Six games about architecture

I went look­ing for a few recent exam­ples of games that deal with archi­tec­tur­al themes in some way. I pulled these most­ly from a few of the major street games fes­ti­vals that are out there, such as Come Out & Play, Hide & Seek, Igfest and You Are GO!

Just from this small sam­ple size it is appar­ent that there are many ways to deal with a city and build­ings in a game. You can use the phys­i­cal lay­out of a space, or the sto­ries cling­ing to a place. You can use games to dis­cuss urban process­es, or map not only phys­i­cal but also psy­cho­log­i­cal geography.

Any­way, here’s six games that I found.

Physical space as plaything

Pho­to © Lia Bulaong

Cross my Heart + Hope to Die is inter­est­ing first of all for the pro­files of its cre­ators. Eric Zim­mer­man is well know for being the co-author of the sem­i­nal Rules of Play, as well as for hav­ing cre­at­ed a num­ber of inter­est­ing games such as SiS­SY­FiGHT 2000. For Cross My Heart + Hope to Die, which pre­miered at the 2010 Come Out & Play Fes­ti­val in NYC, he col­lab­o­rat­ed with archi­tect Nathalie Pozzi. The result is a game in which the phys­i­cal lay­out of space plays a major role. Play­ers rearrange the walls of the life-sized labyrinth in which the game takes place. Even though these walls are in fact not much more than semi-trans­par­ent drapes, and as such would­n’t obstruct move­ment, they are enough to sig­nal par­ti­tion­ing of space. They also pre­vent play­ers from see­ing all that is going on, while still giv­ing them a hint of what is close by.

Urban processes as subject

Pho­to (cc) Kate Raynes-Goldie

Gen­tri­fi­ca­tion: The Game! by Atmos­phere Indus­tries attempts to emu­late the social process of wealth­i­er peo­ple mov­ing into low-income neigh­bor­hoods. The game pits play­ers against each oth­er in the roles of locals and devel­op­ers. Devel­op­ers imag­ine ways in which they would rede­vel­op exist­ing build­ings. Locals take action to halt the process of gen­tri­fi­ca­tion through var­i­ous means, such as protests. Play­ers track their process using a mobile app which feeds back the changes to the build­ings — the imag­i­nary gen­tri­fied cityscape. This is very close to what I imag­ined a real-life ver­sion of Golf­stromen’s Gen­tri­fi­ca­tion Bat­tle­field would be like.

Rulespace versus meatspace

Vis­i­ble Cities, by Hol­ly Gra­mazio and Kevan Davies, is a rel­a­tive­ly straight­for­ward check­point chase game but with an inter­est­ing twist. Although check­points are all phys­i­cal­ly in the same area, the game rules group them in var­i­ous “uni­vers­es”. Play­ers and chasers can only inter­act with each oth­er if they are in the same uni­verse, even though they can phys­i­cal­ly per­ceive those that aren’t. In this way, the game ele­gant­ly shows how our expe­ri­ence of phys­i­cal real­i­ty is not only gov­erned by the atoms it is made up of, but also to a large extent by the prin­ci­ples of gov­er­nance we social­ly agree upon. This reminds me of Chi­na Miéville’s love­ly book The City & The City.

Place-inspired storytelling

Pho­to (cc) Aaron Bras­hear

Necrop­o­lis Fam­i­ly Tree, by Coney, makes great use of the mean­ing of a spe­cif­ic place by chal­leng­ing play­ers to tell sto­ries inspired by a memo­r­i­al site. More specif­i­cal­ly, by explor­ing a grave­yard in search of imag­i­nary long-lost rel­a­tives. Although the con­nec­tion between the space, the game’s theme and play­er actions is quite lit­er­al, I pre­fer this over the loca­tion-based games that can be played any­where and in fact have no real inter­play with the place a play­er is in.

Mapping sentiment on the streets

Pho­to © Present Attempt

Walk­ing Smiles, by Present Attempt, is all about map-mak­ing, which isn’t any­thing new for urban games per se, but the map cre­at­ed by play­ers wan­der­ing the city in this case records smiles received from strangers. Thus it isn’t a lit­er­al map­ping of phys­i­cal space that emerges from the game, but a map of sen­ti­ment, of emo­tion­al space if you will. It looks like the game’s run­ners go out of their way to map the data received from play­ers in as many inter­est­ing ways as pos­si­ble. For instance, they build a chart of smiles per minute as the game progresses.

The image of the city as puzzle

Pho­to © Invis­i­ble Playground

Pieces of Berlin by Erik Burke & Lynn Maha­ras is about look­ing at the cityscape and com­par­ing what is seen to draw­ings of build­ings on trans­paren­cies. I guess a game like this will only work in cities with a high image­abil­i­ty rank­ing. I have seen quite a few urban games that incor­po­rate clues in the form of city pho­tographs. But the use of draw­ings here appeals to me for their ambi­gu­i­ty. It empha­sizes gen­er­al shape as opposed to details. It also allows for some more free­dom on the game designer’s part with regards to which parts of the city to show and hide.

Now, I would kill for a chance to bring these games togeth­er, and play them all in the same space. It might be worth­while to col­late play­er expe­ri­ences and see how these games allow for alter­na­tive entry points into the expe­ri­ence of a city’s fab­ric or how they enable peo­ple to shape their city.