During the course of my thesis research on game cities, I have found that considering spaces as public and private reveals fundamental elements that guide game design. Public spaces are often the result of the medium of the game’s desire or need to adventure out into the unfamiliar world. Public spaces are open to adventure, danger, and the unknown, whereas personal private spaces in general are familiar and safe. In her 1961 tome The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs wrote about the sidewalk as an active place that must be guarded to sustain the pedestrian dynamics of the city. Erving Goffman’s Behavior in Public Places provided a study of personal behavior in public spaces that also contribute to social order (Goffman 1963). Public spaces become safe when there are forces that maintain social order; private space become unsafe when they are invaded when we enter unknown places.
Games play into these dynamics to craft tensions and opportunities. We can see this in play in games of all genres. Players sneak into top-secret laboratories, try to escape from monster-infested dungeons, and venture deep into unknown lands. They also take refuge in private spaces, often protecting them from invaders. A trope of the role-playing game genre is for guards to protect the gates of the town or genre, not only keeping the evils of the world out, but forbidding the player from venturing into the wild before they are ready. Considering these dynamics and that “private space is distinct from, but always connected with, public space” (Lefebvre 166), we can see the importance of public and private city spaces.
I would like to illustrate three examples, taken from my thesis research, of this dynamic at play as a part of the narrative environment. The first is the generally public space of Tony Hawk’s Underground. The second is the violation of private space in Max Payne. Lastly, Grand Theft Auto IV is an example of the player as the violator of public space.
The Manhattan of Tony Hawk’s Underground is nearly all public space. Borden chronicled the history of skateboarding in terms of public and private places: from the city streets and the drained pools of California backyards, to the fabricated skateparks and reappropriated public architecture, the place of skateboarding is always in flux (Borden 108). This creates opportunities in the Tony Hawk games much the same as it does in the physical world.
The player rides on every piece of architecture available—storefronts, staircase railings, the roofs of buildings, the sidewalk and street, and even telephone and power lines. Some missions involve impressing pedestrians through the transformation of public property into spectacle. Others involve escaping from security guards or police designated to protect public space from intruders like yourself. The narrative of the game is not just about an up-and-coming skater trying to make it big, but also, as Iacovoni observed, the act of skating transforms spaces public and private into personal places dedicated to the player’s use.
Max Payne opens with a highly evocative scene. In a playable flashback sequence, the player, as Max Payne, comes home to their apartment calling out to their wife as the fireplace crackles. The apartment is cozy—hardwood floors and area rugs provide contrast to the usual concrete and pavement traversed in most games. Immediately this scene is disrupted, as the player catches a glimpse of hanging paintings turned on their side and a large letter V and syringe spray-painted on the wall. As the player makes their way through the house the tranquility of a familiar apartment is violently severed—a series of cinematic cuts show blood on the wall and the screaming of a woman and child are heard in the background. The player regains control over their movement, killing the men who have perpetrated the crime. But it is too late.
Again a series of cinematic cuts show a nursery, a pile of baby blocks, and then the murdered body of Max Payne’s child. After another shootout we see his slain wife on the bed. This opening, which shows the private protected space we most value violently ravaged gives the player motivation for the rest of the game. Here we see evocative narrative environments and elements at play. The elements are the murdered family, the spray-painted logo, and the escaping criminals. The environment is the normally safe private place—the furnished well-loved house—turned on its head both visually and through gameplay action.
There is no danger in Niko Bellic from Grand Theft Auto IV walking the streets of the Bronx at 4 in the morning. The player needs not worry about being mugged or assaulted. There is little threat of pedestrians becoming enemies (sometimes they will fight back if you punch them, but mostly they keep to themselves). On the one hand, the narrative of Grand Theft Auto IV is Niko as victim of circumstance just trying to get by in a strange place. On the other hand, the design of the world tells the story of Niko as a public menace. The gameplay of GTA IV is selfish and the world accommodates this. Ignoring for a moment the wanted system which determines police pursuit of the player, they are free to steal cars, kill pedestrians, run red lights, smash into other vehicles, drive anywhere their vehicle will prohibit, possess a range of weapons, and generally pose a threat to every resident of Liberty City.
Public space becomes threatening in Grand Theft Auto IV when missions are engaged because it leaves the player vulnerable. A massive outdoor gunfight might have enemies spread all over the place trying to kill the player, while one false move in front of a police officer forces the player to focus both on the goals of the mission and evading the pursuing police who will throw them off-course or end the mission. Liberty City tells a very different story about the use of space than our normal experience—it is a world where social norms are designed to be broken.
Cited:
Borden, Iain. Skateboarding, Space and the City. New York: Berg, 2006.
Goffman, Erving. Behavior in Public Places. Free Press, September 1966.
Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith. Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 1992.
Good little snacky bite of the thesis. When’s the defense? What you write about GTA 4 pretty much echoes what I wrote about the spatial rhythm of L4D – wide open spaces fucking suck, because all of a sudden you’re covering 360 degrees of zombies instead of two directions. In GTA 4 it’s especially annoying, because one shotgun blast from a cop pretty much sets you back 30 minutes of play time. When we talked about GTA in Ian’s class, I shared my secret of -always- running on foot to get away from cops. They never follow you very well down alleyways, and then can’t jump over walls and fences like you can – definitely a Certeau-ian disruption of the control of the city.
Like the comparison of public and private spaces. Did you cover Assassin’s Creed in your thesis? Simon made me think of it when he mentioned that GTA cops have a hard time catching the player on foot. In AC the guards that you encounter are almost as athletic as you are, they can climb and run as fast as the player.
However, I think AC is framed differently. With GTA the player is in a modern day city, which brings our cultural norms with it. In AC you are in medieval Jerusalem so fading into crowds, killing people and generally getting away with horrible acts can be masked by our romanticized notions of a lawless or ruthless medieval time. In this way I would compare AC to something like Tony Hawk’s Underground more so than GTA since the player in AC is an outsider entering into public city spaces in order to use them to complete their job.
Did you go into the trend of sandbox type game spaces in your thesis? It’s interesting to see how games like Underground, AC and GTA all have similar open formats but can be seen as very different representations of space.
@Ben
I did not take a look at Assassin’s Creed, as I focused only on New York City games. I’ll put it on the list to consider if I get to turn this thing into a book, though.
As for sandbox games, I actually chose to put the concept of sandbox aside. Nitsche has a good quote in his book which reads “Words like sandbox do not refer to structures but rather their use (Nitsche 171).” I’m focusing on a specific use, which is the player’s imaging of space through the guided activity of mission and level structure. Sandbox possibilities aren’t completely unrelated, of course, and are definitely a way that people get to know the space, but I chose to focus elsewhere. Maybe I’ll throw a little something into the paper about that to cover my ass.
Hi!
I enjoyed reading it. I am also working on the production of space in SL. I would like to read your thesis. I wonder if it is available online. Thanks
M Rahman