King, et al.
Geoff King and Tanya Krzywinska, Brunel University, London
geoff.king@brunel.ac.uk
tanya.krzywinska@brunel.ac.uk
Gamescapes: Exploration and virtual presence in game worlds
One of the pleasures offered by many games lies in the active exploration of virtual worlds, a feature that ranges across a variety of game genres and visual styles. This may be linked closely to the pursuit of goals or missions structured into core gameplay, in order to advance the player through game levels. But it can also include a freedom to move more freely through a variety of on-screen landscapes, a pleasure that can be indulged for its own sake. This paper will examine a number of examples, seeking both to analyse strategies in game texts that offer potential for exploration and to consider the nature and basis of the pleasures that might result. The focus will range from the large scale - the way entire game worlds are structured and rendered navigable - to closer surface textural detail that seeks to create a sense of virtual embodiment, immediacy and presence in the gamescape.
The authors will argue that since the evolution into three-dimensional graphics the
exploration of on-screen space has become one of the distinctive qualities offered by games, from the topsy-turvey magical world of American McGee's Alice to the virtual realism of The Getaway. Exploration of a gamescape in real time might be combined with narrative dynamics, in some cases, or with the production of audio-visual spectacle, in the unfolding of new digitally animated vistas. But it is one of the respects in which games differ strongly from other screen-based media such as film and television, even if the worlds on offer sometimes gain resonances from their equivalents elsewhere.
Game texts to be analysed will include examples such as: Tomb Raider, Lord of the Rings, American McGee's Alice, Grand Theft Auto III, Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and The Getaway.
The authors are co-editors of ScreenPlay: Cinema/Videogames/Interfaces (Wallflower Press, 2002) and currently writing a book on videogames for I.B. Tauris & Co. They have also written a number of other books, including the co-authored Science Fiction Cinema: From Outerspace to Cyberspace (Wallflower, 2000) and separately authored books on subjects including, Hollywood cinema, film comedy and occult cinema.
Gamescapes: Exploration and virtual presence in game worlds
Geoff King and Tanya Krzywinska, Brunel University, London
Games offer a number of different pleasures, including in many cases the potential to explore and/or gain a sense of presence within the virtual world of the gamescape. Exploration may be linked closely to the pursuit of goals or missions structured into core gameplay activities, in order to advance the player through game levels. But it can also include scope to move more freely within and through a variety of on-screen landscapes, a pleasure that can be indulged for its own sake. More than simply a background setting, the world of the game is often as much a protagonist, or even antagonist, as its inhabitants. This paper, which forms part of a larger work-in-progress, is organized around analysis of two principal dimensions of the gamescape. We start by considering the degrees of freedom offered by different games, from the most restrictive to those which offer maximum potential for exploration. We then look at the degree to which games create for the player an impression of virtual presence within the gamescape, a mediated sense of spatial immersion within the on-screen world. Our focus ranges from the large scale - the way entire game worlds are structured and rendered navigable - to closer textural detail that seeks to fabricate an impression of virtual embodiment, immediacy and presence.
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