Analyzing place in terms of ‘place memory’ reveals how the past comes to life – evoked through memory. According to Ken Foote, you can respond to their negative experience in 3 different ways. One may choose to rectify, sanctify, and/or obliterate ‘place memory’ altogether. To rectify place is to attempt to ‘make right’ past wrongs. The Jewish Museum in Berlin, Germany attempted to rectify place memory by transforming the same location where Holocaust events once took place – into a building that others could visit to learn about the terrors of persecution Jews faced. The architect Daniel Libeskind attempted to rectify the memories that took place during the Holocaust by “imposing an urban void onto the prominent Lindenstrasse in place of traditionally formal and regimented facades” (Phaidon 2005). Internally, public spaces are assembled around a dramatic and cavernous route called Die Leere–meaning,’the emptiness,’ says Libeskind (Phaidon 2005). The Jews once associated this place with a location that evoked bad memories – memories of their people being persecuted – but this place memory was transformed into something more positive with the addition of the Jewish Museum to Berlin, Germany. This particular transformation of place and place meaning have, over time, sanctified place by changing the way its memory is experienced. Another type of response that mitigates place memory is by way of obliteration. By destroying the memory/meaning of what used to be there, place memory is essentially obliterated over time. This can be done by destroying any negative connotations that you associate with a place which bothers you so that you are not reminded of it.

EVE Online hires players to be reporters in the game world, working for a galaxy-wide news agency. These players are tasked with interviewing players about recent events, which are then written up as news articles accessible from both the login screen and various places within the game itself, including floating news platforms.

The problem, of course, is that these reporters (Identified by the “ISD” in front of their name) aren’t always viewed in the highest regard by those who would rather not take the game quite so seriously, which leads to exchanges like this:

[07:31:38] ISD Clarity Brown > Hi there! Are you OK to talk now?
[07:31:42] VCtab > Our capital pilots alerted me that you’re looking for someone to speak to?
[07:31:50] VCtab > My alt is Gtab, recruiting coordinator
[07:31:55] ISD Clarity Brown > /emote nods
[07:32:02] VCtab > What can I do for you?
[07:33:06] ISD Clarity Brown > I noticed the disbanding of GoonSwarm and then saw the orange spot on the map. From what I gather looking around here, it looks like someone bounced out of a POS in a Hel because of the disbanding – could you confirm if that’s right?
[07:33:52] VCtab > Completely false
[07:34:07] VCtab > The reality of the situation is that our Hel pilot was absolutely overcome with grief
[07:34:10] ISD Clarity Brown > No Hel, or no bounce?
[07:34:23] ISD Clarity Brown > He lost the will to live?
[07:34:29] VCtab > He refused to believe that the disbanding had occurred and threatened to “commit suicide” if it had really happened
[07:34:34] VCtab > He completely did lose the will to live.
[07:35:03] VCtab > The Swarm meant so much to him that he decided to sacrifice his Hel in grief and then offered to take his character to sell on Eve-Online forums
[07:35:13] VCtab > it was a completely intentional act.
[07:35:22] VCtab > He sacrificed the Hel willfully.
[07:35:30] ISD Clarity Brown > My sympathies to his widow or family. It must be a very difficult time for all of you
[07:35:59] VCtab > That’s really appreciated. A lot of people would take this really dark hour as a chance to mock us
[07:36:09] VCtab > But I hope you’ll tell his story,
[07:36:13] VCtab > It’s a really sad event
[07:36:50] VCtab > A lot of people are really confused right now, understandably

Further attempts by ISD Clarity Brown were met with the same story, though one person did throw it off a little bit by suggesting that the pilot who commit suicide had always been “a little unstable.”

Persona is an RPG game for platform.  It is not played online but there are still tons of personalized characters.  In the game you play as boy (who you name) who can activate what is called a persona which in short is using a portal in you to bring ‘monsters’ out of a secret world in order to fight the bad guys who are infesting the real world and causing everyone to commit suicide. There are good persona users and there are bad ones.  The main battles in the game take place in a timeless place called tartarus which is where all the baddies live.

This game is both a good and bad example of extroverted place.  In the real world (because you also must go to school, develop relationships, and take care of yourself) your character is constantly changing and therefore the real world arena is massively dynamic. To be successful in the game you must develop certain relationships in order to activate new persona species as well as learn things in school.  Most of these things most be done by certain dates in the game in order for you to be successful. It involves a lot of strategy and time management in the game time or else you will not have the skill level needed to defeat certain bosses.

However this game is also a bad example because when you are fighting in tartarus there is no time.  The only way your character changes there is by leveling up. You may get tired and lose health but if you exit back to floor one it will save your game and restore al your health. So technically you could stay in a dungeon crawl forever and only level up. Unfortunately I realized the ‘due date’ system too late so i am currently trying to get my level up to where it should be by spending hours in tartarus.

In closure this game is almost like two separate games because even though one world affects the other, one of them is extremely dynamic while the other is quite stagnate.

EVE Online was a sort of default choice for our group, three of us joined because we randomly started talking about EVE during the time when we were signing up and decided to do it, albeit one of us later got mad at us for choosing EVE even though he signed up because we were using EVE. EVE online makes an interesting subject largely because the enjoyment most people derive from the game is independent of developer intention. The world is designed to be largely empty, the quest structure is only a basic outline of the some story elements and a system designed for getting certain rare gear that most people just trade on the markets anyways.

This structure means that the success of EVE is entirely dependent on the players interacting with eachother, and puts the makers of the game, CCP, in the unique position of actually having to take feedback from players. Past incidents where CCP was accused of meddling in the game’s player politics due to favoritism were met with their membership numbers dropping rapidly as people were removed from the immersion and promises of the game by outside actors. The game’s politics have crossed over into real life in the other direction as well; in response to the aforementioned incident, CCP had players elect representatives democratically who were flown to CCPs headquarters in Iceland to discuss the future of the game and the direction their constituents wanted to see it in. Given the fact that a trip to Iceland costs a fair bit of money, this means that your in game political abilities (and by extension, your social skills) can earn you a free vacation.

EVE online is a political environment built into an empty shell of a game world with amazing infrastructure, but as such it isn’t as graphically catching as many other games. Most places in the game are just skyboxes with a few planets in the distance, leading to the developers to have to overcome the issue of making space not seem like, well, real space. I was able to get in touch with one of the artists at CCP, Ben Mathis (www.poopinmymouth.com. I am not kidding, that’s his professional portfolio site), who explained to me that there was an entire document dedicated just to the background images used to render the skyboxes, focusing on deep-space imagery taken from real life which shows a more “dynamic” space than actually is seen by the naked eye. Essentially this means that the space rendered in the game shows the equivalent of super long exposures spanning more than a single galaxy: there are far more than the 5200 systems players can visit within their field of view, but the galaxy really is more empty than people want it to seem.

But that doesn’t diminish the fact that it is posted.

While there are easy comparisons between the full blown virtual worlds of most modern video games, I often find myself more interested in an abstract comparison. While a RPG is a construct of landscapes and city location, a less complete virtual world also makes an interesting cometary on geography in virtual worlds as juxtaposed with our own.

The game Shift, a flashed based online in which pressing shift inverts the entire world, plays on an interesting fact in virtual worlds: the relativity and visualization of the environment itself. Being a two dimensional game simplifies this inversion, whats black and solid turns white and void and whats void and white turns black and solid, and the whole map turns upside down. This sureal game feature makes the puzzle based game play incredibly interesting. The constant inversion of the whole world repeatedly destroys the perceived actuality of the game. This is somewhat a different direction for the notion of virtual worlds which often strive for believability.

Here’s a book that I own called The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy: I Link Therefore I Am.

I got this book about a year ago. I know this course is about geography mainly, but this book goes into many concepts that we talk about in class concerning ideas of space and place, the characters connection to the gamer and the influence that has on space and place, as well as the geography of the virtual reality and how the player sees it.

The book is separated into “Levels” which have within them chapters to read. Each level is a type of base category in which all the chapters talk about different ideas within that category. Most of the book is how the gamer relates and feels towards the character and the story, but some “levels” (particularly Level 5) deal with the gamers interaction with time and space within the game. Definitely worth a look at.

Here’s a link to the book on Amazon, for those interested.

http://www.amazon.com/Legend-Zelda-Philosophy-Popular-Culture/dp/0812696549/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1219315198&sr=8-1

Understanding geography from the humanist perspective is ultimately akin to understanding the association of the human element with the world around it. Within the valve game Portal, this connection between the human element and the environment around which the game takes place is emphasized both through the gameplay mechanics, which focus on interactively altering relative space to effect movement,   and through interactions with the omnipresent computer, which effectively incites action from the player while simultaneously acting as a constant indirect threat.

Ultimately, the predominant feature of the game is the ability to create portals through which your character can pass between two points unobstructed, which and be employed to get passed different obstacles. This fundamentally alters the user perception of space as an arbitrary aspect of the environment in that is allows for the player to alter the environment in order to change disadvantageous positioning into an advantageous situation. Such a radical alteration of the definition of movement within the game allows for a level or creativity that causes the game as a whole to appeal more readily to the public at large. Furthermore, this mechanic also effects interactions with the threats of the game, such as its applications against the stationary turrets and cubes.

As for interactions with the computer, which serves as the primary threat and motivator within the game, it becomes clear that, despite any lingering feelings of security or accomplishment, the computers ultimate role is to create a constant destabilizing force that continually pushes the player forward, thereby preventing any formation of safety within a particular level.

All of these aspects combine to create a game in which the physical space within the game is in constant flux both literally in the player’s ability to influence the environment, and humanisticly in that the player is never left alone long enough to establish an idea of safety within a level, but instead is pressed on by the computer and only has long enough to enjoy a degree of fleeting accomplishment before the next challenge.

Every game I’ve ever played wanted me to feel as if I were the outsider in a new environment.  It is worth taking note that most games I play are old school RPGs from Japan.  So you have a cutesy looking avatar wandering 2D worlds with some simple quest in mind.  You are saving the world or finding a family member or something.  Usually you start out in a very familiar location such as your parents’ house, but then some catastrophic event changes everything and you must leave that safety for the greater good. 

Many times it is that terrible event that suddenly triggers the existence of enemies in the spaces you must travel through to get to the places that make the game advance.  While passing by some trees a crazed bird may appear causing you to duel with it.  If you win, you are rewarded with the new knowledge of being able to fight effectively as well as the ability to move through that spot without further attacks.  Hostile environments keep players on their toes and from feeling comfortable with the surroundings.  At least until they have acquired enough experience to defeat enemies with ease.  This normally requires continued gameplay.

Even when you have reached a civilized place, such as a city or town, you still might not be in place.  The first time you enter that place, the inhabitants may treat you exactly as you are: a stranger.  However, consecutive places you come across might be programmed to recognize your achievements.  People might come up and ask you whether you are the hero who has been gradually saving the world.  In any case, being out of place and not native makes for more interesting gameplay as you have nothing else to rely on, but your own skill.

In the universe of EVE Online (see prior blogposts for a general overview), well over 5000 solar systems are charted, each with its own set of bases, hubs, ports, and planets.  Of the nearly 300,000 subscribers to EVE, around 40,000 of which are online in the galaxy at any given time, once solar system, Jita, consistently plays host to over 1000 of said users.  Holding around 3-6% of the total online population in .002% of the space is an astronomical figure (pun intended), one that has had serious effects on the game, both in the virtual environment and the physical world. In the virtual galaxy of New Eden, the rise to prominancy of the Jita system was something of an unintended consqeunce of new player start zones, trans-system transport routes, player market stops, and numerous other factors, and while nobody can quite decide on how Jita became such a hub, nobody is denying the massive population that cycles through it every minute.   In the physical world, this has caused the developers a few headaches: everything from removing one of the primary jumpgate into Jita to cut traffic to removing all asteriod belts, mining oppurtunities, and NPC missions in the system to discourage lingering presence; ultimately, their solution was to put the entire system of Jita on its own blade server set, one of less than a handful of systems to get its own server.

The interesting geographical implications of Jita come from the fact that the system is wholly uninteresting: it’s location is ‘sorta kinda’ close to some vast swaths of player controlled territory; it’s not too far from a few of the Caldari empire’s starting zones; its more or less on a direct route from Caldari to Gallente space.  But fundamentally, it’s not a central system; its not in the middle of everything, it’s just became the middle of everything: socially, despite not being so geometrically.  Any EVE player knows of Jita if they’ve been around for more than a week ingame; of the thousands and thousands of systems, everyone knows of Jita.  In a social sense, Jita is the center of EVE; it’s the common reference point which all players can identify and relate to.

Harvey’s views of socially constructed geography line up perfectly with the astounding growth and prominence of the Jita system in EVE Online.  When EVE first began in May of 2003, the small player population and relative homogeneous  mix of solar systems gave little reason to place importance on Jita; however, over the nearly seven years of existence, successive generations of traders, marketers, researchers, miners, profiteers, pirates, and noobs have flooded the system with value.  Anything you could possibly want to buy, borrow, research, or outright steal can be found in Jita.  Think of it like the Supercenter Wal-Mart of EVE: yeah, sure, its overly crowded, not that efficiently run, parking is impossible, and it takes forever to get in and out, but at the end of the day, you got whatever odd item it was you wanted.  When its all said and done, plenty of other systems could have developed into the powerhouse/blackhole of an economic hub that is Jita, but they didn’t.  And that fact is the beauty of socially constructed geography: while the reasons why society chose to make such a location the prominent destination that it is may be lost to the sands of history, its current importance and power are undeniable and will persist indefinitely… or until the society of EVE decides to relocate all their economic assets to a different if equally originally insignificant system.

For further reading, check out EVE-Wiki and Jita Blogpost.

Poor Harry Townshend just can’t get out of his apartment. His front door is chained shut from top to bottom, and even the handwritten note under the peephole warns, “Don’t go Out!!”

He was a fairly content individual until this turn of events – heck, he found his home such a “safe place” that he scarcely interacted with others or the outside for the last two years. Which is why it’s so interesting that this humble one-bedroom one-bath apartment is used as a vehicle for the horror that sets in: all those little things he considered familiar and intimate, all those things that carry meaning for him and define him deteriorate into a nightmarish vision that threatens to kill not only him but all those around him.

Let’s meditate a little longer on this sense of “meaning.” We never really get to know very much about Henry. We can glean a few items of interest: he likes taking photos and keeping up with his scrapbook. His apartment, as we initially see it, is clean save for some clutter here and there. His refrigerator has a bottle of wine and some chocolate milk, but that’s about it. Much of his items are kept in much the same condition as when he first moved in – his bookshelf is mostly unread, and his other pair of shoes unworn. For a man who spends so much time in such a small space, if we were to go off his personal effects alone, it would have been hard to tell that anyone had lived there.

It’s this spartan environment that says much of the character of Henry himself. He’s almost a non-entity – though confused by his predicament, his reactions are not as strong as perhaps other people would be in encountering the ghosts and monsters that he does through the supernatural holes leading from his apartment. His trademark phrase of, “What the hell?” has become a point of ridicule for those who have played the game, as he repeats those words to an extent of self-parody. No hysterics, just a very subdued sense of confusion. Even in terms of self-preservation, he seems to care more about the safety of the people around him than his own, even reaching out to an electric chair in a misguided attempt to save a fellow tenant from frying to death at one point. Not only that, but breaking with tradition in the Silent Hill franchise, the nightmarish vision of the game’s environment and creatures reflect less of Harry’s own psyche than his antagonist, Walter Sullivan. In fact, it could very well be compared to The Great Gatsby in terms of narrative: Harry is more like the novel’s narrator, Nick Carraway, as he begins to piece together Walter’s sordid history (which is a much more involved series of discussion than will be covered here) and how he fits into the strange events of the game.

And it is the decisions by the developers to portray these events in a certain fashion that, despite much maligned gameplay problems, still really helps to create a sense of disease in the player. Little touches in certain parts take the universal and mundane and turns them into something disturbing. Your home, at first relatively normal looking – save the aforementioned chained-door and the soft part of the living room wall where you can look in on your neighbor Eileen – gradually becomes haunted by all sorts of ghosts that you must exorcise (if you want to get the better endings, that is). The peephole with which you can look out into the “normal” world always has something different to see on the other side, which in and of itself can inspire a sense of dread (I’ll never forget seeing the “victim” version of Henry: bloody, eyes not visible, his lips moving erratically with words we can’t hear).

Notice my use of “your” in that last paragraph. While we always identify with whatever we play as to a certain extent, the game broke with its predecessors in yet another way by allowing a first-person perspective when you’re in Henry’s apartment. For all of the floating ghosts and two-headed baby monsters, it’s those moments in his home that always strike the most fear in me – which says a great deal, as those creatures are not at all fluffy bunnies and unicorns. After finishing each session of the game in my own living room, I can’t help but be a complete milquetoast when I catch sight of some ugly depression in a wall and feel my skin crawl ever-so-slightly.

Thanks, Team Silent, for making me question the very safety of my own home.