Uploaded November 2023 | Updated September 2026, 4 days ago
Every game is a fragment world– bordered by the rules of its logic. These boundaries may be spoken out loud (don’t step on the cracks! the floor is lava!) or may be programmed (the end of traversable ground, the rim of the map, an invisible wall that plays a bonk sound effect when you walk into it). Such edges, encircling, make the space of play. These worlds are defined by their boundaries– they exist floating. This talk takes as its center the concept of the walled garden, expanding it out to include games and games spaces. It looks at ornamental gardens, cloisters and isolate spaces, and even mythological or utopian fantasies of worlds apart, and seeks to connect the logic of potent isolation to the games we make and play. By examining historical narratives of boundaries, walls, and edges as applied to constructed spaces, this talk thinks about processes of worldbuilding and systems design as a methodology of gardening, with all of its attendant violences (against the slugs, yes, but also in their construction out of the world)– and looks as well beyond the boundary, where the garden stops and a wildness of bugs, errors, logical failures and edge cases begin.
Every game is a fragment world– bordered by the rules of its logic. These boundaries may be spoken out loud (don’t step on the cracks! the floor is lava!) or may be programmed (the end of traversable ground, the rim of the map, an invisible wall that plays a bonk sound effect when you walk into it). Such edges, encircling, make the space of play. These worlds are defined by their boundaries– they exist floating. This talk takes as its center the concept of the walled garden, expanding it out to include games and games spaces. It looks at ornamental gardens, cloisters and isolate spaces, and even mythological or utopian fantasies of worlds apart, and seeks to connect the logic of potent isolation to the games we make and play. By examining historical narratives of boundaries, walls, and edges as applied to constructed spaces, this talk thinks about processes of worldbuilding and systems design as a methodology of gardening, with all of its attendant violences (against the slugs, yes, but also in their construction out of the world)– and looks as well beyond the boundary, where the garden stops and a wildness of bugs, errors, logical failures and edge cases begin.
