There’s a term in art, film, even music.. ‘negative space’. It describes the space where things aren’t. It’s important, because those gaps, their shape, their scale, tells us something about the subject. If our hero is a dot on screen, against the vastness of space, she’s alone, dwarfed, terrified. If she looks towards the right of the screen, framed to the left, she is looking out over her surroundings. In music, the exact pause Clint Mansell leaves before bringing back the percussion frames the way the drums sound when they do hit.
Negative space is important.
And it’s not something we discuss in game design very much. The unique, exciting thing about games, is players occupy the negative space. You can spend as much time as possible creating that sexy scifi wall, but gameplaywise, it’s irrelevant, the player cannot touch it, they are constrained within an empty volume, the space inside the room. Architecture has played with negative space as the point of a room.. vaulted ceilings raise our eyes to god(s), oppressive office spaces make us work a little harder. The air inside the bubble is more important than the admittedly pretty film which defines its borders.
I got into a facebook thread earlier with a friend about procedural generation in his upcoming game. He was considering the rules by which he places objects.. should he use a simple dice roll to place down obstacles, or something smarter? True randomness leads to impossible rooms, frustration. Games often solve this by using prefabricated level chunks bolted together, or they embrace the possibility of impossible spaces, and make sure they hold the player’s hand comfortingly when it happens, even using it as an opportunity for more anarchic fun.
Negative space is the solution I suggested. Thinking of a game as a series of obstructions makes logical sense, but thinking of it as a sequence of spaces between obstructions is the more player-centric perspective. Roll the dice for a random number between a lower and higher range for the size of the gap, then place an obstacle and repeat, and you’ll make something that feels more, well, human.
Not sure of the point of this ramble, just typing out a thought process I found interesting to be in the middle of. Negative space as design tool. Done. Time to stop procrastinating and fix this animation bug I’m meant to be looking at.
I’m going to think about this idea for a bit. There may be more than one way to deploy the idea of negative space in game design.