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DontVoteMeOffPigeon “the core narratives behind many games center around a struggle to explore, map and master contested spaces” 1. "Village Fort to Hotel: Take the APC (LAV-25) or transport (DPV) and drive east along the beach fringes. Go around the right side of the hill and head along the border. Closely follow the border across the train tracks and the hills above the hotel. Follow the hills around so that you come down on the right side of the empty pool."2
In order to understand the important role of the path within walkthroughs we have to introduce two types of spatial description as noted by Michel de Certeau: descriptions of the "map" type and of the "tour" type. Following C.Linde and W.Labov who developed this distinction in their analysis of descriptions given by New York residents about their apartments3, the "map" would be something like: "the girl`s room is next to the kitchen" in our text: "At the bottom of the avalanche is the Hut Key." Apparently only 3 percent of the New York stories use this type of description. All the rest consists of the "tour" type, such as "You come in through a low door" in our text: "Over to the right is a block which, you can jump to and avoid the snowballs". "Concerning this second type, the author points out that a circuit or 'tour' is a speech-act (an act of enunciation) that 'furnishes a minimal series of paths by which to go into each room'; and that the 'path' is a series of units that have the form of vectors that are either 'static' ('to the right', 'in front of you', etc) or 'mobile' ('if you turn to the left', etc.).In other words, description oscillates between the terms of an alternative: either seeing (the knowledge of an order of places) or going (spatialising actions).”4 The elements these computer games share with some traditional types of narration could be analysed taking into account everyday narratives of practised space. They can be described as paths through a territory that is spatially structured and chronologically ordered by active entities (such as obstacles/enemies and riddles) fulfilling the functions of “tour guides”. The spatial illusion only emerges through spatializing action on behalf of the playing subject. Written by Axel Stockburger
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