Gameworld Interfaces by Kristine Jørgensen

Author:Kristine Jørgensen [Jørgensen, Kristine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: [KEYWORDS, COMMA SEPARATED]
ISBN: 9780262026864
Publisher: The MIT Press
Published: 2013-07-22T16:00:00+00:00

Figure 3.1

Prince of Persia (Ubisoft Montreal 2008)

In light of the discussion in chapter 2 about ubiquity, it is unfair to say that the goal of these games is transparency: taking a closer look, we can see that these gameworlds are indeed activity spaces littered not only with affordances, but also with a plethora of signifiers that provide the player with perceptible information about how to interact with the environment. Even though Prince of Persia does not feature any overlay or WIMP features, relevant gameplay information is made explicit by the use of signifiers and stresses the gameworld as an activity space designed with a specific gameplay in mind. This approach to the gameworld interface is one that must be seen as completely world oriented because it relies only on elements that are part of the gameworld ecology. In this sense, the gameworld is an ecology because it asks the player to look for interactional information in the gameworld itself.

In Prince of Persia, fiction is used very clearly as a contextualization of the game mechanics. For instance, the avatar cannot die but is saved by his companion, Elika, and her magical abilities whenever he is about to fall into a pit or is given a mortal blow by an enemy. Also, the so-called light seeds are interesting in this sense. Light seeds are balls of energy that the player collects in order to reenergize Elika’s magical powers after having killed a boss and “healed the environment.” They are represented as floating, overexposed balls of light that in many other games would not have been explained fictionally but would rather be seen as game-system information, as in the floating icons located above character heads in Diablo 2. In the context of Prince of Persia, however, they are explained as magical features cohering with the game’s fiction. The game also uses props in the format of optional dialogues between the Prince and Elika. These dialogues provide personality to the two characters and reveal the implications of a romantic subplot. The characters also refer to events that we are not shown in the game, such as the prince’s lost donkey. These props encourage us to imagine a larger universe with additional events outside what we can witness in the course of the game.

An Augmented Gameworld Interface

Another approach that comes close to the pure gameworld interface found in Prince of Persia is the augmented gameworld interface typically found in first-person-view games. This perspective provides a close-to-the ground view of the world. Games using this perspective allow the player to navigate the gameworld primarily by looking or listening for information in the environment, but they also augment the gameworld by the use of an additional HUD or other WIMP features.

The first-person shooter Crysis takes this approach (see figure 2.2, chapter 2). Eric describes the navigation of the Crysis gameworld in terms of an environment in which he is present and has an inside perspective that allows him to treat the gameworld as he would any physical space.

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