The Videogame

Gregory More of RMIT University enthuses the possibilities architecture may play in shaping the spaces of the videogame and consider the potential of the videogame as a new media for spatial enquiry.

Author: Gregory More

With the term ‘digital architecture’ the digital signifies something undergoing translation: as if digital architecture is not architecture until it stops being digital. Digital architecture in this light can be considered a temporal condition, where digital media and processes are utilised by architects to translate design ideas into architecture. If one considers videogames however, there is no such translation into the real. Architectural experience in videogames is immediate and present, and although not a replacement for the requirements of the material world, the screen-based event of the videogame offers a new software paradigm for the architect. It is a novel mechanism for spatial experience and delivery: a future space for architects to design and operate in.

It is worth defining what I mean by the term videogame. In this article videogame refers to a three dimensional digital environment that allows a computer user to interact in a spatial manner. These characteristics are present in classic videogame titles like Rockstar Game’s Grand Theft Auto series, where city spaces are simulated, or Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft, where environments represent mythical spaces tied to the game play. Also, I expand the definition of videogame to include titles that are not strictly videogames, for example the virtual communities of Linden Lab’s Secondlife. Defining the videogame as a platform for spatial experience allows us as architects to consider the relationship between existing architectural models of spatial design: highlighting the potential that the emerging spaces of the videogame offer to the discipline of architecture.

The obvious potential for the videogame within architecture is its ability to represent architectural design. Similar to utilising animation and film techniques to show a yet built design through a walk-through or film sequence, the videogame naturally lends itself as an engaging alternative to these existing techniques. Since videogame technology is based on placing a viewer within a scene, especially games that use a first person view of space, this software can be readapted for architectural purposes with the simple omission of the game elements. In this context the videogame provides the designer, or user group, the ability to experience a design in real time. Game level editing is part of videogame culture, so a range of videogame titles come with editing software allowing users to modify exist levels and create their own content. There is obvious potential to integrate design and building information into the space of the videogame to allow the designer or the client to understand, alter and make decisions about a design project.

I am interested in how the videogame transforms the act of design and the cultural role of the videogame within design contexts. Videogames are about establishing place and locating an individual within a context. For example, in Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, the game play occurs in replicant city spaces of Los Angeles, San Francisco and Las Vegas. Videogames are digital and therefore virtual, and since virtualisation is globalisation, and globalisation equates to economisation, it follows that the videogame will advance architecture towards new economic paradigms of spatial delivery. Architecture becomes a commodity exported and imported between physical and digital economies. Unfortunately, due to the ease of importing design into digital contexts, where copying design is logically more efficient than generating new design, videogame spaces are typically populated by an architecture of allusion. However, if videogames are the new media of architecture, and architects begin to use these spaces for design production, then this trend will begin to reverse. In the introduction I promoted that digital architecture awaits translation. In comparison I would consider the videogame as a space in transition. Currently, videogames reflect known architectural models of representation. However, over time designers using the videogame will begin to generate new models of architectural experience and delivery. As an educator I am interested in how design curricular changes with regard to this emerging media and how through studio teaching one explores new modes of design delivery. As an architect and designer I’m currently developing projects that question the emerging relationship between videogames and architecture, and discuss a range of these projects and recent design teaching in the following section.

Concrete Falls

Concrete Falls - A Thousand Lines of Sight is an experimental project examining the relationship between architecture, landscape and the space of the videogame. It presents an architecture realised for videogame environments – utilising 3D real time games engine technology to provide the experience of being in and actively moving through space. This project considers an architecture that results from the activity of a videogame space. By tracing trajectories, sightlines and boundary defences it generates an architectural memorialisation of the popular, and aptly termed, First Person Shooter (FPS) videogame genre.

Within the FPS genre there are many game types. Concrete Falls - A Thousand Lines of Sight addresses ones that emphasise territory based conflict, where teams are required to navigate and dominate space to achieve the game objectives (Capture the Flag is one such game type). Spatial symmetry is a key characteristic of a generic landscape of this type. It offers modelling efficiently and, more importantly, ensures spatial equality for each team. In this project two self-similar walls stand symmetrically on either side of a border, and a connecting passage runs beneath the contested no-man’s land. Fragments of Berlin’s historical border are re-enacted as a site of enquiry – a place of the oppositional and defensive gaze.

A thousand view shafts are carved into a wall; each line of sight emanating from within and terminating in the surrounding landscape. An internal ramp flows up through the wall, folding circulation into an interior peppered by sightlines. The solidity of the wall is deconstructed by a multiplicity of sightlines and the resultant porous architecture has a reciprocal relationship between viewing and framing space. Two types of model are established in the creation of the lines of sight – The Persecutor and The Scatterer. The Persecutor is a wall of a thousand eyes staring at a single target in the territory below. These apertures are cross haired in shape. In contrast The Scatterer spreads its interest across the landscape through a series of rectilinear holes, creating a relationship of one-to-many, in a generic, random and arbitrary manner compared to the many-to-one relationship of The Persecutor. Using a fuzzy-logic approach these archetypes dissolve and the resultant form is a fusion of the Persecutor and the Scatterer, in endless variation relative to the state of play.

The architecture has been developed parametrically allowing the serially deforming ramp to be reconfigured in shape and character. From this the lines of sight are distributed on three trajectories that travel up the ramp replicating the FPS positions of crouching, standing and jumping. A solid-void model makes salient the effect of carving out the lines of sight and is archaeologically reminiscent of a fortress or bunker. In its static form, as if arrested by Medusa’s gaze, the resultant architecture provides a memorial to the interaction of the game-space.

Meta Island Beta

With the Meta Island Beta project I examine a relationship between physical space and digital space, specifically connecting a gallery space to a transforming videogame environment. Meta Island Beta presents an island as a space prior to identity: based on Wu Cheng’en’s 1590s tale Journey to the West (commonly known as Monkey). Islands, in the digital and synthetic environments of videogames, are geographies without geology, ultimately located in the flatness of an infinite ocean, where the meta-concepts of gameplay and virtual inhabitation inform the silhouette, undulation and edge of the landform.

Meta Island Beta presents a hybrid installation where an abstracted physical landscape is connected in real-time to a digital environment. A landscape sculpture with embedded electronics senses the light levels of the gallery space and drives a real-time environment that presents an island sitting on the horizon of a virtual ocean. This island is constantly reconfiguring and reforming itself in response to the light levels of the gallery. Every five minutes a new island is created through a series of formative processes. Firstly, initial formation -- the island is given a mathematical distribution (Gaussian) with a series of peaks informed by the information transmitted from the light sensors. Secondly, erosion -- the island form is eroded utilising an algorithm to simulate hydraulic and atmospheric erosion. Finally, vegetation -- the erosion process redistributes simulated soil deposits, and where soil is of sufficient depth and above the water line, peach trees (Monkey King gained immortality from the Peaches of Heaven) are planted onto the surface of the island. During a day around 288 islands are generated by the installation, each unique and derived from a combination of physical and digital processes.

Teaching Design in Secondlife
In combination with research projects that examine the architectural role of videogames I also direct digital design studios at RMIT University’s School of Architecture + Design, Melbourne, Australia. The most recent studio utilised Linden Labs SecondLife as design context for interior design and architecture students. SecondLife became the studio platform for the semester, and offered a virtual environment in which students could design and collaborate. Participants developed two projects for the studio, one exploring a space of refuge, and the second, considered the future of the library – a hybrid performance and collection space. These can be experienced first hand by visiting RMIT Island in SecondLife.

The SecondLife software has a series of tools for designers to create objects and spaces. Although limited when compared to typical architectural software, the toolset is easy to utilise, and complexity can still be achieved if required in the modelling. Within Secondlife one purchases island space that has ongoing rental payments. Participants once given access to this land can create their own items called primitives (prims). Through a combination of prims designers can achieve complicated compositions of elements and materials, and with scripting enable interaction and temporal events. Secondlife offers a precursor of future technologies where architects can apply their skills within a new digital collective, allowing for persistent and engaging spaces of digital experience.

Contemporary videogame spaces are of inherent interest to the discipline of architecture in their attempts to recreate and simulate real-world environments. The videogame will not replace physical architectural projects, however it will add another level in the architectural understanding of space and spatial behaviour. Designers will need to learn from the videogame to develop sensibilities akin to the medium. Architecture shall play an important role in shaping the spaces of the videogame, and to avoid being lost in translation, architects should consider the potential of the videogame as a new media for spatial enquiry.