal and Echochrome.’ Whether this is due to the demographic which attended the Ludotopia workshops or decided purely by those who then chose to submit to the volume is unknown. However, to advertise the collection as ‘laying the groundwork’ and reveal the majority of the proposed writers as male threatens to continue cycles in academia of ignoring or side-lining the contributions of women. The excellent scholarship of academics which have engaged with space and spatial theory in games, such as Huaxin Wei, Alison Gazzard, and Clara Fernández-Vara is neither cited nor present in this work which claims to pioneer a new direction within the discipline. As a result, Ludotopia doesn’t reflect the full range of engagement between game studies and space, and as such should not be taken as a textbook on the subject but rather an example of the academic work available. The individual chapters are impressive for their range and application, and the collection is drawn together in a coherent and enlightening fashion, however, the framing for the volume highlights the gaps both in the span of time between initial workshop and publication, as well as the demographics of contributors.