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The following text is adapted from my paper, "A Taxonomy of Virtual Spaces" (Rowe, unpublished):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