Virtual Worlds

Challenging the Paradigm of Spaces|

Virtual Worlds: Challenging the Paradigm of Spaces

> Press Start to Play

> Select Player

> The Chat Room

> The Sandbox

> The Open World

> Game Over. Try Again?

> End Credits

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Virtual Worlds: Challenging the Paradigm of Spaces

> Press Start to Play > > > >

It’s 7:00 p.m. All my work is done for the day.

I can’t really go outside.

Maybe I’ll play this game for a while to take my mind off of things.

Three hours later…

With the sudden lack of being able to experience the world outside dwelling spaces, the COVID-19 pandemic became the catalyst that redefined what place-making meant in an increasingly digitalized world. People have been driven to form an almost inseparable connection with virtual spaces as human connectivity, work, and entertainment were forced to go online. From virtual museum tours to flight simulators, people across the globe were searching for a way to escape to other realities in an attempt to satisfy their social and psycho-emotional needs. Personally, I turned to a long-neglected pastime from my childhood: video games. During the first lockdown, I lived alone in a matchbox apartment at the heart of London yet I was still able to explore infinite worlds and timelines from within the four walls of my flat. It was a form of escapism that helped me feel engaged in a rather static environment.

Virtual worlds are now challenging the paradigm of spaces. In the physical world, built environments are designed for specific interactions to take place, making exchanges possible between the user and the space that has been provided. Tactile and or abstract characteristics found in architectural landscapes such as composition, scale, and materiality join to form a spatial narrative that connects with the user. Inherently, the mechanisms of interacting with these physical environments involve sensory experiences that allow us to navigate a space through discovery and decision-making. Therefore, it can be argued that spatial narratives created in virtual worlds seek to elicit deep connections of mental engagement through sensory experiences not dissimilar from architectural spaces found in the physical world.

Note that I will be using the word “physical” to describe the built world rather than using the word “real.”

For clarity, virtual worlds exist within video games: the game is the platform for which the player accesses these worlds. Video games are an increasingly fluid medium that provides a spatial blank canvas unrestricted by real world parameters. This allows for endless possibilities with manipulating the rules of physical spaces and timelines, as well as creating third person perspectives that are not necessarily experienced by anthropogenic scales. The fluidity of this medium creates a rhetoric of freedom where the player is not constrained by existing identities and social roles; thus, the implications of the intersection between spatial narratives and player engagement must be explored. If the user of the virtual space has real sensory experiences and heuristic interactions that are comparable to what can be experienced in the physical world, to what extent can architectural spaces be defined as purely physical?

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Virtual Worlds: Challenging the Paradigm of Spaces

> Select Character > Warrior. Healer. Mage. Rogue. > I pick a different one each time I play.

The exponential growth of communicational technology during the Information Age in the mid-20th century has broadened the capabilities of remote human connection. We no longer need to be within someone’s proximity in order to feel present with them. Textual language facilitated by newspapers and written letters evolved to oral communication via telephones.

Oral then combined with gestural in the form of video conferences. Finally, graphic is combined with oral, gestural, and textual modes of communication in order to form video games. By combining all of these elements, multiplayer role playing games and social games have the highest sense of presence.1 This is because the digital virtual body- also known as the avatar- exists in the first or third person perspective with which the player can reflect their identity upon.

One must consider how the psychology of virtual presence in terms of individual identity and emotion differs from experiences in the physical world. Damasio’s The Feeling of What Happens describes a tri-layered theory of consciousness that involves the Protoself, Core Consciousness, and Extended Consciousness.2 Virtual worlds still provide this stimuli even with the lack of full sensory experiences that physical architectural spaces usually provide.

Visual and auditory cues can become engaging enough to allow the perception of all three layers of consciousness simultaneously, just as it naturally would in the physical world.

However, when the player is in a state of full immersion it could mean a dissection of these layers of consciousness since the player has transmuted their sense of being on to the character on the screen. An artistic composition of visual and auditory stimuli combined with a convincing narrative can allow the player to truly feel a spike in adrenaline as they are being chased by an enemy or falling from a ridiculous height.

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Being the initial form of consciousness, the Protoself is an embodied self capable of emotions. The player’s sense of being is transferred to the character.

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At Core Consciousness, external stimuli causes complex reactions within the being, thus a relationship between the self and the present external world is formed. The virtual world must be convincing enough with its auditory and visual stimuli.

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Finally, the Extended Consciousness is when the being is able to perceive that their emotions are reacting to external stimuli. The character and the player is intertwined in a continuous interaction between that being and the virtual world.

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Virtual Worlds: Challenging the Paradigm of Spaces

The existence of the player cannot be isolated from the interactions of the player with the virtual space. At its core, video games are a succession of inputs and outputs that translate to interactions and consequences. In the physical world, heuristics facilitate problem solving, decision-making, and discovery via mental shortcuts that tell us what action will produce the wanted result most efficiently.3 This aids with navigating a space as visual cues such as light, materiality, and building composition can act as signposts that will help you recognize if you are getting lost for instance. Finding your way around an unfamiliar place, deciding which path is the safest, and estimating distances between two places are all navigational actions we are familiar with, so when they are performed within the virtual world they can still feel familiar even if temporal and spatial contexts are obviously fictional. Of course, the difference is these complex actions are diminished onto a few command buttons on a controller. The more acclimatized the player becomes with the controls, the more heuristic navigation skills are developed comparable to the level of reflexes, thus facilitating player immersion on a sub conscious level.

As a result of the familiarity of these sensory experiences and navigational heuristics, the identity of the player is equally real in both the physical and the digital world. There exists an intrinsic human need to explore and question unfamiliarity, hence virtual worlds can become a new pedagogical medium that provides us with new ways of interpreting the physical world around us. Consequently, this creates potential for the player to use the digital virtual body to experience perspectives different to that of an anthropogenic one. To explore this further, the following sections discuss the varying degrees in which virtual worlds can achieve immersivity through its ability to enable player engagement and interactions with space.

Schlemmer, Eliane and Luciana Backes. Learning in Metaverses: Co-Existing in Real Virtuality. “Immersion, Telepresence, and Digital Virtual Presence in Metaverses.” IGI Global, 2015. Web. http://doi:10.4018/978-1-46666351-0 1

Damasio, Antonio R. The Feeling of What Happens: Body, Emotion and the Making of Consciousness. London: Vintage, 2000. Print.

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Hertwig, Ralph and Thorsten Pachur. Heuristics, History of. Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Center for Adaptive Rationality. Berlin, 2015. Web. https://pure.mpg.de/rest/items/item_2139307_11/component/ file_2404607/content 3

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Virtual Worlds: Challenging the Paradigm of Spaces

Figure 1 Habbo (Sulake, 2000) custom avatars in a chat room

Figure 2 Final Fantasy XIV (Square Enix, 2010) multiplayer battle quest

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Virtual Worlds: Challenging the Paradigm of Spaces

> The Chat Room > > > >

My friend lives in Australia.

“Hey, let’s go to our usual spot?”

We meet up on a spaceship.

I laugh because her robot arm is too short to shake my hand.

Social dimensions exist within video games due to the player’s ability to transmute their identity onto their digital virtual body to interact with other real people. This redefines the importance of digital worlds as a medium of creating social spaces particularly in the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic where people were limited to being physically present with others.

Massively Multiplayer Online Social Games (MMOSG) are able to satisfy this need through telepresence, where avatars can interact with others through text, speech, and gestures.

There exists a rhetoric of freedom where the constraints of the player’s existing social roles and identities do not exist, and social, political, and economic boundaries can be rewritten.

As a result, social games have become more immersive than bidirectional communication forms such as instant messaging and phone calling. In this instance, immersivity becomes defined by the intersection between shared spaces and social interactions.

On another scale, Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG) involve a pre-designed overarching narrative that creates a specific goal the players must collectively achieve.4 A unique gaming experience is developed for each player through their own individual decision-making processes, hence creating a sense of purpose and belonging to that virtual world in conjunction with other players and their experiences. The interactions between the player, the virtual community, and the virtual world creates an immersive environment through societal exchanges towards a common goal. With the development of network capability on video game consoles and personal computers, previously single player games have added the function of multiplayer via Wi-Fi connections, thus giving the possibility for games of all genres to include this social dimension.

Zagalo, Nelson and Leonel Morgado. Virtual Worlds and Metaverse Platforms: New Communication and Identity Paradigms. “Procedural Virtual Worlds - Which Types of Virtual Worlds Exist?” Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference, 2011. Web. https://www-igi-global-com.ezproxy1.bath.ac.uk/gateway/chapter/full-texthtml/55397 4

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Virtual Worlds: Challenging the Paradigm of Spaces

Figure 3 Minecraft (Mojang Studios, 2011)

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Virtual Worlds: Challenging the Paradigm of Spaces

> The Sandbox > I’m in a field that extends further than the eye can see. > There is a lake. Some trees. A rock or two. > I broke them down and made a castle for myself.

Essentially, sandbox games are almost the reverse of social games and role playing games: there is little to no narrative as the player is free to create and inhabit their own virtual worlds. These games simply provide native modelling tools and an infinite amount of space, giving players full agency in participatory design at all scales without the need for being a specialist in coding and digital model making. Additionally, physical forces, environmental considerations, and socio-economic contexts do not constrain the process of spatial design.

As a result, malleable spaces with unlimited possibilities are present at the hands of the player, thus having the potential to redefine the future of accessibility and inclusivity in designing spaces.

Since the player becomes the creator in the game, they can both design and access spaces that do not or cannot exist in the physical world. Minecraft has become the archetype of sandbox games where players have been able to create builds entirely from their imagination. This scope widened further when players started to create replicas of everything from famous fictional worlds to actual existing cities.5 Collaborative design environments are also encouraged; for instance, players have joined to form a community to create a 1:1 scale of Earth as a result of not being able to travel during the pandemic.6 The ability to construct these imaginative spaces have expanded the capabilities of video games to become a medium that encourages the exploration and reinterpretation of the world around us, especially when these spaces are not directly accessible to us in the physical world.

Hill, Simon. These Astonishing ‘Minecraft’ Builds Were Years in the Making. Wired, Conde Nast, 2021. Web. https://www.wired.com/story/best-minecraft-builds/.

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BuildTheEarth. 2022. Web. https://buildtheearth.net/

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Virtual Worlds: Challenging the Paradigm of Spaces

> The Open World > I don’t feel the weight of my limbs, yet I can carry this great sword with ease. > Is there no gravity? > If I jumped off this edge into the sea below, what would happen? > …I found out the hard way.

Fictional books, movies, and serialized shows are all linear forms of entertainment where there is a unilateral relationship between the author and the viewer. The viewer is open to interpret what the author has presented, but the viewer has no input to the development of the narrative. Compared to these more conventional forms of entertainment, open-world video games offer more immersive and personal experiences as the player can interfere with the plot while the spatial narrative drives their decision-making. Open-world games are those in which an overarching plot is designed but is not completed in linear progression. The player is free to explore the world, complete side plots, and interact with non-playable characters at their own pace, therefore creating a highly personal experience as the player decides the extent to which they interact with the world provided.

With that in mind, open-world games rely on three factors for immersivity: the story, the way the game is played, and the environment that it is set in. The story and gameplay are intrinsically intertwined as the player can revisit the world and experience different storyline paths formed by the various characters and quests that reside in each unique area.

The freedom to define the story timeline of open-world games make them “feel like a series of connected voyages that become a part of [the player’s] routine in such a way that it

Figure 4 The Witcher 3 (CD Projekt Red, 2015)

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Virtual Worlds: Challenging the Paradigm of Spaces

begins to blur into [their] life.”7 Spatial narratives directed by the built fabric, lighting, materiality, sound, and interactive elements will all affect how the user navigates through a space; however, excessive visual uniformity and repetitive experiences will interrupt the player’s sense of place. Developers have had to create convincing urban typologies that integrates key places of interest with the randomness of spaces in between to form a natural heterogeneity of activities.8 When playing The Witcher 3, it was noticeable that the urban fabric of large cities like Novigrad had a completely different atmosphere than the rural outposts scattered throughout the map as it reflected the realistic idiosyncrasies of medieval societies. Details such as historical city planning, differences in socio-economic class, and variations in environmental contexts can all be read from the design of the virtual world. This gives the virtual world authenticity while still being familiar enough for players to understand despite the game being set in a medievalist world plagued by mythical monsters. Darran Anderson explains this in his book Imaginary Cities, where he states that video games are more surreal rather than fiction as they experiment with stories from previous times and places, enabling the scope to create mythical pasts and speculative futures. Provided with the believability of coherent plot lines and spatial narratives, the players are able to form a well-founded sense of place that strengthens the belief of the surreal world rather than questioning its veracity.10 Since open-world video games rely on these reciprocal relationships between the story, gameplay, and environment, the immersivity felt by the player is a personal experience where unique perspectives and emotional connections can be made with a tangibility comparable to how we interact with spatial contexts in the physical world we live in.

Muncy, Julie. Open-World Games Are Changing the Way We Play Videogames-and That Might Be a Very Good Thing. Wired, Conde Nast, 2015. Web. https://www.wired.com/2015/12/open-world-games-2015/.

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Álvarez, Ricardo, and Fábio Duarte. Spatial Design and Placemaking: Learning From Video Games.

Space and Culture 21.3 (2018): 208-32. Web. https://journals-sagepub-com.ezproxy1.bath.ac.uk/doi/ full/10.1177/1206331217736746 8

Anderson, Darran. Imaginary Cities. “Remembering the Future: Plotting the Stars.” Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2017. EPub. 9

Murray, Janet H. Hamlet on the Holodeck : The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, 1998.

Print. P. 111 10

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Virtual Worlds: Challenging the Paradigm of Spaces

Figure 5 Open-world games featuring a multitude of timelines and spatial narratives NieR:Automata (PlatinumGames, 2017) features a machine-driven dystopian future Final Fantasy XV (Square Enix, 2016) plays with urban typologies on water Assassin’s Creed Origins (Ubisoft, 2017) is set in a historically accurate Egypt

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Virtual Worlds: Challenging the Paradigm of Spaces

> Game Over. Try Again? > The last thing I can remember was running away. > I can sense that parts of my memory have been destroyed… > What if I forget everything? My memories? My self? My...

Palpable experiences driven by extending consciousness onto the identity of the virtual digital body, navigating a space through heuristics, and forming connections with a plot that can be altered are all key elements of immersivity in video game worlds. Multiplayer social games provide a platform where social telepresence and its resulting interactions in shared spaces can occur. In the blank slate of sandbox games, the malleability of virtual worlds facilitates the creation of accessible and inclusive spaces. Finally, nonlinear exploration in open-world games form personalized experiences for the player as spatial narratives activate real sensory interactions. Overall, immersivity is the symbiotic relationship between the user and their interactions in the space, as well as the space and its interactions with the user.

Similar to how we form memories in the physical world, each experience is unique to the player as they decide the extent to which they interact with their surroundings.

Ultimately, the occurrence of this in a world that is digital poses the argument that virtual spaces can be considered as reality as opposed to an imitative simulation of what exists in the physical material world. As hyperreality and the multidimensional functions of virtual spaces further blends the boundary between physical and digital worlds, we can start to assess the qualities of reality that virtual worlds possess as the spaces and interactions between them are becoming progressively tangible. The implications for this are starting to be seen in applications of virtual environments beyond entertainment as the pandemic has challenged us to reinterpret the potentials of spatial functions in the context of virtual spaces.

The freedom of constraints in creating and accessing this medium is paving way for constant experimentation, while the omnipresence of technology is making virtual spaces increasingly accessible thus connecting us to an ever-growing network. The French sociologist Baudrillard states that “the simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth, it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true.”11 With the exponential growth in the diversity of virtual spaces, we can no longer pinpoint whether they take precedent from the physical world or vice versa. In conclusion, both virtual and physical worlds are realities in their own right, with virtual worlds being defined as a separate existence rather than an augmentative extension of the physical world. The act of inhabiting a space is no longer confined to boundaries created by material architectural elements in the physical world.

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Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Michigan: U of Michigan, 1994. Print. P. 166

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Virtual Worlds: Challenging the Paradigm of Spaces

> End Credits > Text

Anecdotes at the start of each chapter are based on the author’s own experiences Álvarez, Ricardo, and Fábio Duarte. Spatial Design and Placemaking: Learning From Video Games. Space and Culture 21.3 (2018): 208-32. Web. https://journals-sagepub-com.ezproxy1. bath.ac.uk/doi/full/10.1177/1206331217736746 Anderson, Darran. Imaginary Cities. “Remembering the Future: Plotting the Stars.”

Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2017. EPub. Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Michigan: U of Michigan, 1994. Print. P. 166 BuildTheEarth. 2022. Web. https://buildtheearth.net/ Damasio, Antonio R. The Feeling of What Happens: Body, Emotion and the Making of Consciousness. London: Vintage, 2000. Print.

Hertwig, Ralph and Thorsten Pachur. Heuristics, History of. Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Center for Adaptive Rationality. Berlin, 2015. Web. https://pure.mpg.de/rest/ items/item_2139307_11/component/file_2404607/content Hill, Simon. These Astonishing ‘Minecraft’ Builds Were Years in the Making. Wired, Conde Nast, 2021. Web. https://www.wired.com/story/best-minecraft-builds/.

Muncy, Julie. Open-World Games Are Changing the Way We Play Videogames-and That Might Be a Very Good Thing. Wired, Conde Nast, 2015. Web. https://www.wired.com/2015/12/openworld-games-2015/.

Murray, Janet H. Hamlet on the Holodeck : The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, 1998. Print. P. 111 Schlemmer, Eliane and Luciana Backes. Learning in Metaverses: Co-Existing in Real Virtuality. “Immersion, Telepresence, and Digital Virtual Presence in Metaverses.” IGI Global, 2015. Web. http://doi:10.4018/978-1-4666-6351-0 Zagalo, Nelson and Leonel Morgado. Virtual Worlds and Metaverse Platforms: New Communication and Identity Paradigms. “Procedural Virtual Worlds - Which Types of Virtual Worlds Exist?” Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference, 2011. Web. https:// www-igi-global-com.ezproxy1.bath.ac.uk/gateway/chapter/full-text-html/55397

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Virtual Worlds: Challenging the Paradigm of Spaces

> Images

Figure 0 Edit by Author. Final Fantasy XV (Square Enix, 2016) Web. https://www.iamag.co/ final-fantasy-xv-kingslaive-building-the-world/ Figure 1 Collage by Author. Habbo (Sulake, 2000) Web. https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/ have-you-played-habbo-hotel Figure 2 Collage by Author. Final Fantasy XIV (Square Enix, 2010) Web. https://alchetron. com/Final-Fantasy-XIV Figure 3 Collage by Author. Minecraft (Mojang Studios, 2011) Web. “I Built a Planet in Minecraft Hardcore“ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJToSyr4yvM Figure 4 Edit by Author. The Witcher 3 (CD Projekt Red, 2015) Official artwork from game download.

Figure 5 Collage by Author: NieR:Automata (PlatinumGames, 2017) Web. https://www.platinumgames.com/games/nierautomata?age-verified=f0a1407214 Final Fantasy XV (Square Enix, 2016) Official artwork from game download.

Assassin’s Creed Origins (Ubisoft, 2017) Web. https://www.creativebloq.com/features/behindthe-scenes-on-the-art-of-assassins-creed-origins

Body Text 2815 Words Candidate Number 11085

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