Games have the potential to affect us at our core, as beings that are reflective
and sentient, both serious and playful. Moreover, the current play context for
digital games is expanding: a mobile game played through a phone may engage us
as we pedal to work, for example. We may find ourselves performing "Dance Dance
Revolution" for our friends at the local arcade, or immersed in a midnight
level of the latest survival-horror thriller in our bedroom. Whatever the
context, the gameplay experience is clearly influenced by our felt environment.
The relationship between the game state-whether mediated by a board, mobile
device, or console and monitor-and our embodied experience is the wider focus
of our games research in the interaction design and performance areas.
The Shadowplay project will initiate our research strategy by examining the
experience of virtual illumination in games. A common feature of many digital
games is that they are played in a simulated 3D environment, a game world. The
visual qualities of these worlds are defined through a metaphor of illumination
drawn from existing media practices such as film cinematography (Manovich,
2001). Recent advances in game engine technology and rendering algorithms have
opened new possibilities for game lighting design; but, as in so many other
aspects of our relationship with technology, these advances have outpaced our
capacity to grasp and express the options facing us. Quite simply, we have no
vocabulary or shared framework for discussing the ways in which simulated
illumination contribute to the gameplay experience. This situation persists in
spite of a growing body of evidence that illumination qualities in spaces-both
real and mediated environments-not only enable our visual experience (Gibson,
1979, 1971), but also convey a non-visual impact upon our emotions and behavior
(Knez, 2001). These findings support what cinematographers have long intuited:
that light is a subtle but powerful vehicle for narrative and meaning-making.
A focus on light is highly relevant for the games industry. David Polfeldt, game
designer at Malmö-based game company Bad Robot, points out that though
receptive, the industry lacks a means of adequately expressing lighting
concepts. Game developers and artists tend to speak a recursive language, in
which invoking "Doom3", for example, calls up a host of real-time dynamic
lighting and shading effects. The practical work of lighting a game occurs
within programming and software environments that take cinematography concepts
as organizing metaphors. In some companies a programmer working as a technical
director defines the lights, while in others digital artists set lights within
3D applications and export them to the rendering engine so that their effect
can be evaluated. The rendering engine determines the quantity of lights in a
scene, and the sort of effects possible.. Although in the past the real-time
demands of digital games have limited the use of complex lighting setups and
effects, a number of new rendering engines, techniques and workarounds allow
game designers increasing control of the illumination spaces of their games
(Niedenthal, sub.)