July 2010
17 posts
About Me
Celeste Masinter earned her M.F.A in Interactive Design and Game Development at the Savannah College of Art and Design, where she received an artistic fellowship from 2003-2006. Her thesis, “Game Environments as Psycho-Symbolic Allegory”, was published in the education section of Gamasutra, a world-respected online resource for the game industry. She also received her B.F.A from the ...
Thesis featured in Gamasutra - Game Career Guide →
Dedication
This work is dedicated to:
My mother,
Your encouragment and comforting words are a tonic for my soul.
My father,
Your dynamic and generous spirit continues to enrich my life.
My brother,
Your friendship is a treasure beyond compare.
Also, my Aunt Karen and Uncle John who accepted me into their home like a daughter and provided me with the means to finish this project.
Bibliography
Coffey, Robert, “Sanitarium”, Gamespot, June 4, 1998, http://www.gamespot.com/pc/adventure/sanitarium/review.html
Bartle, Richard A., Designing Virtual Worlds, Indianopolis: New Riders Publishing, 2003
Double Fine Productions, Tim Schafer’s Psychonauts, release: Majesco Games, June 21, 2005
Dreamforge Intertainment, Sanitarium, release: ASC Games, April 30, 1998
Freeman, David, “Four Ways to...
Conclusion
Through the metaphoric power of symbolic structure and imagery, game levels illustrate character fantasies, ambitions, biases, and flaws. Thus, they expand the player’s perspective of the hero, villain, or the relationship between them. Furthermore, the psycho-symbolic nature of game terrain can be employed to satirize society or deconstruct reality. Game environments designed to embrace one or...
The Game Behind The Game
View Figures
As stated previously, effective games must provide enough confusion to challenge, and enough order to bewitch the player into the belief that success can be achieved with enough persistence. Thus, the player must understand the rules and limits of the game before they begin. Nonetheless, placing a player in a game that is many games at once, without flooding him/her with rules,...
Game Environments: Arenas of Self-Salvation or...
View Figures
Whether we consider the player character and villain as distinct entities with identities in virtual danger of becoming each other, or whether we consider them as extensions of each other to begin with, seeking reconciliation within a virtual placenta (the game world), every game is essentially an exercise in self-salvation in a self-centered universe. This is because all game...
Investigation of Psychological Maps, Manipulation...
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Game worlds, thick with symbolic and metaphoric potential, easily slide in and out of psychic territory. They serve as apparitions of character fantasies come to exciting and horrifying life, and implicate game characters as psychotic; as creatures lost in a dream of their own creation. In such a playing field, reversals are inevitable. The villain substantiates the role and purpose...
Terrain as Area for Player Character/ Villain...
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No game is complete without opposition, either in the form of obstacle or enemy confrontation. An engaging game-play scenario must provide interaction sufficiently alluring, yet sufficiently agitating, that it insists on continued reevaluation. In this sense, just as there is a relationship between the player character and the environment, so is there a relationship between the...
Exploration of Worlds as a Study of Character
View Figures
Carl Jung, a psychologist and contemporary of Sigmund Freud, was a student of human fantasy and dreams. He theorized that the human quest for meaning manifested itself as a map of personal symbols within the subconscious of the individual. These symbols described and, by their relationships to each other, organized fears, biases, and desires. Jung called these secret motivators...
Introduction
Game worlds dazzle the senses, capture the imagination, and, when the metaphoric and symbolic powers of spaces and structure are tapped, can function as virtual manifestations of the private, psychological “worlds” of characters, or as intimate comments on character relationships, becoming allegory. Ultimately, the psycho-symbolic potential of game terrain provides more ways for game designers to...
Here, there be dragons!
Maps… have always been highly evocative artifacts too, charged with poetry and fantasy… In the Middle Ages, lands beyond the borders of the map-maker’s knowledge were shown as full of dragons and exotic monsters. (Swaaji, Klare, and Winner, 11)