Key Principle
The real product of entertainment design is not any single artifact — it is a world. "You can't sell a world, so these various products are sold as gateways into this world, each leading to different parts of it." (Ch.19) Games, films, toys, and shows are gateways that either reinforce or damage the coherence of that world. Successful transmedia worlds share key properties: they are long-lived (Superman 75+ years, Bond 60+), evolve through visitor contributions, are rooted in a single medium but accessible through any gateway, facilitate many stories rather than one plotline, and typically have a creative individual at their core (Disney, Miyamoto, Rowling). (Ch.19)
Characters inhabiting those worlds function as projection surfaces. Two avatar archetypes reliably work: the Ideal Form (the warrior, wizard, or agent the player has always wanted to be) and the Blank Slate (iconic, low-detail characters like Mario that invite projection). "People don't play games to be themselves — they play games to be the people they wish they could be." (Ch.20) Scott McCloud's principle from Understanding Comics applies directly: less visual detail means more psychological projection.
Beyond appearance, characters carry status — a hidden, subconscious negotiation of who is in charge in any interaction. Status is not who you are; it is something you do. Low-status behaviors include fidgeting, avoiding eye contact, and touching one's face. High-status behaviors include relaxed posture, strong eye contact, and not moving the head while speaking. Slow motion conveys high status. Status is always relative: Darth Vader is high-status with Leia, low-status with the Emperor. (Ch.20)
Spaces are the architecture of experience. "The primary purpose of architecture is to control a person's experience." (Ch.21) Christopher Alexander's concept of the Nameless Quality — spaces that feel alive, whole, comfortable, free, exact, egoless, and free from inner contradictions — translates directly into game level design. Inner contradictions (a space meant to feel fun but that frustrates) are the heart of bad spatial design. His fifteen properties of living structures map onto game design: telescoping goals equal levels of scale, territory mechanics equal boundaries, level/boss/level/boss equals alternating repetition, boss arenas equal the void, house rules equal roughness, emergent rules equal simplicity and inner calm. (Ch.21)
Why This Matters
Transmedia worlds compound value across decades. Pokemon's crude Game Boy graphics worked because the vivid anime series created a binocular effect — once players saw characters in high fidelity on TV, they projected that detail onto primitive visuals. Combined sales exceeded $90 billion. A major entertainment executive predicted the Pokemon movie would "be the end of it" — he failed to understand transmedia worlds and was later removed from his position. Teams that think they are making "a game" rather than building a world miss this compounding entirely. (Ch.19)
Status dynamics and spatial design remain largely unexplored in games. Keith Johnstone's insight that status is behavioral, not intrinsic, means characters could shift depending on who else is present. "Status is like a secret language that we all know so well we don't know we're speaking it." (Ch.20) Most game characters behave identically regardless of social context. Designers who master status, spatial flow, and Alexander's living-structure principles gain access to an enormous untapped design space that makes characters feel dramatically more alive and spaces feel intuitively right.
Good Examples
The Binocular Effect (Pokemon): A vivid experience in one medium (TV anime) enhances imagination in a lower-fidelity medium (Game Boy game). Like using binoculars at a sporting event — once you have seen figures close up, you project that detail onto tiny figures afterward. This explains how a technically primitive game sustained engagement for decades. (Ch.19)
Third-Person Distortion (Max Payne): Normal-sized interiors feel claustrophobic in third-person because the player's brain simultaneously occupies the character's body and the camera position behind it. The solution: scale up the room, scale up furniture slightly, spread furniture out. Looks wrong in first person but corrects third-person perception. The player's perceptual reality, not geometric reality, determines whether a space works. (Ch.21)
Alexander's Path-Laying Principle: "Lay no paths at all. Merely plant grass. Then come back a year later, see where people have worn paths in the grass, and only then begin to pave." (Ch.21) — a spatial restatement of the iteration principle, applicable to level layout and player flow.
Counterpoints
Photo-on-Avatar Gimmicks: Putting the player's actual face on a character never sustains engagement. Players want to be someone else, not themselves in a costume. The blank slate and ideal form work precisely because they are not the player. (Ch.20)
The Uncanny Valley: Games pursuing photorealism risk the valley — as artificial characters approach human likeness, empathy suddenly drops because near-human characters register as "diseased people." Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within and Polar Express fell into this trap. Stylized characters (Pixar) stay safely on the appealing side. The implication: invest in expressiveness and status behavior, not in polygon counts chasing realism. (Ch.20)
Geometric Accuracy in Third Person: Designers who build "accurate" spaces for third-person games create consistently frustrating navigation. Accuracy that violates perceptual expectations breaks the experience more than deliberate distortion that matches them. (Ch.21)
Key Quotes
"You can't sell a world, so these various products are sold as gateways into this world, each leading to different parts of it." — Jesse Schell, Chapter 19
"In the long run, the world is governed by those who visit it." — Jesse Schell, Chapter 19
"People don't play games to be themselves — they play games to be the people they wish they could be." — Jesse Schell, Chapter 20
"Status is like a secret language that we all know so well we don't know we're speaking it." — Jesse Schell, Chapter 20
"The primary purpose of architecture is to control a person's experience." — Jesse Schell, Chapter 21
Rules of Thumb
- Think world-first, not product-first. Each gateway (game, film, toy) should complement, never contradict, the others.
- Successful transmedia worlds are long-lived, evolve through visitor contributions, and facilitate many stories rather than one plotline.
- For avatars: default to the Ideal Form or the Blank Slate. Less detail invites more projection.
- Model status as behavior, not identity. Characters who shift status based on social context feel dramatically more alive.
- In third-person games, scale spaces up and spread furniture out to compensate for camera-body dual-occupancy.
- Resolve inner contradictions in spaces before adding detail. A space that contradicts its intended feeling cannot be rescued by decoration.
- Apply Alexander's fifteen properties as a checklist: levels of scale, boundaries, alternating repetition, the void, roughness, simplicity and inner calm.
- Use the binocular effect deliberately: a high-fidelity gateway (trailer, cinematic) enhances engagement with lower-fidelity gateways (gameplay, merchandise).
Related References
- Indirect Control and Player Freedom - Spaces and characters serve as indirect control
- Interface Design and VR/AR Presence - Presence in virtual spaces