Spatial Literacy: Reading (and Writing) Game Space
Celia Pearce
Assistant Professor of Digital Media
Director, Experimental Game Lab and Emergent Game Group
School of Literature, Communication and Culture
Georgia Institute of Technology
[email protected]
Conventions of Spatial Literacy
Conventions in media serve as a kind of shorthand between creator and audience: In
order to understand and enjoy novels, films, theaters, audiences must be able to “read”
the conventions of these media. Though early filmgoers did not understand that the
train coming toward them in the Lumiere Brothers’ L'Arrivée d'un train à La Ciotat
(1895) was merely a projected moving image on a two-dimensional surface, today’s
cinema audiences are accustomed to the language of film. Media consumers frequently
take these conventions for granted, yet, as Sturken and Cartright have pointed out;
media literacies are neither intuitive nor passive. Producers invent conventions and
visual languages with which viewers must actively engage in order to construct meaning
(2001). Audiences must become complicit in these conventions, engaging in what Janet
Murray describes as the “active creation of belief” (1997, 110).
That games are spatial, a notion introduced by Murray (1997), as well as the author
(1997), and others (Jenkins 1998; Nitsche and Thomas 2003; Fullerton, Morie, and
Pearce 2007), is now generally accepted as a foregone conclusion. Aarseth plumbs the
depths of space in his essay on the topic (2000), and an entire volume has since been
devoted to numerous essays on the subject (von Borries, Walz, and Böttger 2007). Even
from their earliest, most primordial instantiations, video games have struggled with the
representation of space on the two-dimensional, albeit dynamic, plane of the screen,
requiring players to develop a sense of spatial literacy1, that is, a mode of conventions
for “reading” game space. From early text-based adventures, moving toward the more
graphical games of this genre, such as the early Ultima (Figure 1) and Indiana Jones
(Figure 2) series, we can observe the struggle to portray space within a limited pixel
count and color palette, interstitial representations which eventually resolve into today’s
spatial conventions of gaming. Note the increase in fidelity of the second image, creating
affordances for more detail and hence for a more seamless integration of narrative
elements into the visual scene. Also note the shift from a top-down mode of navigation
to a head-on view of the game environs.
1
This is not to be confused with the term “spatial literacy” as applied to geographical knowledge
and the discipline GIS (Geographical Information Systems) (Longley and Singleton 2006).
Pearce/Spatial Literacy
Future & Reality of Gaming 2008
Page 1
Figure 1: The first game in the Ultima series (Origin 1985) depicted navigable space in plan
view, while structures, creatures, and people are shown in elevation. (Image: Moby Games)
Figure 2: Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (LucasArts 1992) used fixed-point perspective
to represent three-dimensional space, although the navigation was effectively side-scrolling.
Agency took place through multiple-choice actions enacted on objects in the scene through the
“point and click” convention that became synonymous with the adventure game genre.
(Image: Moby Games.)
Pearce/Spatial Literacy
Future & Reality of Gaming 2008
Page 2
Regardless of the game genre, spatial literacy is critical to understanding how to “read”
game space. We must understand, for instance, the construct of the top-down view, and
accept the inconsistencies of representations of the objects being seen from head-on.
(Figure 1) We must know if objects have a backside, if they can be circumnavigated. We
must understand which objects in the space we can interact with and which we cannot.
(Figure 2) We must understand principles of occlusion: that objects cover other objects
that are in front of them. We often must understand the mechanical properties of the
space, such as its simulated physics, in order to play the game properly. Individuals who
are not familiar with the spatial representation of video games will not be able to “read”
the space and therefore be unable to construct meaning from its components.
Practices of Spatial Literacy: The Case of Myst and Uru
Myst was one of the most significant titles in developing the spatial conventions of
games. Originally self-published by Cyan Worlds, Myst was distributed as a commercial
game by Brøderbund in 1993, and maintained the rank of best-selling CD-ROM game of
all time until 2001, when it was outpaced by The Sims. Seen as a major progression from
the video game’s primitive origins, Myst was the first computer game to be considered a
work of art, and is often cited as an indication that computer games had “come of age”
(Ashe 2003; Carroll 1994).
Figure 3: Myst (Cyan/Brøderbund 1993) drew players into a complex, three-dimensional world
they had to interpret to understand. (Image: Author)
Myst developed a new language of “spatial storytelling” (Murray 1997; Pearce 1997;
2002; 2007), even though its technology was rudimentary. Essentially a nonlinear slide
show of geographically linked environments, Myst created the illusion of navigating in
first person through a fully realized virtual world. Players explored a mysterious,
Pearce/Spatial Literacy
Future & Reality of Gaming 2008
Page 3
apparently abandoned island using a deceptively simple interface, allowing them to
inhabit a visually rich environment represented by a complex network of interconnected
still images. (Figure 3) The screen was free from clutter common to games of this era
(note Figure 2). An icon appeared on the screen when an action, such as moving to the
next space or examining an object, was available.
Players took the role of an undefined character, obliquely referred to as “The Stranger.”
They had little direct contact with nonplayer characters (NPCs), only with their forensic
evidence. Thus, the space itself became the main character of the story, with most
relevant narrative events having occurred in the past. This method, which I described in
some of my earlier writings as the “interactive backstory” (1997; 2002; 2004),
demanded that players develop the skills of “spatial literacy” with which this paper is
concerned.
The spatial literacy adopted by Myst players was directly related to the premise and
visual language of the game. Myst and its sequels take place within a society of artisans
who “write” entire worlds into existence, a compelling metaphor for computer
programming. This conceit also created a viable context for an extensible world that
integrated extensive written text without interrupting the believability or flow of the
experience.
Myst gave rise to a series totaling five single-player games, as well as Uru: Ages Beyond
Myst, a massively multiplayer game set in the Myst world. Uru has had a tumultuous
history. Originally launched in 2003, it never really got off the ground and its initial sixmonth beta (titled Uru Prologue) closed in February of 2004. Hundreds of the 10,000
players from the original beta immigrated into virtual worlds such as There.com and
Second Life, developing Uru-based fictive ethnicities and communities, and leveraging
the creative affordances of these worlds. Additionally, a group of hacker fans were able,
with participation from Cyan, to create a system of fan-run servers, maintained for
about two years, until the game was again re-launched in February of 2007 as Myst
Online: Uru Live on Turner Broadcasting’s GameTap subscription service. A little over a
year later, the game once again closed and at the time of this writing, Cyan had
announced that it reacquired rights to Uru and was reopening yet a third version that
integrated user-created content. The release of this instantiation of Uru was imminent
at the time of this writing. Uru has had one of the longest-standing game fan
communities of any multiplayer online game, and, as one writer has observed, the fanran variation of the game outlived both commercial versions (Carless 2008). This paper
is derived from the author’s ongoing ethnographic research on the Uru Diaspora2,
beginning in 2004, to the present, including contributing to the reopening of the game
in 2007.
2
In addition to a number of papers on this work (Pearce and Artemesia 2006; Pearce and
Artemesia 2008; Pearce 2006b; 2006a), this work will be published in the forthcoming volume,
Communities of Play: Emergent Cultures in Multiplayer Games and Virtual Worlds (MIT,
Spring 2009).
Pearce/Spatial Literacy
Future & Reality of Gaming 2008
Page 4
Most Uru players had been longtime Myst fans, and so were well acquainted with the
vocabulary and conventions of the series, whose gameplay comprised a blend of
elaborate puzzles and scavenger hunt mechanics. Uru had one vital difference, however,
from its precursors in that it added the feature of a player avatar, dubbed an “Explorer.”
The name U-R-U, in fact, implied that this character was the player in the present day.
Unlike “The Stranger,” the “Explorer” was embodied, adding to spatial literacy the
negotiation of the body in space. In D’ni, the language of the Myst world, Uru also
means “community” or “gathering.” The addition of the avatar introduced a sense of
proprioception, and also provided players with a mechanism for “seeing and being seen”
by other players, both of which enhanced players sense of presence (Pearce 2006a).
The objective of Uru, like other Myst games, is never explicitly stated but is alluded to
obliquely by Yeesha via a hologram (also a puzzle.) To vastly oversimplify (the story is
incredibly elaborate), it is ultimately to visit all the Ages and collect the seven Journey
Cloths that Yeesha has hidden in each. (Figure 4) The outcome of this will be to free the
Bahro, or Beast People, whom Yeesha refers to as “The Least,” and who have been
enslaved by the prideful D’ni.
Figure 4: Uru player touching a Journey Cloth in Eder Kemo, the Garden Age.
(Image: Guild of Greeters)
Pearce/Spatial Literacy
Future & Reality of Gaming 2008
Page 5
Practices of Spatial Literacy
To illustrate in more detail the phenomenon of spatial literacy, I will take a cultural
anthropology approach to game criticism by drawing from my ongoing study of Uru
players and describe the ways in which players have developed a unique cultural
practice of “reading” space derived from the decade-long encounter with the Myst
world. This cultural practice, which requires a high level of active intellectual
engagement, exemplifies de Certeau’s notion of consumption as a creative act (1984).
One might view such a practice as discursive, a dialog between designers and players,
and as the series evolved, Cyan developed increasingly sophisticated methods of spatial
communication. Players, in turn, developed increasingly sophisticated spatial literacies.
In the following sections I will give examples of four practices among Uru players that
both demonstrate and develop spatial literacy. These practices operate in an
interdependent, often emergent fashion, in which one form of spatial literacy practice
builds on and feeds the others. These practices are:
•
•
•
•
Interpretation—Reading Space: Understanding space and its meaning.
Discourse—Describing Space: Talking about space.
Emergent Gameplay—Playing Space: Using knowledge of space appropriatively
to create unique forms of gameplay.
Productive Play—Writing Space: Creating facsimile and new spaces using a
particular spatial vocabulary and syntax.
Interpretation—Reading Space
Myst games are rich with hidden meaning, which players must interpret in order to
progress. A unique example of this in Uru, not present in other Myst games, is the Relto.
The player’s home base, it comprises a small adobe hut on an island floating in the
clouds. The Relto is tied to the player’s identity in two ways. First, it is where the player
both creates and edits her avatar, by opening a wardrobe inside the hut. Second, it
serves as a means of tracking progress in the game. As players traverse each Age, they
collect various items that add features to the Relto, including the linking books—a
mechanism of teleportation—that provide access to the Ages themselves.
The interpretive aspect of spatial literacy is illustrated by the following example. Having
never completed the game due to my preoccupation with studying its players, in the
final months of Myst Online: Uru Live, I asked an experienced player to assist me in this
endeavor. She requested an invitation to my Relto, which I obliged by opening a small
leather book that all players wear on their belts and offering it to her. She placed her
hand on the book and entered my Relto, and I followed.
Pearce/Spatial Literacy
Future & Reality of Gaming 2008
Page 6
Figure 5: “BEFORE” and “AFTER” screenshots from the Guild of Greeters site illustrate the
transformations that take place in the Relto as you progress in the game.
(Image: Guild of Greeters)
At the start of the game, the Relto is relatively bare. As players begin to visit Ages, new
features are added. Uru has no point system, and because the gameplay is nonlinear,
achievement is measured in a cumulative rather than a linear achievement-based
fashion. Progress is marked through the addition to the Relto of features collected in
each Age, which will be different for each player based not only on which Ages they have
been to, but also which part of each Age they have visited. Thus, this experienced player,
deeply familiar with the “language” of the game, was able to quickly assess, based on the
features in my Relto, which Ages I had access to and where I had been in each. Figure 5,
taken from the Guild of Greeters web site (which shall be described in more detail in the
next section) illustrates the difference in appearance between a new player’s Relto and
that of a player who has made a degree of progress in the game.
Discourse—Describing Space
In this section, I will present an example of how players talk about and describe the
spaces of Uru by referring to a game guide on the Guild of Greeters web site. The Guild
of Greeters is a self-created Uru group dedicated to helping new players learn the game.
Uru has a pervasive culture of newbie support, and the Guild of Greeters has formalized
this in a variety of ways, including in-game tours, and as extra-virtual, web-based
walkthroughs. The following analysis uses excerpts from a walkthrough, created by the
Guild of Greeters, for what Uru players characterize as the most complex Age in the
game, Kadish Tolesa. Kadish Tolesa has a number of qualities that make it a particularly
Pearce/Spatial Literacy
Future & Reality of Gaming 2008
Page 7
useful exemplar to illustrate the complex skills of spatial literacy required and adopted
by Uru players; the walkthrough referred to here, through both figures and text, also
provides one of the best examples of the ways in which players both talk about and
illustrate the game space. Through the way they describe the game, players have
developed a kind of poetics of game space (Bachelard 1964; Fullerton, Morie, and Pearce
2007), taking a game that uses a largely visual language and translating it into English
in their own words.
Kadish Tolesa is entered at the base a grove of giant tree trunks integrated with
architectural elements. (Figure 6) Trees are an important part of the Uru mythology:
“The Great Tree of Possibility” is referred to repeatedly throughout the game, also
serving as a metaphor for its nonlinear and exploratory nature. This area is described on
the Guild of Greeters web site thus:
You arrive in an open area surrounded by giant trees. You see leaves falling gently
from above, a linking pedestal with a Nexus book and two pathways with broken
stone arches, one lit and one unlit. Take the path through the unlit arch.
Figure 6: A few falling leaves and beams of light suggest foliage above giant tree trunks in
the entrance to Kadish Age of Uru. (Image: Guild of Greeters.)
Passing under either of the archways affixed to the trees, will you find yourself among
one of two sets of ruins, consisting of pavilions with scopes mounted on them. When you
climb up onto each of them, you will find a scope that is positioned facing another scope
in the distance. You will notice an open book near one of the scopes. (Figure 7) In Myst
games, books serve the function of portals. Clicking on the image shown in any open
book will take you to the illustrated area or Age. This convention is well known among
Myst players, whereas players unfamiliar with the series might not be aware that the
Pearce/Spatial Literacy
Future & Reality of Gaming 2008
Page 8
book is actually a portal; they might expect to click on it and see text, for instance, which
can also sometimes be the case. Clicking on this book takes you to the Kadish Gallery.
Figure 7: The Kadish Gallery book at one of the scope pavilions.
(Image: Guild of Greeters)
The gallery image in the Guild of Greeters walkthrough (Figure 8) is accompanied by the
following text, which reveals that a key to understanding this Age lies in knowing the
personality of its creator (an allegory for the personality of the game’s designers.):
The puzzles of Kadish Tolesa are among Uru’s more difficult ones. Not only do you
have to figure out how to solve them, you must also figure out how to interpret the
clues. [Here, again, we see the importance of interpretation.] All of the clues are in
this gallery. Study the panels, then make detailed notes and sketches or take KI
pictures of them. Be prepared to return here to look at panels as you go through the
age.
An important thing to keep in mind for all Kadish puzzles is the fact that Guild
Master Kadish was known for his careful omission of information in order to seem
more powerful to others. Thus, the basis to solving the puzzles lies in discovering
what is missing rather than what is seen. We will point out this theme periodically
in the walkthrough.
Pearce/Spatial Literacy
Future & Reality of Gaming 2008
Page 9
Figure 8: The Kadish Gallery contains visual clues to solving all the puzzles in the Age.
Seasoned players will know to have a paper and pencil handy in order to do detailed
sketches of all the patterns found in this room. Initially, these patterns will have no
meaning when taken out of context, but because designs and patterns that will be
relevant at later points are common in Myst games, Uru players have developed a
meticulous eye for detail and a skill for replicating complex visual patterns accurately, a
skill that also comes into play in the “productive play” aspect of spatial literacy. Along
with the “reversal/omission” interpretation described above, the meaning of each of
these patterns will become evident only when the player reaches the relevant puzzle.
The linking book conceit creates an affordance for complex spatial relationships that
defy traditional notions of both space and time. The Kadish Gallery, for instance, is
located within the lost city of D’ni Ae’gura, the central, neutral gathering area of the
game, which is set in the present day. It is clear once you exit the Gallery into the City
that you are no longer in the same “time” of the Age you have been exploring. However,
you can return to your instance of Kadish Tolesa via a linking book in the Gallery.
Kadish demonstrates in particular how integral puzzles are to the space itself. Most of
the puzzles cause dramatic structural alterations to the environment. The following
example, from the Guild of Greeters walkthrough, demonstrates both the integrated
puzzle design, and the explanation and description that players use to decode and
explain these intricacies, through the use of both text and diagrams to guide players in
solving the puzzle.
Pearce/Spatial Literacy
Future & Reality of Gaming 2008
Page 10
Figure 9: A diagrammatic illustration from the Guild of Greeters showing how to solve the
cylindrical room in the Kadish Age.
In Figure 9, an inset showing the pattern on a stained glass window from the Kadish
Gallery (the solution to the puzzle) is shown in the upper left hand corner. The
illuminated blue dots on the left side indicate a series of buttons that must be pushed to
activate the floor of the room. The red dot on the right indicates the location the player
must stand. The larger, main image shows the pattern on the floor that is illuminated
when the correct buttons are pushed. But there is a trick here. Per the Guild of Greeters,
“… remember that the key to progress in Kadish is to find what is unseen or not
obvious.” Note that the path the player is to walk, indicated by dimensionalized yellow
arrows is not, as one might assume, illuminated, but in shadow. The inset at lower right
shows the effect once the shadow path is traversed to the circle at center: The floor tiles
descend to become a staircase leading down into another room.
After transforming several other puzzle rooms, you finally arrive at the conclusion of
this Age, Master Kadish’s private vault, suspended ominously by cables in the center of a
large cavern. (Figure 10) The code for entering this vault involves recognizing the
numbers of the D’ni numerical system on a control panel, matching those numbers with
symbols seen in the Kadish Gallery, then following a numerical sequencing pattern that
involves calculating what is absent from each number set.
Pearce/Spatial Literacy
Future & Reality of Gaming 2008
Page 11
Figure 10: The Kadish vault, suspended perilously in the center of a cavern.
Figure 11: The Kadish vault, replete with treasure, paints a stark portrait of greed and its
consequences.
Pearce/Spatial Literacy
Future & Reality of Gaming 2008
Page 12
Once solved, the door opens and you discover the skeleton of Kadish himself lying amid
heaps of treasure. (Figure 11) This follows the convention in Myst games of rarely
introducing actual characters, only their forensic evidence. The scene in Kadish’s vault
is also indicative of the series’ spatial storytelling conventions, and bears a similarity to
conventions of theme park design. Kadish’s entire rise and fall, characterized by greed,
wealth and pride, is captured in this one spatialized moment. A note on the floor in D’ni,
annotated by the main character of the game Yeesha, punctuates his tragic end. This is
perhaps the best example of one of the underlying themes of all the Myst games: the
perils of pride and lust for power.
Figure 12: The alternate version of the Kadish vault.
Within the vault is a linking book that leads to an alternate version of this room, one
supposes, at a different point in time. (Figure 12) In this version, most of the treasures
are missing, but a few new artifacts have been added, including a page that, if collected,
will add butterflies to your Relto, a light ending to an otherwise dark Age. Note that this
version of the vault does not have the requisite exit path, so one has to return to the
original instantiation of the vault in order to exit and complete the Age.
In Kadish, as in every Age, the discovery of all seven Journey Cloths unlocks the
“Journey Door” where you collect one of the donut-shaped stone totems that are
incrementally added to your Relto has you progress in the game. The path to the
“Journey Door” in Kadish is highly precarious: you must balance on a cable, tightrope
style, then jump down to a ledge to access the door. (Figure 13)
Pearce/Spatial Literacy
Future & Reality of Gaming 2008
Page 13
Figure 13: A diagram from the Guild of Greeters web site shows the path down the cable that
leads to the Journey Door.
Emergent Gameplay—Playing Space
Figure 14: Uru player hiding inside a tree during
a game of hide-and-seek. (Image by the Author)
In addition to players’ interpretation of and discourses about the game’s space, spatial
literacy can also be revealed through emergent gameplay. Here I provide some examples
that demonstrate the way in which players’ knowledge and particular way of “reading
Pearce/Spatial Literacy
Future & Reality of Gaming 2008
Page 14
space” allowed for emergent gameplay. The first example is “hide-and-seek.” Though
not a formal part of the game rules, players adopted the habit of playing hide-and-seek
in Eder Kemo due to its plethora of hiding places. Hide-and-seek was a natural
extension of the scavenger hunt mechanic in that players’ understanding of the space
allowed them to hide in creative and original ways. The rules by which the game was
played was that each person found by the “it” person would join in the hunt for the
remaining hiders. Players received high praise for finding the most inventive or creative
hiding place. The image here illustrates a player who has hidden his avatar within the
trunk of a brain tree, exploiting a collision flaw in the model. (Figure 14)
Other examples include a number of player-created sports included in the “D’ni
Olympics.” These included the popular “avie bowling,” which entailed sinking ones
avatar up to the neck in a floor with a particular collision flaw and using one’s head to
knock down traffic cones that were scattered throughout the city, cone-balancing,
staying atop an inverted cone, and tent-rope climbing, a tightrope-style game. These
games required players to intimately understand the properties of the world and then
master some aspect of it, complete with technical flaws and constraints.
Writing Game Space
In this section, I will talk about the aspect of spatial literacy as expressed through what I
term “productive play.” (2006b) These are activities in which play transforms into
creative production. Because Uru players have now been ejected from three different
instantiations of the game, they have adopted the practice of preserving their culture
through artifact creation in more open-ended virtual worlds such as There.com and
Second Life. Over time, they have created artifacts and environments that run along a
spectrum from entirely derivative of to loosely inspired by Uru and other Myst games.
These artifacts have particular meaning to Uru players that may not be known to the
other players. Uru players will immediately recognize, for instance, linking book
pedestals in the virtual worlds Second Life and There.com. (Figure 15)
Figure 15: Player-made linking book pedestals in Second Life (left) and There.com (right.)
Pearce/Spatial Literacy
Future & Reality of Gaming 2008
Page 15
In Second Life, Uru players’ spatial literacy enabled them to recreate entire sections of
Uru. Eder Kemo was a particularly popular Age for group activities, and was the primary
Age in which hide-and-seek games were conducted among the players in my study.
(Figure 16)
Figure 16: Uru’s Eder Kemo (left) and the Second Life player-made version (right.)
An Uru refugee in There.com also recreated environmental elements from Myst,
including components for constructing the game’s Channelwood forest. (Figure 17)
These trees have also become popular among non-Uru players, with the result that
many players have created Myst forests without realizing the special meaning of these
artifacts.
Figure 17: The Channelwood Age of Myst (left), and a player-made Channelwood in There.com (right).
(Image by Raena; forest components by Raena; build by KT3)
Another Uru-inspired artifact that has become pervasive in There.com culture is the
cone house. Loosely based on an Uru structure, it eventually became the predominate
building on the campus of the University of There, a player-run educational center many
of whose faculty and administrators are Uru refugees. (Figure 18)
3
To protect their privacy, avatar names have been replace with pseudonyms.
Pearce/Spatial Literacy
Future & Reality of Gaming 2008
Page 16
Figure 18: The campus of the player –run University of There consists
primarily of Uru-inspired cone houses.
(Image by the author; buildings by Damanji3)
As players mastered the spatial literacy of Uru, they began to take significant liberties
with its vocabulary, developing their own completely original Uru-inspired
environments. The final image is of Numbakulla, a totally original Myst-inspired game
created by players in Second Life. (Figure 19) Here productive players adopt the style of
the Myst series to create an exploratory puzzle game that uses many of the same
conventions and techniques of the original Myst games.
Figure 19: Numbakulla, an original player-created game in Second Life inspired by Myst.
Pearce/Spatial Literacy
Future & Reality of Gaming 2008
Page 17
Conclusion
The preceding chapters provide analysis and specific examples player practices of
spatial literacy as applied to a specific game. These practices include:
•
•
•
•
Interpretation—Reading Space: Understanding space and its meaning.
Discourse—Describing Space: Talking about space.
Emergent Gameplay—Playing Space: Using knowledge of space appropriatively
to create unique forms of gameplay.
Productive Play—Writing Space: Creating facsimile and new spaces using a
particular spatial vocabulary and syntax.
As demonstrated here, Uru players developed a specific style of spatial literacy in direct
response to the conventions of spatial narrative developed by Cyan worlds. Uru players,
most of whom were longtime Myst fans, were “fluent” in the language of the Myst world
and engaged in active practices of consumption as a manifestation of their spatial
literacy. While this investigation has been specific to Uru and its players, these four
practices of spatial literacy could easily be extrapolated to many other games and game
genres. Each of these practices can be seen in a range of communities. For instance,
World of Warcraft players exhibit extensive discursive practices, such as Thotbot, an
online Wikipedia-style database of quest guides. Understanding player practices of
spatial literacy will help us to better understand not only the process of game design, but
the way those designs are interpreted by, and in the process, co-constructed by players.
References
Aarseth, Espen. 2000. Allegories of Space: The Question of Spatiality in Computer Games. In
Cybertext Yearbook 2000, ed. Markku Eskelinen and Raine Koskimaa. University of
Jyväskylä.
Ashe, Suzanne. 2003. Exporing Myst's Brave New World. Wired 11.06.
Bachelard, Gaston. 1964. The Poetics of Space. New York: Orion Press.
von Borries, Friederich, Steffen P Walz, and Matthias Böttger, eds. 2007. Space Time Play:
Computer Games, Architecture and Urbanism: The Next Level. Ed. Friederich von
Borries, Steffen P Walz, and Matthias Böttger. Basel/Boston/Berlin: Birkhäuser.
Carless, Simon. 2008. Opinion: Myst Online: Uru - Beyond Cancellation. GameSetWatch, March
6. http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2008/03/opinion_myst_online_uru_beyond.php.
Carroll, Jon. 1994. Guerrillas in the Myst. Wired Magazine 2, no. 1 (August).
de Certeau, Michel. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley, California: University of
California Press.
Pearce/Spatial Literacy
Future & Reality of Gaming 2008
Page 18
Fullerton, Tracy, Jacquelyn Morie, and Celia Pearce. 2007. A Game of One’s Own: Towards a
New Gendered Poetics of Digital Space” . In Proceedings of perthDAC 2007: The 7th
International Digital Arts and Culture Conference: The Future of Digital Media Culture,
ed. Andrew Hutchison, 136-146. Perth, Australia.
Jenkins, Henry. 1998. "Complete Freedom of Movement": Video Games as Gendered Play
Spaces. In From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and computer games, ed. Justine
Cassell and Henry Jenkins. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
Longley, Paul, and Alex Singleton. 2006. Spatial-Literacy.org. Spatial-literacy.org. present.
http://www.spatial-literacy.org/.
Murray, Janet H. 1997. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace.
Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
Nitsche, Michael, and Maureen Thomas. 2003. Stories in Space: The Concept of the Story Map.
In , ed. Oliver Balet, Gerard Subsol, and Patrice Torquet, 85-94. Graz, Austria: Springer
Verlag.
Pearce, Celia. 1997. The Interactive Book: A Guide to the Interactive Revolution. Indianapolis,
Indiana: Macmillan Technical Publishing.
---. 2002. Story as Play Space: Narrative in Games. In Game On, the History and Culture of
Videogames, ed. Lucien King. London: Laurence King Publishing Limited.
---. 2004. Towards a Game Theory of Game. In First Person: New Media as Story, Performance
and Game, ed. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
---. 2006a. Seeing and Being Seen: Presence and Play in Online Virtual Worlds. In Online,
Offline & The Concept of Presence When Games and VR Collide, ed. Jacquelyn Ford
Morie. University of Southern California Centers for Creative Technologies.
---. 2006b. Productive Play: Game Culture from the Bottom Up. Games & Culture 1, no. 1: 1724.
---. 2007. Narrative Environments from Disneyland to World of Warcraft. In Space Time Play:
Computer Games, Architecture and Urbanism: The Next Level, ed. Friedrich von Borries,
Steffen P Walz, and Matthias Böttger. Basel/Boston/Berlin: Birkhaüser.
Pearce, Celia, and Artemesia. 2006. Communities of Play: The Social Construction of Identity in
Persistent Online Game Worlds. In Second Person: , ed. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat
Harrigan. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.
---. 2008. Identity-as-Place: Trans-Ludic Identities in Mediated Play Communities—
The Case of the Uru Diaspora. In . Copenhagen: Association of Internet Researchers,
October 15.
Sturken, Marita, and Lisa Cartwright. 2001. Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual
Culture. New York: Oxford University Press (USA).
Pearce/Spatial Literacy
Future & Reality of Gaming 2008
Page 19