Communication presented at Future and REality of Gaming Conference (Vienna, 2013).

1. THE SENSE OF LIGHTING INSIDE GAME
WORLDS.
MYTH AND MEANING IN GAMEPLAY
AND GAME MECHANICS.
Marta Fernández
Simon Niedenthal
Manuel Armenteros

2. WHY LIGHTING?
- Compositional and evocative power of light to create stories and trigger emotions
among viewers.
- Resource to support perception, to add depth, and to draw the viewer’s eyes
towards the areas of interest (Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception, 1954).
The Third of May.
Goya, (1808).
Saint Joseph charpentier.
George de la Tour (1642).

3. WHY LIGHTING?
- Different cultures and religions have used light and shadow myths to give an
explanation for different mysteries and concerns that arose in their societies.
Cavern’s Metaphor
(Plato, Republic)
Ying and Yang
(a symbol for light and shadow in its origins)

4. WHY LIGHTING?
Myths and symbolism of light and
shadow have been represented in
different media (literature, comics,
paintings, cinema, etc).
Death. The Time of your Life.
(Gaiman, Bachalo and Pennington, 1997)

5. WHY LIGHTING?
- Nowadays graphic cards allow designers to
represent complex lighting situations inside
game worlds.
- Technology can not only be used to make the
environments more realistic, but to add
meanings through lighting.

6. - How is lighting used in video games, where storytelling intertwines
with interactivity?
- Previous research on the use of visual devices in video games:
- Camera and points of view: Nitsche (2008)
- Color palette (Canossa, 2006)
- Research on the power of lighting to elicit emotions (Knez and
Niedenthal, 2008; Seif el Nasr et al, 2007). Connection and
divergences between cinema lighting and games lighting
(Niedenthal, 2005).
- What about the role of lighting in gameplay and game mechanics?
WHY LIGHTING?

7. RESEARCH GOALS AND METHODOLOGY
- Research goal: To examine lighting in the context of
gaming, specially in the context of gameplay.
- Theoretical frame:
- Perceptual, semiotic and narrative features of lighting
- Game studies :interaction and level design
- Ancient light and shadow myths

8. RESEARCH GOALS AND METHODOLOGY
- Analysis method:
- Assessment of a sample of current commercial game levels by
means of a qualitative content analysis.
- Use of software to assess specific parameters of lighting.

9. LIGHTING IN PREVIOUS MEDIA
- Most discussions of game aesthetics and lighting have focused on similarities to cinema.
- Functions of lighting (Bordwell and Thompson, The Film Art, 1995):
- Directing the spectator’s glance.
- Defining textures.
- Giving cues about the structure of the space by means of creating reflections and
shadows that show offscreen elements.
Interior , Conversation. Cairo.
(Frederick Lewis, 1873).
Portrait of a Man in an Oriental Costume.
(Rembrandt, 1635).

10. LIGHTING IN PREVIOUS MEDIA
- According to Revault (La luz en el cine, 2003), in classic cinema the
characters’ facial expressions are more significant than the
surroundings, thus lighting usually privileges characters over the
environment.
Dr. Zhivago
(Lean, 1965)

11. LIGHTING IN PREVIOUS MEDIA
- Cinematographic approaches are good to study lighting in cut scenes.
But “games, as interactive experiences, differ from films in
significant ways” (Niedenthal, 2005, Shadowplay: Simulated
Illumination in Game Worlds).
Silent Hill 2.
Konami.
The Godfather.
F.F. Coppola.

12. LIGHTING IN PREVIOUS MEDIA
- We should pay more attention to architectural lighting patterns when analyzing
game sequences.
- Lighting in interactive sequences invites the user to interaction.
- The priority in games is to make the player aware of the relationship the avatar has
with the space he has to interact with, so lighting in games privileges spaces over
characters.
Dead Space 2.
Visceral Games (2011)

13. LIGHTING IN REAL SPACES
- Taylor and Socov, The movement of People
Toward Lights (1974):
“ There is evidence that the higher the
illumination ratio, the higher the percentage
of subjects entering to the brighter side of an
environment. For example, 100 per cent of the
subjects entered to the right when the right
side was 100 times bigger than the left side”.

14. LIGHTING IN REAL SPACES
“Luminance is a powerful variable in everyday
visual experience--it seems more difficult to
perform visual tasks such as searching or
reading, under conditions of dim illumination
than under conditions of bright illumination”
(Loftus, 1985, Picture Perception: Effects of
Luminance on Available Information and
Information-Extraction Rate).

15. VISUAL ATTENTION IN VIDEO GAMES
- Understanding players’ visual attention patterns within an
interactive 3D game environment is an important research area
that can improve game level design and graphics.
- There is experimental and empirical evidence (eye tracking
methodology) of the player’s response to visual features of
games and the impact they have upon their behavior.

16. VISUAL ATTENTION IN VIDEO GAMES
- Seif el Nasr and Yan’s study (2006) of visual perception in games
concludes that players interact with the areas of the environment
where visual attractors are placed:
“Through studying the videos and coordinate data extracted, we
found that bottom-up visual features, including color contrast and
movement, subconsciously trigger the visual attention process,
thus verifying the bottom-up visual attention theory”.
(Visual Attention in 3D Games, 2006)

17. LIGHTING AND GAMEPLAY
-The bottom-up approach identifies several features or
properties that subconsciously attract attention:
-Movement
-Color
-Contrast
-Brightness
-Lighting can act as a tool to help designers create visual
attractors and thus give rise to the expected game experience.

18. NAVIGATION CUES BY MEANS OF
LIGHTING
- Lighting attractors to guide the player’s navigation.
- Navigation cues are delivered with the aim of moving player forward,
and avoiding making the player feel disorientated.
Dead Space 2.
Visceral Games (2011)

19. NAVIGATION CUES BY MEANS OF
LIGHTING
- Lighting as a way to guide player’s movement has a greater
scope in the game experience.
- It may be the key to accomplish a task in the right way and a
useful design decision to avoid players’ failure.
Uncharted 3
Naughty Dog (2011)

20. NAVIGATION CUES BY MEANS OF
LIGHTING
-Lighting color can also be applied to support meaningful navigation.
-A yellow lit room may attract player’s visual attention because of the
contrast it executes against the rest blue lit rooms. This yellow lit room is
the one where a key to progress through the next level is found in
Darksiders.
Darksiders, Vigil Games (2010)

21. INTERACTION CUES BY MEANS OF
LIGHTING
- Lighting contrast is also apparent when showing items or affordances,
as seen in Bioshock 2.
Bioshock 2, 2K Games(2010)

22. - Meaningful use of cast shadows to suggest the presence of enemies
to the player.
INTERACTION CUES BY MEANS OF
LIGHTING
Crysis 2, 2K Games(2010)

23. LIGHT AND SHADOW MYTHS
-In the remote past, the night was a dark period, where danger and
fears often appeared.
-Night was the moment for enemies, lies, death and evil.
-Conversely, the rise of the sun every morning was considered a
moment where life came back.
- This way the sun started being a symbol of life, and many religions
easily associated light with good gods and darkness with evil and
monstrous beings .

24. LIGHT AND SHADOW MYTHS
The idea of light as a source of knowledge and
sanity, as well as its conception as a manifestation of
truth was an influential postulation in Christianity.
Jesus said, “I am the light that is over all things. I am
all: from me all came forth, and to me all attained.
Split a piece of wood; I am there. Lift up the stone,
and you will find me there”.
(The Gospel according to Saint Thomas, Logion 77).
Light of the World,
Holman Hunt, 1853

25. LIGHT AND SHADOW MYTHS
- Mazdaism monotheism based in two opposing forces: the god Ahura Mazda
(Illuminating Wisdom) and Arhiman or Angra Mainyu (Destructive Spirit) which
were constantly in conflict.
- Manichaeism  believed in a eternal fight between two opposite principles:
Goodness and Evil, which were associated with light (Zurvan) and Darkness
(Arhiman).
Ahura Mazda Arhiman Mani
(the prophet of Manichaeism)

26. LIGHT AND SHADOW MYTHS
- Shadows represent the opposite powers. Parreño (2008) shows how literature has
given different meaning to shadows:.
-Symbol for evil and death, of the double person, of non real things, concealment.
“I am SHADOW, and my dwelling is near to the Catacombs of Ptolemais, and hard by
those dim plains of Helusion which border upon the foul Charonian canal.” And then
did we, the seven, start from our seats in horror, and stand trembling, and shuddering,
and aghast, for the tones in the voice of the shadow were not the tones of any one
being, but of a multitude of beings, and, varying in their cadences from syllable to
syllable fell duskly upon our ears in the wellremembered and familiar accents of
many thousand departed friends”.
Edgar Allan Poe, Shadow.

27. LIGHT AND SHADOW DUALISM IN
GAMES
- Main goal in Alan Wake: go to the light.
-Darkness equals madness and terror, nightmares and death; light equals sanity
and safety.
Alan Wake (Remedy Entertainment, 2010)

28. LIGHT AND SHADOW DUALISM IN
GAMES
- Light also equals sanity in Amnesia: the Dark Descent, thought not
protection.
- Main goal: reaching of a balance between staying hidden from the enemies
in the darkest areas, on the one hand, and recovering the avatar’s lucidity
by turning on some lights on the other.
Amnesia, The Dark Descent (Frictional Games 2010)

29. LIGHT AND SHADOW DUALISM IN
GAMES
• Shadows of the Damned :example of how creating symbolic spaces through
lighting can make game states change
Shadows of the Damned (Grasshopper Manufacture,2011)

30. LIGHTING AS A SYMBOL OF
REINCARNATION
- According to Campbell (Myths of Light) for Hinduism the idea of reincarnating is of two
orders:
-The reincarnation principle of moving a body’s soul into another body.
- The other is that principle of sheer light that never dies, the light that is
incarnate and immanent in all.
“The ultimate goal of the soul is to reach the point where it does not need to put on a
body anymore. It is released, to be not anybody, anything, to become one with the
light” (Campbell, Myths of Light).
Journey (ThatGameCompany, 2012)

31. CONCLUSIONS
• Lighting in games works not only as a means of achieving descriptive, narrative
and evocative aims, as in previous media, but also to accomplish appellative goals,
namely, as a means to invite the player to interaction.
• Through the mythical and metaphorical power of light and shadow, a number of
games create symbolic spaces where game states and winning conditions are
influenced by light. Lighting can bring protection to the avatar, limit the range of
actions the player can perform, and make enemies feel weaker. Conversely,
shadows are the place for increasing the game’s difficulty and tension. Shadows
are the place where enemies are powerful, and can trigger the insanity or even the
death of the avatar.
• Far from being a superficial element that merely demonstrates the technical
capacities of current game engines, lighting is a strong compositional and symbolic
element enabling us to model players’ interactions, both by attracting their visual
attention and by using myths and cultural assumptions which are present in the
social collective knowledge.

32. The sense of lighting inside game worlds. Myth and meaning in gameplay and
game mechanics
Marta Fernández
Simon Niedenthal
Manuel Armenteros
THANK YOU