Sometimes it’s really OBVIOUS that a video game is trying to make a point through architecture,
like “IT’S ART DECO O’CLOCK and you’re trapped in an undersea time capsule!!!!!”
But other times. Things are more. Subtle. Architectural design keeps us immersed in
a game’s world, even if we don’t notice it’s there. It’s like a secret language.
And today we’re going to explore how both architects and game designers use that language
to influence the way we move, and the way we feel.
You might have some assumptions about what an architect actually does. At least one of
your assumptions is right, because architects do everything.
Architects place plumbing and telephones. They consider the amount of natural light
that enters each room. They have to think about how people need to use the finished space
— and how they’ll feel there. They actually have a lot in common with game
designers. For one, they both have to deal with code. (AUDIENCE BOOS)
...Okay! Both game designers and architects are creating
an experience. Whether you’re navigating the corridors of Hyrule Castle, or just trying
to find your dentist’s office, you’re interacting with a system that someone built
for you, the end user. So today we're going to look at four of the ways that architecture is speaking
to you: through space, construction, material, and light.
SPACE is one of the many ways that architects CONTROL YOUR MIND.
Kind of. By space, (echo-y voice) I mean how much room is in a room.
Architects use a concept called compression and expansion to manage your movements. Long
corridors use compression to encourage people to keep moving — and when they reach a larger
exhibit room or concourse and the space expands, they’ll naturally start to meander, and grab a Jamba
Juice. STUART: People don't want to be in tight spaces. They
always want to move to wider, more open spaces. So you kind of use a lot of psychological
tricks like that architecture in order to move people around.
SIMONE: That’s Stuart McDonald, the world design director for Control. Before doing game design,
he worked in and taught architecture. This pattern of “small space BIG space”
exists in plenty of games. It’s most noticeable in boss arenas — you know that feeling you get when
you step into a suspiciously large room and you know, you just know that stuff is about
to pop off? You’re reading architecture! You’re literally READING THE ROOM. HA.
Now, Control has a very on-the-nose example of compression and expansion in The Ashtray
Maze. In this level, you’re funneled through a narrow – compressed — hallway, where
all you can do is run forward. Until the maze literally expands. And you fight a bunch of
dudes. Even though it’s not in the same Brutalist
style as the rest of the Oldest House, The Ashtray Maze demonstrates why Control’s
architecture is so effective. The gameplay necessitates running and dashing and yeeting
tons of furniture, and eventually… flying. And so, the architecture supports that.
The interior of the Oldest House is mostly a series of overwhelmingly big interconnected
rooms. It doesn’t have very many corridors like the ones in the maze, even though in
a real office building, you’d expect them: STUART: That would be a terrible gameplay space. So
that's why we had to go kind of really, brutally open plan.
SIMONE: That’s not to say that we should throw out all corridors in games. And Remedy
doesn’t — the corridors that do appear in Control … control you! They line you
up to see or experience something exactly the way that Remedy wants you too.
How big a space is can tell you how it’s meant to be used. But there’s plenty of other
meanings BUILT into the environment. (EXPLOSION) We know what environmental storytelling generally
means in a game. It’s skeletons. Or really meaningful graffiti. Stuff that’s put there
after the fact to tell you something happened. But architecture can also tell you a story
about culture. For example, “hostile architecture:” something like a like low wall with spikes on it
to prevent people who are unhoused from sitting or sleeping there. This wall tells you
WHO and WHAT is valuable to the culture that constructed it.
In Final Fantasy VII Remake, you visit Shinra employee housing on top of the Sector 7 plate.
The houses are blocky and impersonal, and there’s a huge pipe running right through
the neighborhood, directly to the factory. Even the road points toward the factory — because
in Midgar, Shinra is all that matters. Of course, not every example of architectural
storytelling is quite so bleak. Sean, known on YouTube as The Lore Hunter, is an architectural
designer. And one of his favorite examples thoughtful construction is from Dark Souls:
SEAN: Anor Londo is, it's this pivotal point in Dark Souls 1. … it's the first time that
something looks nice and put together. They really got in the headspace of an architect
when they're looking at Anor Londo because there's two different sets of steps.
SIMONE: Notice the stairs on each side are normal-sized, but the stairs in the center are huge. Why?
Well, Anor Londo used to be shared by giants and humans — and the architecture reflects
that. And this design is pure storytelling! There’s no mechanical difference when your
character walks up the center stairs, versus the sides.
SEAN: It doesn't make a difference. So it was just this architectural decision by the game designers.
It makes it a place. And as soon as it's a place, it helps with immersion.
SIMONE: The architecture is sending a message about people who are no longer here, and how they
shared this city. So, environmental storytelling is the graffiti
on the wall. It’s also where the wall is, and who it’s protecting.
And it’s what that wall is made of. The most gruesome thing in the world is grabbing
a subway pole in the middle of summer and feeling warm metal. It’s a little greasy.
Why is it greasy? And you can see your sweaty face reflected in it. This makes you upset.
All of these sensations are possible because the subway pole is made of metal. It’s a
practical choice for a material, but it has all sorts of consequences!
SEAN: That's something weird about architects is you can identify an architect if they're going
around touching buildings. (SMACK SOUND EFFECT) SIMONE: Architects do that weird-ass thing because
touching materials helps them understand what existing in a space will feel like for the
end user. We have baked-in associations with materials: memories of touch that influence
our emotions. Even though games are largely incorporeal, game designers use materials
the same way an architect might: to evoke feelings. Yoshi’s Woolly World would read
entirely differently if it were YOSHI’S CONCRETE COMMONWEALTH. ... Yoshi's Dirt Duchy.
I spoke with Ben Garbow, an architectural designer who creates laboratories with spill-proof
rubber flooring and metal surfaces, natch. Buuuuuut Ben doesn’t just think about chemical
disasters when he’s designing a lab — he balances practicality with psychology.
BEN: People aren't going to be doing good research unless they feel good in the lab, right? If
they feel sort of soul-crushing by just existing in a lab you design, then that's ultimately
not a successful building. SIMONE: In the service of making people feel good,
Ben might add more organic materials, like wooden cabinet fronts to warm up the space.
It’s a nice concession to the human touch. But not all workplaces strive for comfort
— and in Portal, materials tell us a story of discomfort and extreme workplace negligence!
Midway through the game, the sleek concrete and glass test chambers give way to rusted
metal and really gross linoleum. It’s literally falling apart.
You're getting hints at the seams bursting open a little bit … you are firmly outside
the bounds of where you’re supposed to be — where you thought you were supposed to
be in this game. SIMONE: The contrast tells us clearly where in the
lab we belong — and where we don’t. It’s all the more powerful because the player is
hyper-aware of the game’s materials anyway: you need concrete to make portals. So seeing
the absolutely necessary concrete, covered in grime and … handprints?? Eugh! It's upsetting!
But there’s another huge difference between Portal’s test chambers and the back-end.
That’s the light. Like physical materials, light is practical,
artistic, and psychological all at once. It’s also the architectural tool that ties everything
else together. It interacts with materials, it fills a space, and the presence or lack
of it tells a story. In games and in real life, lighting tells
us where we should be — either by pointing the way, or simply by telling us it’s safe.
And game designers are great at using darkness to make us feel unsafe. Gone Home takes place
in a cozy Pacific Northwest house. It checks all the boxes we’ve been talking about.
Spacious rooms. Warm materials like wood and cloth. This is
a normal-ass house for a normal-ass family. And yet...
Because we have to go into so many dark rooms and switch on the lights, it’s TERRIFYING!
The designers knew what they were doing by making lighting so central to the gameplay
— they transform something cozy into a haunted house.
In Control, light is built into the walls of The Oldest House, into the ceilings, and
into these columns. Without it, the concrete might not have wowed us as much as it does.
In games it’s hard to recreate the way light behaves, bouncing off surfaces, and making
pockets of shadow as well as brightness. The art design in older games reflects this:
So before, artists would put in lots — of rust stains and lots of cables and little details
and grime and dirt, because the wall will just look boring, the light wouldn't read.
STUART: The good thing is that we're moving into the era of like real time ray-tracing and all
that technology that kind of allows us to actually light things much more realistically.
SIMONE: Stuart and his team had the freedom to leave concrete surfaces bare, because Remedy’s
lighting tech lets the walls be visually interesting, without being covered in stuff.
As game technology improves, game designers will be able to think more like architects
— harnessing better graphics and processing power to make material textures pop, to build
complex lighting systems, and to create detailed spaces that toy with our emotions.
And those same game technologies are helping future architects too.
SANDRA: I think more and more we see in urban design or architectural practices, you know, knowing
how to work game engines is kind of a sought after skill in those industries as well.
SIMONE: Sandra Youkhana and Luke Pearson run a master’s course where the next generation of architects
and urban designers… make games. The students use traditional design programs like SketchUp
and Rhino, but they also learn Unity and coding languages like C#.
In one game, the player character has a pair of augmented reality glasses that let
them digitally opt-in to the European Union. So the player can pop back and forth between
life in a Europe-connected UK… and a post-Brexit one.
LUKE: I think it also lets us see games and architecture
as more than tools — as something which allows people to engage with the social and
cultural impact of the work that they're producing. SIMONE: And by making games, the students learn to
think about games and architecture as tools of communication: They have to consider who
the end user is, what their creation is saying, and how it’s saying it.
LUKE: By making games they have to deal with how information is communicated to someone. The player. Because if your game is completely, you know, like, impossible to understand, then the first
feedback you'll get is like, That's rubbish. It doesn't make any sense. I can't play it.
And so it's it allows them to get really, I think, a conversation going between designers
and the people. SIMONE: Buildings don't live in designs or on draft
paper — when they’re built, they have the power to make us happy, or sad. They can
invite us in, or push us away. Architects design in ways that subtly tell us what to
do, and what’s important. And now you understand some more of their
language.
I didn't have time to talk about this in the script but
when architects finally become like, certified architects,
They get a physical, actual stamp. And that's what they use to stamp their drawings.
And it basically says like, uh, yeah, I take responsibility for this.
This is my stamp! If the building falls down, it's on me y'all.
I think that's so cool.
I want a stamp.