Spatial Communication in Videogame Environments: Exploring, Enacting, Perceiving

• Author / Creator

  Whistance-Smith, Gregory

• Videogame environments constitute a vast expansion of the built environment, offering new worlds to explore and new spaces for engaging in a range of activities. While often framed by their activities, these virtual spaces are also meaningful for how they communicate values and shape behaviour, much as physical ones do. Theories of embodied cognition argue that human cognitive processes are grounded in our body-based engagement with the world, and they provide a robust way into analyzing how spaces communicate to their inhabitants and interactors. Using analyses of nine videogames, this study argues that virtual environments communicate spatially through the design of their interactive affordances, and how these evoke cognitive schemas, metaphors, and frames through interactions within the space. The nine works span three types of virtual environments: spaces designed (1) as rich worlds to explore (e.g. gardens), (2) as settings for meaningful action (e.g. workplaces), and (3) as scaffolds for training new modes of perception (e.g. installation artworks). These categories address players’ differing forms of engagement with each type of space, and the comparative analyses between works (within and across categories) capture a range of spatial communication strategies by revealing important commonalities and differences between works. Together, the analyses reveal the semiotic strategies used to create meaningful virtual places, while also suggesting approaches to designing meaningful built environments of all sorts.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Built Environment
  • Videogames
  • Framing
  • Embodied Cognition
  • Affordances
  • Spatial Communication
  • Metaphor
  • Image Schemas

• Graduation date

  Fall 2019

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Arts

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-4taz-ss69

• License

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