Machines For Play Functionality Context

Machines for Play:
Functionality, Context, and

Performance in Video Game
Spaces
An Honours Dissertation
By Brad Power
School of Arts
Murdoch University
This dissertation is submitted in partial fulilment of the requirements for

the degree of Bachelor of Digital Media (Honours) at Murdoch University
2015
Declaration
I declare that this dissertation is my own account of my research and

comprises work that has not previously been submitted for a degree at
any tertiary institution.
Brad Power
15 May 2015
2
Abstract
Video game space design presents numerous challenges, not only in

creating game content which successfully conveys game concepts to
players, but also in promoting engaging play which results in a positive
player experience. In view of this challenge, I discuss an approach to
game space design comprised of three overlapping design concerns -
functionality, context, and performance, in order to provide a perspective
which encapsulates several conventional theories of player experience. In
the irst part of the thesis I characterise the interaction model for video
games as one in which game conveyance is served by functional,
contextual, and performance design and these in turn can be seen in
combination as components of design patterns in successful video games.
In the second chapter I use Csikszentmihalyi’s notion of low

(Csikszentmihalyi 1991) as an analytical structure for examining the
overlap between functionality, context, and performance in providing
players with the components necessary for the desirable outcomes of low.
The game space design implications of low prerequisites are examined
against my approach and speciic practices are highlighted which
promote immersion in both narrative (transformation), and game space
(spatial presence). The attainment of these goals is shown to hinge on the
complementary relationship between functionality, context, and
performance in game space design.
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Table Of Contents
Abstract.................................................................................................................. 3
Introduction...........................................................................................................6
Chapter One........................................................................................................ 10
Interactivity in Video Games........................................................................11
Functionality, Context, and Performance................................................... 14
Functional Design in Game Spaces............................................................. 16
Context Design in Game Spaces.................................................................. 18
Performance Design in Game Spaces.........................................................21
Second-order Design Principles...................................................................24
Chapter Two........................................................................................................ 32
Flow................................................................................................................. 33
Challenge........................................................................................................ 35
Concentration................................................................................................. 39
Clear Goals......................................................................................................44
Feedback..........................................................................................................47
Control.............................................................................................................50
Conclusion........................................................................................................... 56
Works Cited......................................................................................................... 59
Software Cited.....................................................................................................69
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Introduction
The design of video game spaces is important in determining player
experience, and overall enjoyment and engagement. Most modern video
games graphically depict some form of space in which gameplay occurs,
the predominant forms of which are either two or three dimensional, and
whose contents can range from the abstract to the realistic. With the
advances in computing power and graphical capability of modern gaming
hardware, video games can take place inside sprawling virtual worlds
and complex virtual cities and game spaces can be required to facilitate
subtle and nuanced gameplay. Approaching game space design requires
an understanding of how players might interact with and interpret the
space in order to make gameplay feel natural, intuitive, and engaging.
Toward these ends, many theorists have put forward arguments

highlighting the importance of spatiality (Aarseth 2000, 154), meaningful
play (Tekinbaş and Zimmerman 2005), and narrative content (Jenkins 2006
[2004]) in video games and linking them to the way in which video games
are read and understood as texts to be interacted with. Furthermore, as
interactive media, a great deal of interest concerns the capacity of video
games for agency and immersion (Murray 1998), and speciically the ways
video games position themselves as experiential devices, and the quality
of that experience as it relates to concepts such as spatial presence (Wirth
et al. 2007), transportation (Green and Brock 2000), and low (Chen 2006;
Csikszentmihalyi 1991). The aim of this thesis is to explore the
relationship between these concepts as they concern game space design,
and propose a perspective based on these theories which would form the
foundation of a useful set of irst principles for game space designers.
This thesis attempts to unify number of design approaches in existing

literature, which range in scope from detail-oriented bottom up
perspectives, to top down views which speak of video games in general
and are not focussed on game space design speciically. Existing books
which touch on game space design (Novak 2012; Rogers 2010; Thompson,
Berbank-Green, and Cusworth 2007; Perry 2008; Castillo and Novak 2008;
6
Power - Machines for Play
Krawczyk and Novak 2006), whilst giving excellent industry-proven

advice, often consist of either anecdotal generalities or situational loose
sheets of ‘tips and tricks’ for certain genres or game structures, rather than
being bound to underlying peer-reviewed principles. Scholarly papers
concerning the underlying principles pertaining to the conveyance of
meaning or emotion in games (Tekinbaş and Zimmerman 2005), the
structure of games for player learning (Gee 2007), and player experience
of video game components (Juul 2005) are general theories spanning the
gamut of game design and do not speciically address game spaces.
Furthermore, the techniques and concepts are varied and disparate, often
approaching video games using perspectives from tangential ields such
as literary analysis, ecological psychology, and education, and lack any
unifying framework or underlying commonality. This thesis seeks to
provide a irst principles perspective on game space design, by
considering it to be in three core areas of design: functionality, context,
and performance.
Csikszentmihalyi’s work on low consists of an analysis of the

psychology of experiential quality when completing tasks, and the
preconditions for establishing low serve as desirable design objectives for
game space design. The beneits of low suficiently encapsulate the
experiential goals of game spaces, in that low has been positively linked
to highly desirable outcomes such as enjoyment and motivation (Murphy
et al. 2013), and experiential states such as transformation (Green and
Brock 2000), presence (Wirth et al. 2007), agency, and immersion (Jennett
et al. 2008; Murray 1998). These in turn imply lower-level traits such as
functional and representational consistency (Hallford and Hallford 2001,
152–154), meaningful play (Tekinbaş and Zimmerman 2005), perceived
consequence (Church 2006 [1999]), appropriate feedback (Costikyan 2006
[1994]), and varying challenge (Koster and Wright 2013). My claim is that
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these goals can be achieved as a natural consequence of cohesion in

functionality, context, and performance design.
In Chapter One, I will explore the unique interactive form of video

games as it relates to the three areas of functionality, context, and
performance and explain their role in conveyance - the transfer of
information from designer to player through gameplay. After examining
each aspect in turn, I will show how they can be combined into second-
order design structures which are common in successful video games.
In Chapter Two, I will examine the prerequisites for low, and the role
of functional, contextual, and performance design in fulilling these
conditions. I will show that overlap between each of the three core areas is
required to achieve low and other player-engagement states such as
presence, transportation, and immersion which have been identiied as
being related to low (Wirth et al. 2007; Weibel and Wissmath 2011).
Video game spaces are purpose designed objects within the digital
realm intended for enjoyment through interaction, and acknowledging Le
Corbusier’s description of houses as “machines for living” (Le Corbusier
and Goodman 2008), I similarly claim game spaces as “machines for
play”. This thesis offers a perspective on game space design which
incorporates theories from and related to the ield of game studies, and
provides a set of considerations for game space design which promote
Csikszentmihalyi’s low state requirements. This contribution provides a
design philosophy to assist the creation of game spaces which foster
motivation, enjoyment, and prolonged player engagement.
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Chapter One
West Of House
You are standing in an open ield
west of a white house, with a
boarded front door.
There is a small mailbox here.
— Zork
In this chapter I will examine the video game interactivity through three
design aspect lenses: functionality, context, and performance. These irst
principles are each shown to be fundamental in conveying information to
the player about the game space, and in combination with one another,
shown to give rise to second-order game design techniques which shape
player experience.
Interactivity in Video Games
The interactive form of the video game medium gives insight into its
design requirements. Structurally, video games differ from traditional
cultural “texts” such as paintings, recorded music, ilm, and literature in
that their audience are required to make decisions and take actions in
order to engage with the game. Furthermore, player actions are evaluated
by the game’s rules (in program code) in order to determine outcomes -
whether an enemy was defeated, or how many points to award for
completing a level in a particular time. These outcomes can further
change the events in the game, allowing access to bonus levels, unlocking
special content or secret endings to the game, or possibly allowing for
player-created content within the game, all of which make one player’s
gameplay experience different from any other. Video games are therefore
a dynamic text in which the player can affect and change the content
within the media object itself, unlike traditional static media such as
books and ilms. According to Aarseth’s “extranoematic” property of
gameplay (Aarseth 1997), video games are a “doing thing”, centred on
player action and rule-based outcomes. Therefore, the design of video
game spaces is fundamentally concerned with player action and game
outcomes.
Video games are designed to be played. To whatever degree is

possible, the game designer anticipates and caters for expected player
behaviour but ultimately the power of choice over how to engage with the
game lies with the player:
10
Effectively, the control of ictive events that in ilm is invested in the

choices of the director, writer, editor – because it is they who play the
crucial roles in encoding the template from which the ilm is shown – is
ceded somewhat to the player. Whereas in the case of ilm the audience
encounters the work after it has been rendered in the form of a ilm reel
or digital ile, in videogames the imaginative prop is rendered only after
players interact with it, and in a way that accords with their own
imaginative and participative activities regarding the prop. This means
that whereas previous audiences were somewhat passive in respect to
what was rendered by the work, players in videogames genuinely are
active contributors to the ictions and narratives of the games they play.
(Tavinor 2009).
Here, Tavinor describes the role of the player in the cycle of

interaction, whereby the player changes the system or “state” of the game.
Lopes terms this “strongly interactive”, in that the particular sequence of
decisions during play make the experiences unique, and “users' inputs
help determine the subsequent state of play” (Lopes 2001). Video games
may have wide variations in content, theme, and speciic gameplay, but
their structural commonality is their interactive model. From the epic role-
playing game Skyrim (Bethesda Game Studios 2011) for the personal
computer (PC) to the ive-minute bus stop game Nimble Quest (NimbleBit
2013) for mobile devices, video games are at their core a computer
governed state-machine which turns player inputs into game outputs in
an iterative cycle for as long as the game is running.
I wish to avoid ambiguity in the term “interactivity”, since it is clearly

fundamental to video game space design but has proved problematic as a
somewhat nebulous concept in game studies. Whilst Warren Spector
claims that it “completely deines the game medium” (Tekinbaş and
Zimmerman 2003), Lopes remarks that it is “a buzzword used rather
indiscriminately to describe everything from computer games to Internet
shopping.” (Lopes 2001, 66). Aarseth, calling interactivity “industrial
rhetoric” (Aarseth 1997, 48), describes it as a concept so vague and open to
11
interpretation that it becomes “a purely ideological term, projecting an

unfocused fantasy rather than a concept of any analytical substance”
(Aarseth 1997, 49). Raessens cautions against throwing the baby out with
the “ideological bathwater” - describing it as “participation,
reconiguration, and construction” instead (Raessens 2005, 379). This
thesis takes a more fundamental approach to video game engagement as
human-computer interaction, in the same vein as enaction, irst proposed
by Varela, Thompson, and Rosch (Varela, Thompson, and Rosch 2000)
which “focuses on a tight coupling between machine and the user, here a
participant or enactor. The process is a feedback loop: the actions
performed by the enactor affect the medium that in turn affects the
following actions of the enactor.” (Pugliese and Lehtonen 2011). This has
similarities to Crawford’s deinition of interaction as “a cyclic process in
which two actors alternately listen, think, and speak.” (Crawford 2003, 5).
Whilst this may seem trivial and in danger of Lopes’ “internet shopping”
scenario, and certainly not as categorical and precise as Galloway’s four
moments classiications1 of interactivity (Galloway 2006, 17), what I am
highlighting as important for video game space design at a fundamental
level is not the mode of interaction or the degree to which the interaction
inluences the system behaviour. Rather it is that video games as software
depend on interaction to proceed in a way that other media do not - they
are fundamentally built and designed around accepting player input, and
presenting the consequences to the player in perceivable and
understandable ways.
In turn, I assert that game space design is driven by the interactive

imperative, and my proposed perspective corresponds to provision for
player action, game space exposition, and player choice and progression
1
Galloway provides a two-axis view of interaction, one axis ranging between operator and machine,
and the other between the diegetic and non-diegetic. In this way, he classifies interaction within individual
video games based on the degree to which action is driven by player initiative or simulation rules, and
whether actions are performed via story based mechanics or abstract interfaces. (Galloway 2006, 17–18)
12
during gameplay, which I will now explain as the areas of functionality,

context, and performance.
Functionality, Context, and Performance
The relationship between player actions and the consequences as relected

in the game space help the player make sense of the game system.
Tekinbaş and Zimmerman argue that “meaningful play emerges from the
relationship between player action and system outcome - the process by
which they take action and the system responds to the action.” (Tekinbaş
and Zimmerman 2005, 62). Aarseth characterises games as requiring
textual interpretation as the action unfolds, or “real-time hermeneutics 2”,
which he argues is “analysis practiced as performance” (Aarseth 2003, 5).
Game space design is therefore concerned with the design of action
(functionality), the design of informational cues about the game space
(context), and design for player interpretation, response, and behaviour in
the space (performance). I will argue that these three concerns make up a
“core design triad” which is essential for conveyance in video games, the
concept of which I will now explain.
Video games are privileged as an interactive media experience in being

able to explain themselves to players through gameplay, which is known
as conveyance (Twoheadedgiant 2014; Hanson 2011). Conveyance is the
means by which a video game communicates with the player about the
rules, objectives, and useful strategies of a game (Kelly 2014). Games such
as chess cannot do this, they require explanation from external sources
such as an instruction sheet or the advice of another player. Video game
designers however, can embed instructional gameplay within the game
experience, and the degree to which this incorporated in the aesthetic look
2
Hermeneutics or “exegesis” refers generally to the interpretation of texts and in particular to biblical
scripture. Aarseth and later Arjoranta (Arjoranta 2011) assert that gameplay constitutes an interpretation of
the video game as a text as an immediate and continuous process while the game is being played.
13
and feel of the game space setting (known as theming), and communicated
via active player involvement as opposed to static description, determines
the degree of conveyance. Gee illustrates the importance of conveyance in
the modern era of complex video games when he observes that “if
designers did not make games that the players could learn, they would
not sell any copies of their games” (Gee 2004, 17), and Linderoth cites the
“acting and perceiving” nature of interaction, which is the core of good
conveyance, as being fundamental to video game play (Linderoth 2012,
53). It follows that good game space design promotes conveyance in the
way it structures gameplay as a knowledge acquisition experience.
My claim is that video game space conveyance depends on player

sense-making via interaction in the game space, and occurs across three
distinct aspects of video games which I shall call the “core design triad”,
being functionality, the available actions in the game, context, the
presentation of feedback and game environment, and performance, the
provision of pathways for player progression and expression in the game
over time. These three aspects loosely correspond to (although are
somewhat broader than) Aarseth’s characterisation of elements of games
in virtual environments, which he describes as Game-structure (the rules
of the game, including the simulation rules), Game-world (ictional
content, topology/level design, textures), and Gameplay (the players’
actions, strategies, and motivations) (Aarseth 2003, 2).
Games regarded as having excellent conveyance such as Half-Life 2

(Valve Corporation 2004), Portal (Valve Corporation 2007), and Mega Man
X (Capcom 1993) rely on interaction in the game space to demonstrate
mechanics through functional requirements of the space, and gradually
expand the player’s range of skill with the game. For instance, early levels
in Portal demonstrate basic game concepts such as portal operation and
conservation of momentum through portals. Later levels require the
14
player to combine this prior knowledge to solve more complex puzzles.

Mega Man X presents the player with the opportunity to experiment in
getting out of a pit in the irst game level, whereby the player discovers
the wall-jump and wall-slide ability without explicit instruction. The Half-
Life 2 level “We Don’t Go To Ravenholme…” demonstrates, via placement
of scorch marks and dismembered enemies, the operation of
environmental traps and weaponised props in order to invite the player to
experiment with them. Conveyance in these games require functional,
contextual, and performance design in order to position the player’s
interpretation of the game space as leading to action and further
gameplay.
I would like to point out that each of these examples achieves

conveyance through contributions of the entire core design triad, as
functionality, context, and performance are fundamentally inseparable -
none of them exist in a vacuum and all three require aspects of the other
two in order to do their job. For example, performance design cannot
structure gameplay without presenting functionality within represented
contexts, and therefore depends on considerations of functional and
contextual design. However, for simplicity and the sake of deining the
characteristics of each, it makes sense to irstly talk about them as
individual aspects of design, acknowledging that they all depend on each
other in their implementations. I will explain each in turn, and examine its
direct inluence on game space design.
Functional Design in Game Spaces
Functionality is concerned with what the space and its contents do - the
behaviours of the elements of the space, the rules which govern their
behaviour, and the ways in which the space allows and disallows
interaction. In academic discussions (Bogost 2007; Juul 2005; Aarseth
15
1997), this category of design has often been referred to as the ludic - that
which is important for the formal side of the game when considered as a
system: the ways in which the system is player-inluenced, the rules by
which the player wins or loses. I intend the term to encompass the
somewhat intertwined components of mechanics, rules, and game
controls, and their implications for the design of the space. Mechanics are
described by Miguel Sicart as “methods invoked by agents, designed for
interaction with the game state” (Sicart 2008), or more simply, the player
actionable systems in a video game which inluence game outcomes.
Rules are the formal gameplay requirements set out to deine what is
allowed and disallowed in the game, and by what conditions the player
wins or loses. Controls are the physical methods or interfaces by which
the player may manipulate game mechanics. These three are intertwined
in that mechanics are designed with particular control schemes and rule
interactions in mind and either the details of the mechanic, game rule, or
control scheme may need considerable adjustment or ‘tweaking’ over the
course of game development. Similarly, the design of the space will be
inluenced by factors such as whether or not it is intended to be
experienced via a virtual reality headset such as the Oculus Rift 3, or to
include control schemes making use of gestural touch interfaces on tablet
devices, or movement tracking available via the controllers for most
modern game consoles. Furthermore, if for example the game rules
include a physics model with low gravity and bouncy conditions, or if
they feature long-range sniper weapons or teleportation as a means to
move throughout the space, the design of the space needs to
accommodate such functionality.
The functional design of game spaces is what determines their ludic

architecture, the scaffold on which the game mechanics and rules are
3
The Oculus Rift is a virtual reality headset under development by Oculus VR, now acquired by
Facebook. It consists of two small displays (one for each eye) housed in a compact casing which contains
motion tracking hardware and allows the realistic display of 3D environments which are rendered according
to the orientation and movement of the wearer’s head.
16
made manifest as a visual and spatial representation. In Super Hexagon

(Cavanagh 2012) the shifting geometric maze requires that the player
constantly move their in-game “avatar” (a tiny triangle) so as not to
collide with the walls and according to the rules, end the game. The
movement of the ball and the player controlled bats in Atari’s Pong (1972)
is bounded by the top and bottom screen borders, whereas the side
borders demarcate the rules trigger for scoring a point should the ball
leave the play area. Namco’s Pac-Man (1980) ties its core movement
mechanic to the game space, where observant players noted that Pac-Man
is slower than the ghosts on the straight corridors, but has a speed
advantage when cornering. An experienced player being chased down
would head for the dense parts of the maze, gambling that their skill in
navigating the twists and turns would help them outrun their enemies.
The fact that the large shielding blocks in the Space Invaders (Taito 1978)
environment are slowly destroyed by bullet collisions gives rise to a
devious tactic: players could position their ship underneath a shield and
shoot repeatedly through it to bore a narrow arrow-slit through which to
ire at enemies whilst minimising their exposure to attack. Games such as
Lemmings (Psygnosis 1991), Populous (Electronic Arts 1989), and Minecraft
(Mojang 2011) require the player to shape and conigure the environment
in order to avoid hazards and gather the resources necessary to achieve
the game goals. These examples illustrate not only the way in which
computer game rules are deeply integrated within their game
environments, but the manipulation and modiication of game spaces in
order to gain an advantage in the game itself.
Context Design in Game Spaces
I intend the term context to encompass the motivational or at least

explanatory framework offered by the game designer in the game space
as to where, how, and why the video game scenario is taking place. Whilst
17
this context extends outside the boundaries of the game into transmedial
sources such as websites, graphical novels, books, and fan-ilms, I wish to
concentrate primarily on context as it is embedded by a designer in a
game space. Most often this is done via a narrative or story, and includes
the backstory to the game, the premise or goal of the game within that
narrative, the course of events during gameplay, and engagement with in-
game characters, most often via dialogue. Additionally, context includes
the artistic depiction of the game setting or virtual world, which gives the
player a situational basis from which to make sense of the functional
interactions of which they are aware, and to discover as yet unknown
interaction potentials in the game. The purpose of context is in locating
the player within a depicted game scenario which offers enough
explanation and feedback so that the action is comprehendible (the player
must be able to make sense of what they are seeing), and presenting
motivation to achieve the goals of the game. The goals themselves may
incorporate a mixture of functional or ludic aspects (scoring systems,
getting to the “end” of the game) and narrative aspects (rescuing the
princess, restoring balance to the land, transforming the player-character
from a peasant into a hero), and the role of context is in positioning the
player as an agent operating within a game world context (however
simple or complex that world may be), and signifying the internal
relationships, experiential nature, and limitations or boundaries of that
world.
The importance of contextual design is to enable the player to read the

game space and the events which take place within it, and provide
explanation and motivation for their actions. Rules are abstract until
justiied in the context of that game world, and Caillois’ claim that “rules
create iction” (Caillois 2006 [1962], 127) refers to ruled “as if” behaviour
being a form of pretence, however this iction is contextless. When
children lay pillows as steppingstones throughout a room and play a
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game where they must hop from one to the other, the rules are abstract.
However if they decide that the “the ground is lava”, a deeper layer of
imagination and make-believe is involved. Importantly, it lends meaning
to the both the rule and the action of jumping: there is now a reason why
you can’t touch the ground, and jumping between pillows is your only
chance of avoiding certain death. Whilst rules without iction are perfectly
ine for digital games, they are likewise imbued with more meaning when
they are partnered with an explanatory and motivating ictional context.
This context affects the ability of a player to engage with and

understand the space, and the potential for play hinges on its
implementation:
The deining element in computer games is spatiality. Computer games

are essentially concerned with spatial representation and negotiation, and
therefore a classiication of computer games can be based on how they
represent – or, perhaps, implement – space. (Aarseth 2000, 154)
Aarseth’s “representation and negotiation” is directly related to

comprehension and literacy - the process of real-time hermeneutics
(Aarseth 2003, 5; Arjoranta 2011), the requirements for which have
evolved as graphical technology in gaming platforms has progressed.
After the cathode-ray tube glow of Tennis For Two (Higinbotham 1958) and
Spacewar! (Russell et al. 1962) and the introduction of colour with Pac-Man
and Space Invaders, the static screen paradigm was broken by Eugene
Jarvis’ scrolling space shooter Defender (1980), and game space
representation came a step closer to realising some other place, ictional
yet relatable. As representational implementations evolve, such as the
transition from 2D to 3D4 game spaces, contextual design gains new tools,
and in turn enables new types of negotiation and gameplay.
4
2D and 3D refer to “two dimensional” and “three dimensional” respectively. 2D games require
simpler technology and were standard for early arcade and game consoles, before the advent of software and
hardware which could render scenes with realistic perspective, giving the illusion of 3D space on a 2D
screen.
19
Performance Design in Game Spaces
Performance in a design context denotes consideration given to the

possibilities for player experience via action, choice, and expression
within a video game’s design. Performance as an aspect of video games
has been recognised by both Aarseth who asserts that video games are
“performance-oriented” (Aarseth 2003, 7), and Jane McGonigal who
claims that “all game play is performance” (McGonigal 2005). It includes
provision for players to discover for themselves the function of objects in
the game world, the gradual exposure to new mechanics and plot
developments, and sequencing appropriate resources in the game space
for anticipated player behaviour. Performance design takes into account
player mastery of skills, and the way in which player-mastered skills can
be combined over the course of the game to achieve more complex and
nuanced gameplay behaviour. It structures a kind of functional narrative
for the player whereby their avatar or in-game representative’s actions in
the game world as well as the player’s own story of engagement with the
game over time constitute a chronicle of their trial-and-error gameplay
journey, or what Portal designer Eric Wolpaw refers to as ‘game-story’
(Kumar 2008). When Doug Church argues that “the design is the game;
without it, you would have a CD full of data, but no experience.”
(Church 2006 [1999]), he correctly advocates the guiding hand of the
designer, but completely ignores the player, the one who actually creates
the experience through play. It is not enough to say that design shapes the
experience, it is that play equally shapes the experience as it is enabled
through the game design, which must anticipate and account for player
behaviour. Performance design is therefore concerned with player
response to the design of the game space and its presentation of
challenges, pacing of game events and levels of intensity, and provision of
areas of activity and of rest. It is also aware that players have their own
20
motivations, which align to varying degrees with the designer-intended

goals of the game, but nonetheless revolves around players as human
actors in a digital environment, and behaviour may be driven by human
traits such as irrationality, emotional response, cultural norms, in-game
social expectations, vanity, and outright subversion.
This player-oriented perspective on the experiential outcomes of game

space design highlights the importance of player driven design, which is
practiced by designers for large worlds with high degrees of freedom
(Koster 2005) such as exploration survival games like Fallout 3 (Bethesda
Game Studios 2008), and MMORPG5s like Ultima Online (Electronic Arts
1997). Game designers create a possibility space, which becomes
crystallised into an experience when played, which relates to Jenkins’
concept of enacted narrative (Jenkins 2006 [2004]) and Schell’s Lens of
Essential Experience: “The game enables the experience, but it is not the
experience.”(Schell 2008, 10). Tracy Fullerton’s notion of the game
designer as an advocate for the player (Fullerton 2008, 2) values making
the game space readable, navigable, and playable, but also of crafting a
speciic game experience for the player in which design goals for the game
are met. This constitutes a kind of contract between designer and player,
in that the designer plans a game which is intended to provide a
particular experience or range of experiences. The player can therefore
expect solvability and consistency: that the game space will make sense,
that there are actionable options provided, that game will be winnable
with the given tools and interfaces. The designer to some extent
anticipates player behaviours, and attempts to address possible player
doubt or confusion in their design of the game space.
The goals of performance design are to provide an experience which

emerges from gameplay, accomplished through variation, pacing, and
5
MMORPG is an abbreviation for Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, which refers to
games with role-playing elements which large number of people can play together over the Internet.
21
challenge in order to maintain player interest (Koster and Wright 2013),

and to establish the player’s sense of gameplay control in what Janet
Murray refers to as player agency, or “the satisfying power to take
meaningful action and see the results of our decisions and choices”
(Murray 1998, 126). This will by deinition make use of the actionable
functionality and perceivable context of the space, but the overall design
for the player’s journey of agency through the game is a consideration of
performance opportunity for the player - the dynamic “over time”
experience of the game.
Performance design can’t account for all aspects of play because play
has different meanings and wide variety, and because players themselves
have subjective and arbitrary reasons for playing. Scholars such as
Caillois, Huizinga, and Suits have discussed the function of play at length,
intrigued by the human desire to play despite its lack of utility. Suits
characterises games as rule-based activities to attain goals using “less
eficient means” (Suits 2005, 48–9), Huizinga claims play as being
“external to immediate material interests or the individual satisfaction of
biological needs.” (Huizinga 2006 [1955], 104), and Caillois describes
games, particularly those of chance and gambling, as being situations in
which “Property is exchanged, but no goods are produced” (Caillois 2006
[1962], 124). Designers cannot then create according to a universal
heuristic for play because it does not exist - players play for their own
reasons. Not only may these reasons fail to align with designer-intended
forms of play within the game, they may even lie outside traditional ideas
of what play and fun are, such as provoking and “greiing6” the
experience of others, as well as cheating and exploitation of game
systems, and many other subversive forms of engagement which exist in
the “negative space” of game design. Richard Bartle’s characterisation
(Bartle 2006 [1996]) of multi-user dungeon players into four suits - clubs
6
Griefing refers to behaving so as to annoy, harass, sabotage, or otherwise spoil the game experience
for other people, even teammates.
22
(killers), diamonds (achievers), hearts (socialisers), and spades (explorers)

was successful in informing the design of Bartle’s games, including the
extremely popular and groundbreaking Ultima Online, and countless
others. Even so, Aarseth suggested this taxonomy be updated to include
cheaters (Aarseth 2003). What this demonstrates is that performance
design should not attempt to control player behaviour, but rather offer
options or pathways within gameplay for enjoyable outcomes.
What performance design can do, in combination with functional and

contextual design, is ind the best ways of exposing the fun in a video
game, and provide game experiences in which varied players may ind
their own fun. This comes about through the multitude of ways in which
the aspects of the core design triad combine to create higher order design
structures.
Second-order Design Principles
Whilst I have explained the design areas of functionality, context, and

performance separately, they each inluence and depend on each other
and are not separable as far as implementation in game spaces is
concerned. For instance, functionality in game spaces will always be
represented through contextual design somehow, and design for player
performance over the course of the game will depend on the mechanics
and controls included in its functional design. Here I identify some
second-order design principles which arise out of the irst principles
described in the core design triad, and indicate examples of their use in
successful video games. Firstly, functional design in the game space
requires both contextual and performance design in order to convey
meaning, and I identify three examples: correspondence with real-world
behaviour or cultural norms, recognisable conformity to existing game
convention, and the extent to which the space sequences the introduction
and association between mechanics as instructional interaction experiences.
23
Functional and contextual design may leverage real-world behavioural

correspondences such as gravity, which are so ubiquitous in our lives that
they are seldom questioned in games. That the tiles ‘fall’ in Tetris (Pajitnov,
& Pokhilko 1984) requires no explanation and that hiding in the shadows
in Thief: The Dark Project (Eidos Interactive 1998) decreases visibility seems
obvious. The more mimetic the game interaction is in terms of behaviour
with which the player is already familiar, the less barrier there is to
adoption. Conversely, non-sensical or unexpected behaviour results in
gameplay dificulty (Rambusch and Susi 2013, 86) often leading to player-
character death, such as defeated enemies coming back to life in revisited
offscreen areas in Super Mario Bros. 3 (Nintendo 1988), and the confusion
caused by the fact that the diamonds and boulders in Boulder Dash (First
Star Software, 1984) are affected by gravity but the player-character is not.
Conformity to functional conventions of video games such as

movement controls leverage player ‘literacy’ in what James Gee calls the
semiotic domain of video games (Gee 2006 [1993]). The literacy in gaming
convention required to read behaviours constitutes something similar to
Goodwin’s notion of a professional vision (Goodwin 1994), whereby
previous experience with game space functionality forms an organised
way of seeing or interpreting a similar space. These conventions occur
across all three aspects of the core design triad. For example, early side-
scrolling games such as Moon Patrol (Irem 1982) pioneered the convention
of progressing from right to left, adopted by future games such as Wonder
Boy (Activision 1986), Final Fight (Capcom 1989), and Golden Axe (Sega
1989) which all enforced screen movement towards the right hand side of
the screen. Even though the player may backtrack in the side-scrolling
levels of Lego Batman (Traveller’s Tales 2008), level progress is still
designed as right to left with no in-game indication that this is the case.
Young players (including my own children) to whom the franchise has
24
considerable appeal often struggle to progress, having no prior

knowledge of this convention.
Functional design which seeks to instruct contextually via interactive

experience rather than text description is recommended by Gee (Gee 2007)
and Taylor (D. Taylor 2013a), and game spaces are described by Squire as
“functional epistemologies” (Squire 2006, 22), that is, learning by doing. In
this regard, good level design provides areas which introduce new
interactions in a safe and non-threatening context, in order to promote
their discovery. In the opening scene of Cave Story (Amaya 2004), the
player-character is positioned in a small cave with several platforms,
some shallow water, a save checkpoint, and an exit door. There are no
pressures such as monsters or timers, and no way for the player to hurt
themselves. They are free to get a feel for the jumping mechanic,
experiment with the shallow water, try out the save checkpoint, and learn
how to use the exit door, all without any direct instruction from the game.
Combinations of correspondence, convention, and instructional

experience in game space design create opportunities for players to feel
empowered by intuitively solving problems during gameplay. Two of
Minecraft’s core mechanics are digging (destroying an adjacent cube or
‘block’ to your body), and jumping (you can jump against the force of
gravity, just over two blocks in height). New players often explore the use
of their digging tool by digging directly down, removing block after block
from beneath their own feet until until they ind themselves at the bottom
of a deep vertical shaft with no hope of jumping out. But given the
existing rules, as dictated by the game space, of gravity, jumping, and
digging, the player intuits that they can dig at waist and head height to
form a ledge one block in height, and by jumping onto that ledge and
digging out the blocks above and ahead to form yet another ledge, will
eventually dig a staircase and return to the surface of the world. Both
25
digging and jumping make sense in the context of the game world - once
you have been introduced to them, they produce expected results, and as
such the player is delighted to have solved the shaft problem via their
own ingenuity. There is no in-game text or tutorial which teaches this
process, it is simply a natural consequence of the game mechanics and the
game world having consistent, logical, and meaningful interaction.
The combination of contextual design with both functional and

performance objectives for design highlight representational patterns
which Gee would refer to as part of the “design grammar” (Gee 2006
[1993]) of the semiotic domain of video games such as depiction of game
space elements, architectural implications of game situations, and
environmental narrative.
Depiction refers to the meaning inherent in the representation of the

game object. Colour and shape, for instance, are often used to indicate the
potential outcome of an interaction (Solarski 2013). Negative indicators
such as danger, exhaustion, or risk are often signiied with angular, spiky
shapes and colours such as red or yellow. Positive or safe signiiers often
use rounded or soft-looking shapes, and green or blue colours (Zammitto
2005). Existing convention may assist interpretation, especially with
recognised symbols such as trafic lights and icons such as hearts. Logical
relationships between elements may be implied via depiction, such as
“veteran” troops having better combat abilities than “green” recruits, or
items which are expected to behave in a similar fashion because they are
depicted similarly. Hallford and Hallford illustrate the importance of
representational consistency in linking functionality and context (as
depiction), explaining that a door-opening button should not look
identical to a button which damages the player (Hallford and Hallford
2001, 152–154), because it would violate player-formed ideas of perceived
consequence (Church 2006 [1999], 373).
26
The construction of the game space can, via architectural implication,

assist the player with informed decisions or strategy purely via spatial
form. Long stretches of open landscape in DayZ (Hall 2013) prompt
players to reach for their sniper rile, and twisty labyrinths in Quake III
Arena (id Software 1999) have players switching to the shotgun.
Environmental design such as choke points (World of Level Design 2013)
and architecture constructed to manipulate instinctual player response
can also be used to motivate players to move through the space in a
particular way (Totten 2011). In 343 Studio’s Halo 4 (2012), subtle lighting
cues were placed throughout the level in order to direct or ‘pull’ the
player through the complex space, providing them with a subconscious
waypoint system which made level navigation feel instinctual (Leone
2012).
Contextual and performance design together create opportunities for

environmental narrative, that is, to tell stories within game spaces. Whilst
these spaces don’t have to tell a plotted narrative (Costikyan 2006 [1994]),
Jenkins outlines four ways in which game spaces relate to narrative:
Environmental storytelling creates the preconditions for an immersive

narrative experience in at least one of four ways: spatial stories can evoke
pre-existing narrative associations; they can provide a staging ground
where narrative events are enacted; they may embed narrative
information within their mise-en-scene; or they provide resources for
emergent narratives. (Jenkins 2006 [2004])
Jenkins explains contextual information as not just a matter of content

but also of form and structure, which Aarseth describes as ergodic
literature - a story requiring non-trivial effort to assemble (Aarseth 1997).
For example, in Bungie’s recently released Destiny (2014) story resides
partially through transmedial sources such as the game website. Whilst
some players complained that the story was not entirely contained within
27
the game (Tassi 2015) making it seem to “lack a soul” (Tassi 2014), it does
gives players a choice - if they want a deeper narrative experience, they
can investigate that dimension. If they aren’t interested, they can bypass it
and the game becomes “just another shooter with pretty graphics”
(Gerstmann 2014).
Inside the game itself, considerations of context affect not just the
theming of the game space, but its layout:
The organization of the plot becomes a matter of designing the

geography of imaginary worlds, so that obstacles thwart and affordances
facilitate the protagonist's forward movement towards resolution.
(Jenkins 2006 [2004], 678–679)
Jenkins’ assertion is exempliied in King’s Quest (Williams, 1983), a

graphical descendant of the text adventure genre which consists solely of
enacted plot progression, where the hero has no abilities or powers and
gameplay involves solving puzzles to progress the story. Final Fight’s
themed levels expose an embedded narrative, from street to industrial
area to penthouse lair. In Sonic The Hedgehog (Sega 1991), graphical
theming integrates the game goals (stopping the evil Dr. Robotnik’s
industrialisation and mechanisation of the natural game world setting)
into the design of the levels themselves, where initial environments such
as Green Hill Zone are lush and natural, gradually becoming more
polluted and man-made in later levels and culminating in the inal
confrontation in Scrap Brain Zone. Obstacles blocking progress such as
enemies are represented as robots which transform back into cute animals
when Sonic defeats them, and the layout of platforms and walkable areas
becomes more claustrophobic and machine-like as the game progresses,
favouring orthogonal shapes over natural curves and reinforcing the
desire to restore and naturalise the landscape. Furthermore, game spaces
which are intrinsically linked to a deep game narrative, such as in
Bethesda’s Skyrim and Bioware’s Mass Effect (BioWare 2007) considerable
28
design effort is spent providing a story which encourages player

investment in characters, are more rewarding for players (D. Taylor 2013b)
and promote a higher degree of player immersion and engagement
(Castronova 2005, 287–289).
In this chapter I have examined the interactive structure of video

games in order to locate the design concerns of functionality, context, and
design. Whilst dependent on each other for implementation, each has a
distinct purpose. Functional design provides methods for player
interaction and inluence on the rule systems of the game. Context design
communicates the game environment and feedback for player actions, as
well as narrative content. Performance design provides avenues for player
choice and progression through challenges as the game progresses, and
anticipates player behaviour in order to provide a smooth game
experience. From these irst principles, second-order game design
techniques can be derived which are widely deployed in video games. In
the next chapter I explore the overlap between these three design aspects
and their contribution to experiential notions of low and presence in
video games.
29
30
Chapter Two
And to watch him play that game was like

watching a virtuoso violinist or watching
Marsalis on trumpet. It was just
unbelievable the way he had the chemistry
— all these angry, nasty aliens trying to
waste him, and he’d just calmly waltz
through and blow the shreds out of ‘em. It
was amazing. It was almost like he’d taken
over the game and made it his own. He
was doing things I never envisioned,
never thought of, tactics I never dreamed
of.
— Eugene Jarvis, interviewed in (Herz 1997,

79)
In this chapter I will use Csikszentmihalyi’s analysis of low
(Csikszentmihalyi 1991), the psychology of optimal experience, as a
framework against which to highlight effective design practices in
functionality, context, and performance. I will show that not only do these
design aspects need to combine as demonstrated in the previous chapter
in order to achieve the experiential beneits of low including
transformation and spatial presence, but that consistency is required to
maintain the immersive state.
Flow
If the designer of a video game space (referred to as world-builders in the

case of games with open landscapes or expansive environments) does
their job right, the space will convey the game essence through the core
design triad of functionality, context, and design, and allow the player to
be able to understand and play the game. However it is also the goal of
the game, as a “machine for play”, to facilitate an enjoyable experience for
the player. Of course, what is considered enjoyable will differ from one
player to the next, and the type of fun sought by the player may or may
not align with the intended gameplay or goals offered by the designer.
Having said this, video game spaces are in a unique position to shape the
player experience to a large extent because they are so tightly integrated
with aspects of functionality, performance, and context, and because of
the high degree of interaction they offer to players. Not only does the
design of the game space allow the game to be successfully
communicated and engaged with, it can also can enable a positive
experience and draw the player in so that they feel a sense of location
within the space, and an identity with the world and its characters.
These feelings are often linked with concepts of immersion and low.
Immersion, deined by Janet Murray as “the sensation of being
surrounded by a completely other reality” (Murray 1998, 98) remains a
subjective and ambiguous concept, despite attempts to make objective
32
quantitative studies of it (Jennett et al. 2008; Cheng and Cairns 2005). It

has however been shown to be linked to low (Csikszentmihalyi 1991),
whereby the absorption by players in a compelling task set in a mediated
world leads to a feeling of relocation to that space called spatial presence
or simply presence (Weibel and Wissmath 2011), where the real world is
somewhat forgotten and replaced by the virtual one (Wirth et al. 2007). In
fact these papers show that immersion is a by-product of low, where low
can be described as absorption in a “doing thing”, being the task of the
game, whilst immersion, synonymous with presence (Brown and Cairns
2004), is the absorption in the space in which it takes place (Draper, Kaber,
and Usher 1998).
Flow has also been linked to motivation (Sherry 2004), and Chen
equates the low state with fun (Chen 2006), which, along with its
relationship to immersive states, would seem to align its effects with those
of game space design. Flow does require that the task in question is
autotelic, that is, undertaken for its own sake where the goal and
satisfaction come from the experience and not some byproduct, which
games and play certainly satisfy (Caillois 2006 [1962]; Huizinga 2006
[1955]).
Csikszentmihalyi’s original list of eight related experiential states

(Csikszentmihalyi 1991, 41:3) can be divided into prerequisite conditions
conditions (preconditions) and effects, which I shall annotate inline:
Precondition (1) We confront tasks we have a chance of completing;

Precondition (2) We must be able to concentrate on what we are doing;
Precondition (3) The task has clear goals;
Precondition (4) The task provides immediate feedback;
Effect (5) One acts with deep, but effortless involvement, that removes
from awareness the worries and frustrations of everyday life;
33
Precondition (6) One exercises a sense of control over their actions;

Effect (7) Concern for the self disappears, yet, paradoxically, the sense
of self emerges stronger after the low experience is over; and
Effect (8) the sense of duration of time is altered.
The items listed as “effects” correspond clearly with the sensations

players describe when experiencing immersive or deep games, such as
effortless gameplay due to absorption (often called “being in the zone”
(Chen 2006, 4)), which includes a loss of concern for self, and a warped
sense of time. These effects are desirable for games and hence game space
design should aspire to foster them.
If the core design triad of functionality, context, and performance is

useful in establishing conveyance as explained in Chapter One, in what
ways does it address the preconditions for low and promote immersive
experiences? In order to focus on particular areas of game space design, I
will use the preconditions in this breakdown, also addressed in the
GameFlow heuristic system (Sweetser et al. 2012) and in Murphy,
Chertoff, Guerrero, and Mofit’s discussion of low, motivation, and fun
(Murphy et al. 2013). I classify the sense of control, item (6), as a
precondition rather than an effect based on the logic that in order for a
player to have a sense of control of the situation, they must have been
provided with at least some actual control in the game space. I will
discuss the core design triad in the context of each section in turn, being
the challenge of the task (1), concentration (2), clear goals (3), immediate
feedback (4), and control (6).
Challenge
In Csikszentmihalyi’s low, the task is seen as “a challenging activity that

requires skills”. Challenge in video games was viewed in Chapter One
primarily through the lens of performance, relating to the design
34
decisions for managing player engagement over the course of the game.
Jenova Chen asserts that an effective way of doing this is by integrating
methods for gameplay adjustment into the game space (Chen 2006).
Games such as Quake (id Software 1996) and Doom 3 (id Software 2004)
use environmental challenges to allow the player to indicate their skill
level, implementing dificulty selection integrated into the level design. A
more lexible and automated approach is the practice of Dynamic
Dificulty Adjustment (DDA), whereby the game system assesses player
skill level and responds by adjusting the level of challenge in gameplay
(Hunicke and Chapman 2004), for instance the number of and strength of
enemies or the availability of helpful power-ups. This approach is not
suited to all games and depends on potentially unreliable skill evaluation
criteria (Chen 2006, 12). Chen’s speciic contribution integrates DDA into
the game space itself, allowing the player a conscious choice in whether or
not the game intensity should increase. Chen’s game lOw
(Thatgamecompany 2006) allows upcoming threats to be seen and
assessed, and players can avoid contact via navigation choices.
Despite the predominance of performance design in addressing

challenge, both contextual and functional design are also required where
the space telegraphs or foreshadows future or upcoming challenge. Video
game environments featuring aesthetic cues signalling incoming obstacles
or warning of approaching enemies are common. In top-down shooter
games such as Raiden II (Seibu Kaihatsu 1993), players encounter mini-
bosses7 at points during the level which give them experience in dealing
with the weapons or abilities particular to that enemy. At the end of the
level, the inal boss often incorporates several of the previously
encountered weapon or ability types, and their similar visual design
indicates to the player the likelihood of behavioural similarity.
7
Bosses in video games refer to challenging enemies which are often the gatekeepers or final obstacle
to completing a level, once all the lesser enemies have been defeated. Mini-bosses refers to a less challenging
boss encounter, usually marking a particular state of progression within a game level (such as halfway), or as
a prelude to an imminent final boss encounter.
35
Performance design for a game challenge “journey” accesses a

particular lavour of fun described by both Koster and Gee as being a mix
of learning and challenge. Koster asserts that humans quickly recognise
and master patterns in games, and in order to maintain challenge and
engagement, games should evolve and provide variation and growth,
forcing the player to continue learning (Koster and Wright 2013). Valve’s
Half-Life 2 eschews explicit tutorials or hand-holding mission descriptions
over environmental puzzles which increase in complexity as the player
acquires new masteries during the game. Similarly, Gee associates games
not with work, but with deep learning and fun (Gee 2004), which can be
encouraged with what he calls “Cycles of Expertise”, and which are
described as sets of trials where players “sense their own growing
sophistication, almost as an incremental curve, as the game progresses”
(Gee 2004, 20). Again, where possible Half-Life 2 uses environmental
narrative and instructional experience as discussed in Chapter One to
demonstrate the behaviour of new threats or present interaction
possibilities in situ rather than in a tutorial document or on-screen
instruction, and lets the player grow and expand their understanding of
game interactions organically and under their own steam. Even greater
respect for player intelligence is shown via the level design in Toki Tori 2
(Two Tribes B.V. 2014), where, unlike in a traditional “metroidvania 8-
style” exploration puzzle game, the world is not blocked by obstacles
requiring ability unlocks or keys. In fact the player-character gains no new
abilities as the game progresses, and the only barrier to new areas is an
understanding of how environmental interactions function, allowing
savvy players shortcuts to “endgame” areas right from the starting
location. In a more rigidly designed game this would be called “sequence
breaking”, since privileged knowledge can be used to access areas “out of
8
The term “Metroidvania” refers to games which have exploration, puzzle, and action gameplay which
is not divided into levels, but takes place in a single expansive environment containing different sections
which require acquisition of certain skills, abilities, or items before access can be gained.
36
order”. However Toki Tori 2 progression is entirely based on reason and

deduction, and its contextual and functional design promotes this by
establishing clear internal logic and in-game convention, whereby the
environment behaves in ways which correspond to our natural world -
bubbles loat on the air, water grows grass, and noises attract attention.
Moreover, Toki Tori 2 exhibits a high degree of conveyance, presenting
everything as part of the game space design and providing no explicit
tutorial sequences, magical on-screen compasses, or in-game text other
than the title screen.
Lastly, game space design can vastly change the feel of games as they
relate to challenge, and a sense of “being there”. Ubisoft’s Far Cry 2
(Ubisoft Montreal 2008) and Far Cry 4 (Ubisoft Montreal 2014) are both
games in tropical jungle settings involving assassinating a despot and
pitting your skill and wits against their entire army. However the
functional and performance design difference between the games make
for two completely different experiences. The aspect of realism in Far Cry
2 speaks of surviving against all odds, battling malaria, rusty jam-prone
weapons, and cautious use of limited resources. Far Cry 4 plays more like
a joyride, providing plentiful weapons, access to safe locations, and
conveniences such as map teleportation and enemy tracking through
walls and terrain. Furthermore, whilst Far Cry 2 offers only rare save
locations making for thoughtful and conservative gameplay, Far Cry 4 can
be saved at any time, allowing players to attempt wild and risky
gameplay without negative consequence. In this way, despite similar
contextual theming, functional and performance design of game spaces in
Far Cry 2 and Far Cry 4 make the former feel like a tense and immediate
spatial experience, and the latter feel at all times like a video game.
Approaches to video game challenge make use of performance design

in sequencing appropriate levels of dificulty, and often leverage
37
functional design by using combinations of mechanics to ensure skill

mastery, or embedding contextual clues in the space to prompt player
action. Similar coordination is required to minimise distraction in the
game space, and promote concentration.
Concentration
The goal of game spaces promoting concentration and cognitive low

(Baron 2012) should be of facilitating play rather than of being an
unnecessary adversary or impediment to the player. That is, they should
seek to provide solutions and possibilities for players rather than distract,
confuse, or stagnate. Alan Wexelblat writes:
One of the most important features of any visualization system is the

placement, or location, and arrangement of the represented objects. A
well-structured view can make things obvious to the viewer and
empower interaction. Similarly, a badly constructed view can obfuscate
and impede. A well-structured view has internal consistency and logic,
and can be easily understood. In addition, the structure can convey an
underlying mental model and can indicate possibilities for interaction.
(Wexelblat 1991, 255)
The empowerment of interaction is centred, in Wexelblat’s opinion,

around being easily understood and internally consistent. For whichever
game is being played, the game space should render an environment
appropriate to the task at hand. For instance in First Person Shooter (FPS)
games featuring long-range weapons, adequate space and line of sight is
required to use them effectively, and weapons which deal area or splash
damage are more suited to choke-points and closed-in areas. Maps for
games in such as Counterstrike: Global Offensive (Valve Corporation 2012)
and Quake III Arena are suited to the weapons and abilities contained
within those games, and even though both are in the same genre,
swapping map layouts between games would not result in either game
being playable, let alone enjoyable. This is because the functional design
38
which informs the creation of those maps is speciic to the mechanics and
controls offered within each game, and the performance design is catered
to the particular skills required (such as quick-scoping 9 or rocket
jumping10), which differ between the two games.
Games featuring natural interactions between actor and environment

require less reasoning and reduce the threat of concentration loss, and can
be achieved through functional design in the game space. Such
considerations heavily inluenced the level design in Sonic The Hedgehog,
where branding strategies demanded that the titular hero should
differentiated from Nintendo’s Mario by his key trait: speed. The resultant
level design enabled Sonic’s fast running with the introduction of ramps
and slopes; a irst for platforming levels. Slopes allowed Sonic to change
height in the game level without having to jump, or bump into a wall and
then jump up onto a higher platform. This design enabled a new type of
gameplay which was about dashing and rolling to defeat enemies, and
served the aesthetic of the game as a streamlined and frenetically paced
scrolling platformer. Similar level design in Mega Man X featured sloped
environments to accommodate Mega Man’s dash ability. These games
illustrate functional design considerations for natural interaction so as to
reduce cognitive load, and maintain player concentration.
Design has been analysed from the perspective of allowed interactions

before by James Gibson (Gibson 1986) and later, Donald Norman
(Norman 2013). Gibson’s notion of affordances describes the relationships
between people and the objects in the world around them in terms of how
their physical forms enable or allow interaction. However, as an ecological
psychologist, Gibson’s concept (Gibson 1986, 127) considers only
9
Quick-scoping refers to a skill in games featuring sniper weapons equipped with magnifying scopes,
where players aim at an enemy and switch to the scoped view for an adjustment before shooting, performing
the entire operation in an extremely small amount of time.
10
Rocket jumping is a technique whereby players gain extra height with a jump at the expense of some
damage by firing a rocket weapon at the ground immediately after jumping, and being propelled vertically by
the blast.
39
naturally occurring forms such as plants and animals. Norman later

appropriated the term into the ield of interaction design to describe the
relationship between a human-designed object and its user in terms of the
actions which are, because of the design, perceived to be possible to that
user (Norman 2013, 11). The consequences of this line of thought are that
an object’s design and physical appearance give both visual clues
(signiiers) as to how the object should be used, and impose constraints on
how it can be used. In this sense, affordance consists of not only the
possibility or potential for interaction, but the communication or signiiers
of this potential, and the subsequent recognition by the involved actor
(Norman 2013, 13). Similarly, the affordance relationship for an object will
be different between an actors of different physical capability (e.g. tall,
sighted), and even different experiential backgrounds (e.g. age, culture),
based on the physical compatibility between object and actor, and
readability of the affordance signiiers (Withagen et al. 2012).
There is a clear relationship between theories of affordance and the

functional and contextual design of video game spaces which were
discussed in Chapter One, whereby functional design allows or disallows
interaction in a space, and contextual design signiies potential interaction
and the results of interactions. Furthermore, previously mentioned
second-order concepts such as depiction, correspondence, and
architectural implication make use of player awareness and recognition of
affordance relationships between either the player and elements the game
space (for instance, a vantage point which commands a view of upcoming
terrain), or the player-character and the game space (such as a ladder
leading to a higher area).
I identify two entities with which game environment affordance

relationships are primarily concerned: the human player and the avatar,
being the player-controlled entity within a game space. Since the avatar
40
operates inside a game space which is ostensibly a lived-in world, the

space, in order to be plausible, must accommodate the intended gameplay
in terms of the spatial requirements for the avatar and other actors to
inhabit and interact with the environment, as well as signify those
potential interactions to the player. This may be, for instance, cars on a
racetrack in a racing game, the teammates and opposition in a sports
game, or a jumping character and a set of enemies in a platform game.
Since the player is controlling the avatar, the intended interactions must
be signiied to and be readable by the player, as well as suited to the
physical dimensions and characteristics of the avatar. Contextual design
which does not take this into account may confuse players - for instance if
an object looks too heavy to be picked up by their diminutive avatar,
players may not even attempt it even though their progress is blocked.
The affordance relationship between the game space and both the
avatar and player is therefore complex, and extends beyond Norman’s
concept of affordance between only the physical objects of the space - in
this case the player with the game controller and television screen. What
Norman fails to account for in the domain of interactive media and
software of many kinds, especially games, is telepresence (Weibel and
Wissmath 2011) - that the screen becomes “conceptually transparent” (L.
Taylor 2003). I assert that this affordance relationship extends beyond the
screen and into the virtual world: not only does the game space need to
make interactions possible for the avatar, but the player must take their
learned experiences of real-world affordance into the game. This is why
consistency in depiction and correspondence as discussed in Chapter One
are important - they contribute to the language of affordances in the world
of the video game. Once the game starts, players are for the most part no
longer engaging with the hardware - they have reached into the game and
are interacting in that space: “…players want to engage not with the
screen but with a ictional world these images bring to mind.”(Nitsche
41
2008, 3). In this relationship, game space affordances for both the in-game
avatar and real-world player consists of an intricate blend of presentation,
arrangement, and pacing of content in order to instruct, communicate,
and entertain.
Discussing the affordance relationship between avatar and game-space

considers the geometry of the virtual space of the game as if it was a
physical space for the avatar. Despite the possibility for fantastic
capabilities and features of both the avatar and the world they inhabit,
there exists a set of rules that govern the avatar-environment interactions
which may or may not be similar to those of the real world. Gravity may
be in effect, walls may block movement and vision, and the avatar may
take damage or suffer some consequence by falling from a height. For the
game space to have an effective design, it must accommodate the avatar
in terms of their physical characteristics and abilities. The space needs to
be able to be navigated by the avatar, taking into account their size, jump
height, shot distance, run speed, or any other primary attribute which
affects their relationship to the virtual space. Functional design
considerations such as placement of loating platforms should depend on
avatar jump distance, the trigger frequency of a crushing piston hazard
needs to be related to the run speed of the avatar, and connecting
elements such as doorways, corridors, and ladders need to be the right
dimensions to allow the avatar to pass through. If the game provides
several playable characters with different physical characteristics and
abilities, the design of the game space needs to take into account all of
them to allow all characters to negotiate the space.
Concentration in game spaces is promoted primarily through

consistency between functional and context design concerns, which take
the form of affordances and signiiers in the game space. Whilst
performance design factors such as appropriate pacing (not getting too
42
hard too fast) help maintain concentration, the clear and consistent
representation of interaction in the game space is fundamental in reducing
cognitive load, allowing the player to focus on the game goals.
Clear Goals
The requirement for goals to be clear in game spaces in order to promote a

low state needs to be balanced with the thematic implementation of the
game spaces contextual design - a minimap11 overlay or directional arrow
pointing toward the next objective is useful for knowing where to go, but
is unrealistic and often breaks the immersion of the space and reminds the
player that they are playing a video game. Game spaces seek to serve a
dual role as information providers for game goals and as a link between
player actions and game iction, because games which provide adequate
context in a seamless fashion are less likely to interrupt cognitive low and
more likely to lead to immersion (Murphy et al. 2013). Concrete goals in
video games are described by Baron as useful as an achievable focal point
for player effort (Baron 2012). Baron explains that players take direction
from situation cues and graphical interface information as well as explicit
direction but importantly, critical information should not be delivered at
times of high intensity, and must be done in a way that links the
information with the task. Presenting clear goals is therefore at the
intersection of context and performance design, relying on representation
of information in the game space as well as structuring delivery of the
information in terms of timing and pacing throughout the game.
Often, game goals can be relected in the game space via static design
elements, such as the radio tower in Dear Esther (The Chinese Room 2012),
or embedded in the game narrative. The audiovisual capabilities of video
11
A minimap is a small overhead map of the local area included in the user interface for a game. These
are often included in games with expansive environments which extend far beyond the screen boundaries.
Recent games such as Fallout 3 have attempted to integrate the in-game map within the game world in a
more diegetic fashion, incorporating it into the player-character’s wristwatch-like information device.
43
games have progressed to such a degree that in-game narrative can now
be presented as a sophisticated cinematic experience, and the provision of
compelling characters can aid in goal presentation by inviting the player
to identify with the characters and adopt those characters’ goals as their
own. Transportation, as described by Green, Brock, and Kaufman is “the
experience of cognitive, affective and imagery involvement in a narrative”
(Green, Brock, and Kaufman 2004, 311), and draws the audience away
from the physical and into the narrative, suspending real-world facts.
Achieving this state of narrative immersion is clearly beneicial for
gameplay experiences, and requires identiication with the ictional
characters of a narrative, involving “adoption of the character’s thoughts,
goals, emotions, and behaviours, and such vicarious experience requires
the reader or viewer to leave his or her physical, social, and psychological
reality behind in favour of the world of the narrative and its inhabitants”
(Green, Brock, and Kaufman 2004, 318).
Transportation represents an acceptance of a narrative, a suspension of

disbelief, and a way to convey game goals through character identiication
in video games, which has been achieved in the design of such character-
oriented games such as Dragon Age: Origins (BioWare 2009) and the Mass
Effect series. In both games, the former in a medieval fantasy setting and
the latter a space action-drama, details about in-game characters including
the player-controlled protagonist are revealed throughout the game
depending on how player choices and dialogue inluence non-player
character (NPC) attitudes. As backstory is revealed through carefully
plotted narrative, character motivations and personalities become clearer,
fostering sympathy and identiication with in-game characters. Both
games borrow techniques from cinema in order to strengthen their
contextual design, positioning the camera at alternating close-up
viewpoints during dialogue sequences. The Mass Effect games even have
an option to enable ilm-grain to make the experience even more movie-
44
like. For these games, transportation enables clear goals to be relected in

the narrative and adopted by the player, and overall performance design
depends on sequencing those narratives into a cohesive journey for player
and player-character alike.
Care must be taken, however, to avoid misaligning game goals and

character goals and destroying immersion, which occurs when the
functional and contextual design of the game are inconsistent. Clint
Hocking identiied a jarring friction in Bioshock between the Randian self-
interest given by the game story as motivation, with rewards offered by
the game rules which promoted helping others (Hocking 2007). He
termed the conlict between the narrative and ludic contracts of the game
Ludonarrative Dissonance (Jezixo 2010), and deemed such inconsistency
between the functional and contextual design of the game to be harmful
to the immersive experience. The role-playing aspect of Skyrim and
Neverwinter Nights suffers when the game mechanics allow lawful and
respected player-characters to pilfer unattended inn bedrooms with no
consequence. Despite the large number of starving and destitute plague-
ridden people on the streets of Neverwinter, there’s a surprisingly amount
of coins to be found amongst the barrels and debris which line the alleys.
Such discontinuity has prompted debate within the gaming community
about consistency of ludic and narrative structure in other games(Sims
2013a), such as Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune (Naughty Dog 2007) and Tomb
Raider (Crystal Dynamics 2013), where character with whom the player is
supposed to identify casually murder countless human opponents in
order to progress in the game. Game designers are beginning to recognise
the negative consequences of discord between mechanics and iction for
player performance and gameplay experience (Makedonski 2012), and
speculating that deep story may not even be compatible with genres such
as action games or shooters (Sims 2013b).
45
Such friction between contextual design and functional design risks

goals becoming unclear, and low being lost. Whether this tension can be
resolved through new genres or simply through either downplaying or
restructuring story in existing ones, the game space remains the arena in
which the two must be integrated. Eric Wolpaw terms the seamless blend
between the two as the “low delta to story-story and game-story” (Kumar
2008). Nintendo risks this kind of paradox with titles like Super Mario
Kart, where ‘good’ characters such as Mario and Peach and antagonists
such as Bowser and Koopa Trooper, formerly enemies as afirmed in
numerous previous titles such as Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario
Galaxy, calmly race go-karts and even participate on the same team.
However, whilst the residual canon of the Mario franchise branding
disallows such peaceful coexistence, the main weight of potential
dissonance is avoided since even in a presumably shared game world, the
containment of this gameplay within separate game releases feels more
like episodes or exploration of alternative, parallel world style storytelling
than traditional narrative packaging.
Cohesion in contextual and performance design greatly contributes to

establishing clear goals, via avenues of narrative and player identiication
with character goals, and via pacing and the timing of the delivery of goal
information during gameplay. It is important however that gameplay and
narrative do not contradict one another, or the game experience is
weakened due to mixed messages. In addition to clear goals, indication of
player progress is required via in-game feedback.
Feedback
Aarseth’s assertion that video games demand “active experimentation”

(Aarseth 2000, 154) requires feedback from the game in order to for
46
players to make sense of the consequences of their actions. This is where

functional design meets contextual design, where the game space
response to player actions is displayed via the elements of the game space
itself. Mechanics can reveal the iction of the game world (falling damages
you, but eating restores health), and game narrative provides context and
motivation for game mechanics (roast meat heals more than an apple, and
you are motivated to stay alive because the evil dragon must be defeated).
Both rely on contextual design for the representation of information and
appropriate feedback, which Costikyan highlights as being important for
decision making: “The interface must provide the player with relevant
information. And he must have enough information to be able to make a
sensible decision.” (Costikyan 2006 [1994]). Game spaces and user
interfaces should be constructed such that important information is either
explicitly displayed, or can be implied via meaning and context as
provided by the representation of game environment: or both. Vehicle
failure is imminent in Bizarre Creation’s street racing game Blur (2010)
when cars have dented panels, cracked windscreens, and smoke pouring
out their engines, but even so a vehicle ‘health bar’ is still displayed to
give discretised, granular information to the player about the car status.
Studies of low and presence in games correlate the timing of feedback

in the game space with the player’s ability to relate cause and effect
(Jennett et al. 2008; Nacke and Lindley 2008; Baron 2012) and Wirth
highlights the veriication of player hypothesis testing through game
space feedback as being necessary reinforcement for the establishment of
presence (Wirth et al. 2007). Game space designers must therefore
accommodate timely feedback such that it is “integrated and discernible”
in the game space (Tekinbaş and Zimmerman 2005, 61) in order to build
player conidence in the space and promote spatial presence. This
indicates that contextual design is tightly bound to functional design, and
feedback for the degree of success or failure of player actions needs to be
47
not only visually apparent but timely in order for the player to feel
present in the game space.
The typical result of failure in challenging gameplay is player-

character death, which, while necessary in Gee’s Cycles of Expertise, has
the potential to disrupt the learning experience. The way in which death
has been implemented throughout the transition from coin-operated
arcade games to home consoles with unlimited lives or save points has in
turn fundamentally changed the way in which players construct systems
of meaning through feedback via failure. Death in the iendishly dificult
Donkey Kong (Nintendo 1981) results in a short intermission between
attempts; the level disappears, the screen goes blank, the current score
and progress is displayed and a jingle plays, and then the level is redrawn
and play resumes. If it was the player’s last life, it is game over, and the
player cannot try again until they insert enough coins for another game.
This disconnection between trial and error, slight as it may seem, is
enough to discourage or at least disrupt the process of iteration and
experimentation necessary to build systems of meaning, increasing the
costs of risk-taking and the pressure on players to not make mistakes. It is
like enforcing a short time-out every time a player missed a shot in a
game of basketball.
The evolution of death and dying in video games can be seen as a

mitigation of the risk of disruption to game learning and the
establishment of spatial presence. With the advent of modern home
consoles and the PC, the ability to save game progress lessened some
degree of ‘death frustration’ and ‘rage-quitting’, and game design
changed to accommodate these new capabilities. Players could
experiment with in-game situations and try new strategies, safe in the
knowledge that if they didn’t succeed, they could reload their last save
game. Designers began building ‘save points’ into their levels, often
48
positioned in the game space before tough or challenging sections for

player convenience as in Knytt Stories (Nygren 2007), or even auto-saving
for the player every so often as in Half-Life 2. The Legend of Zelda (Nintendo
R&D4 1986) for the NES12 featured a battery-powered memory chip in the
cartridge to allow it to save progress, enabling its designers to create a far
longer game in terms of content and explorable area, conident that
players would be able to save their game no matter where they were. This
trend of encouraging risk and experimentation through the devaluation of
player death in terms of consequence has led to titles such as Prince Of
Persia: The Sands of Time (Ubisoft Montreal 2003), where players could
reverse a short amount of time in order to reattempt game challenges
instantly. Being able to save or rewind time became a new type of
functional design and enabled new types of play. The natural evolution of
player death being a nonterminal game event through time reversal is
Jonathan Blow’s Braid (Number None, Inc 2008), in which the player is
free to rewind time at any point during the game for as long as they wish,
and in turn, the game’s puzzles, level design, and narrative all revolve
around the idea of time reversal, multiple possibilities for play, and trial-
and-error.
Functionality and context require timely feedback in order for players

to successfully relate action with consequence. In play, feedback for both
the second-to-second interactions and incremental trial-and-error over
multiple lives is essential for players to have a sense that the game action
is something they are able to control.
Control
Control in game spaces refers both to the link from the player to the game
space through the control interface (such as a game controller, keyboard,
or joystick), and the larger scale concept of player opportunity for free
12
Nintendo Entertainment System
49
choice and to see those choices affect the game state. Both are required to
avoid frustration: many players have quit games because the controls
were too hard, cumbersome, sluggish (the player-character’s movements
felt latent or inaccurate compared to the player’s controller manipulation),
or confusing. Games in which player action is “lead” via rewards or other
persuasive devices rather than presented as free choice are seen to be
“railroading” and lack genuine player motivation (Murphy et al. 2013, 16).
Similarly, games in which the player feels their actions are ineffectual
decrease their sense of ownership or attachment to the game session and
game space, and can be described as lacking Murray’s notion of agency
(Murray 1998). Successful game space design hinges on functional design
for “tight” controls, performance design for offering opportunities for
player choice, and contextual design for successful relection of player
inluence in the game space or outcomes.
Functional design issues of player-character control via input devices

is largely a technological and programming issue, although some
instances of game space design consideration occur, such as gameplay
elements which slow players or reduce control. Realism is often sacriiced
for fun, whereby characters such as Mario and Mega Man can change
direction whilst jumping in mid-air, allowing a high degree of inesse.
Performance considerations for icy areas (where player-characters slip
and slide more) and paralysis type effects such as position holds and
speed debuffs13 need to be balanced for duration so as not to be
frustrating.
Performance design issues of control for player choice and agency

often involve game space design whereby multiple play pathways or
solutions exist for a given level or puzzle. Game franchises such as
13
Debuffs are temporary negative effects which act like a curse or anti-powerup, impeding a player in
some way. Debuffs are common in MMORPG’s and other role-playing games, particularly as offensive
spells used by spellcasters to weaken their opponents.
50
Hitman (IO Interactive 2000) and Deus Ex (Ion Storm 2000) feature design
which supports multiple ways to complete game objectives, and have
been immensely praised for offering mechanics and level design which
supports creative, player-driven solutions rather than narrow, designer
dictated ones. In Deus Ex for instance, a player may gain entry to a
fortiied and guarded compound by either a direct frontal attack, using
stealth to follow a guard through the gate, or bypassing security cameras
and locks via hacking and lock picking. Hearing guards muttering about a
sound they thought they heard or rumours of an intruder increase the
degree of player agency, which is further integrated into the level design
with features such as reinforcements being unable to be called in if the
player disables radio communications, or seals the entry doors. In Hitman,
assassinating a target at a restaurant could be achieved by secretly
planting a bomb under his chair, distracting the waiter and poisoning his
food, or simply bursting in and attacking at the right time. In both cases,
the game space design was tightly coupled to the performance design
such that the player was given options and a sense of control over how
they achieved the game objectives.
Player choice and agency can be served in perhaps the ultimate way
by providing the tools for emergent play, whereby players can create their
own in-game and out-of-game ictions. Emergent narrative inside game
worlds, if the game design allows for it, lies at the crossroads of the entire
core design triad of functionality, context, and performance. In games
where the interactions between objects, characters, and the game world
have been designed to be less scripted and more open to use in a variety
of discoverable ways, players can create their own narratives by enacting
events and roleplaying scenarios, which Murray calls “procedural
authorship” (Murray 1998). Multiplayer game spaces which allow high
degrees of player interaction give rise to a particular type of story
stemming from player interpretation of events, and in turn, event
51
creation. This is known as player story, and can augment the oficial game
story in a game like World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment 2004), or
become the story where there was none, as in Counterstrike: Global
Offensive. For instance, the popular online space exploration simulator
EVE Online (CCP Games 2003) collects player stories on its website (CCP
Games 2013), and these have been used in a graphic novel series from
Dark Horse (Way 2014).
Player stories can often emerge from game spaces that have no overt
goal or ending, yet facilitate high degrees of player-environment and
player-player interaction. The desire to share these stories is part of what
has made Minecraft so popular (Leung 2014), and stories from the
multiplayer zombie apocalypse shooter DayZ have been published as a
book (Journo 2013) and have proven to be popular as episodic adventure
stories on YouTube (Blackout 2014; Jam Jar 2014; Moon 2014). The
upcoming addition to the EverQuest franchise, EverQuest Next (Daybreak
Game Company), plans to leverage player created content in their game
space in order to maximise player agency and the opportunity for player
story, and keep players engaged with their game (Crecente 2013). These
instances of design for emergence, catered for by game environments
which allow and invite player experimentation and coniguration of the
environment for their own entertainment, not only increase longevity and
popularity of the game, but provide compelling experiences for players
which feel self-directed and expressive.
Functionality, context, and performance in video game space design do

not occur as three separate and demarcated design concerns, but overlap
and reinforce each other in providing game experiences which can
support what is commonly referred to as immersion - absolute
engagement in the task of the game via Csikszentmihalyi’s low, and a
feeling of “being there” via transportation and spatial presence. I have
52
visited each of Csikszentmihalyi’s preconditions for low and examined

how aspects of the core design triad contribute to fulilment of the ive
preconditions, being challenge, concentration, clear goals, feedback, and
control. In each case, it was found that at least two aspects were involved
in the condition, and that a level of consistency and balance between them
is required to enable the immersive experience. If the respective designs
do not gel, as is the case for example with goals and ludonarrative
dissonance, or feedback loops constantly interrupted by prolonged player
death sequences, the low experience is at risk of being lost.
53
54
Conclusion
Given the complexity and sophisticated capabilities of modern video game hardware
in terms of representational capability, designing game spaces which are not
overwhelming or confusing but instead invite play and promote long-term
engagement with the game is a challenging prospect. The modern video game
market is as diverse as it is large, and commonality between popular and well-
regarded titles often evades notions of theme or graphical quality and depends on
nebulous concepts such as gameplay and a positive game experience.
Based on the interactive structure of video game engagement, I have outlined

three intertwined design areas intended to encompass necessary design objectives in
order to successfully convey gameplay requirements to the player through the game
space itself. I have described functional design of spaces as that which allows
interaction and inluence on the game system via rules, mechanics, and controls.
Contextual design was shown to involve representation and story within the game
space to provide context for action. Performance design is necessary for the
sequencing and coordination of gameplay elements over time to provide the player
with challenge and a degree of choice in gameplay. It was then shown how design
techniques seen in popular games are in fact comprised of multiple components of
the core design triad.
Using Csikszentmihalyi’s low as an overall goal for game space design, I

explored each of the ive preconditions for low to determine how combinations of
functional, contextual, and performance design might fulil these criteria. It was
shown that each condition requires multiple design aspects in order to provide a
low state, and that design in each contributing area should not conlict with or
contradict the other, or the player loses the immersive qualities of the game
experience. However if functional, contextual, and performance design complement
each other, desirable by-products of low such as transportation and spatial presence
can be achieved.
In proposing a set of three design areas with which to base a foundation for game
space design and the second-order structures which it requires, I aim to assist game
space designers with a uniied model for creation of game spaces which are
56
engaging and motivating. Complementary design in these areas, like the

meshing of well-made cogs, provides a basis for virtual environments
which serve gameplay goals at multiple levels, and guide the architecture
of the game space as a smooth-running machine for play.
57
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Machines for Play:

Functionality, Context, and

This dissertation is submitted in partial fulilment of the requirements for

I declare that this dissertation is my own account of my research and

Video game space design presents numerous challenges, not only in

In the second chapter I use Csikszentmihalyi’s notion of low

Toward these ends, many theorists have put forward arguments

This thesis attempts to unify number of design approaches in existing

Krawczyk and Novak 2006), whilst giving excellent industry-proven

Csikszentmihalyi’s work on low consists of an analysis of the

these goals can be achieved as a natural consequence of cohesion in

In Chapter One, I will explore the unique interactive form of video

Interactivity in Video Games

Video games are designed to be played. To whatever degree is

Effectively, the control of ictive events that in ilm is invested in the

Here, Tavinor describes the role of the player in the cycle of

I wish to avoid ambiguity in the term “interactivity”, since it is clearly

interpretation that it becomes “a purely ideological term, projecting an

In turn, I assert that game space design is driven by the interactive

during gameplay, which I will now explain as the areas of functionality,

Functionality, Context, and Performance

The relationship between player actions and the consequences as relected

Video games are privileged as an interactive media experience in being

My claim is that video game space conveyance depends on player

Games regarded as having excellent conveyance such as Half-Life 2

player to combine this prior knowledge to solve more complex puzzles.

I would like to point out that each of these examples achieves

Functional Design in Game Spaces

The functional design of game spaces is what determines their ludic

made manifest as a visual and spatial representation. In Super Hexagon

Context Design in Game Spaces

I intend the term context to encompass the motivational or at least

The importance of contextual design is to enable the player to read the

This context affects the ability of a player to engage with and

The deining element in computer games is spatiality. Computer games

Aarseth’s “representation and negotiation” is directly related to

Performance Design in Game Spaces

Performance in a design context denotes consideration given to the

motivations, which align to varying degrees with the designer-intended

This player-oriented perspective on the experiential outcomes of game

The goals of performance design are to provide an experience which

challenge in order to maintain player interest (Koster and Wright 2013),

(killers), diamonds (achievers), hearts (socialisers), and spades (explorers)

What performance design can do, in combination with functional and

Second-order Design Principles

Whilst I have explained the design areas of functionality, context, and

Functional and contextual design may leverage real-world behavioural

Conformity to functional conventions of video games such as

considerable appeal often struggle to progress, having no prior

Functional design which seeks to instruct contextually via interactive

Combinations of correspondence, convention, and instructional

The combination of contextual design with both functional and

Depiction refers to the meaning inherent in the representation of the

The construction of the game space can, via architectural implication,

Contextual and performance design together create opportunities for

Environmental storytelling creates the preconditions for an immersive

Jenkins explains contextual information as not just a matter of content

The organization of the plot becomes a matter of designing the

Jenkins’ assertion is exempliied in King’s Quest (Williams, 1983), a

design effort is spent providing a story which encourages player

In this chapter I have examined the interactive structure of video

And to watch him play that game was like