Ways of Being: Pervasive Game Design Ethos in Urban Codemakers

Abstract

In this article we describe our approach to pervasive game design and provide examples of how this ethos is embedded in practice vis-a-vis the Urban Codemakers game universe. The theoretical foundations for this approach are outlined and unpacked: moving from Heideggerian phenomenology to a Situationist aesthetic for intervention in urban spaces. We illustrate the necessity of emphasising an understanding of the player's thereness for design; best surmised in Heidegger's term Dasein (there-being). In so doing, we collapse any Cartesian distinction between virtual/real, material/ideal, and subject/object for game design, to instead, a comprehension of different phenomenological worlds within which the player is necessarily embedded and embodied.