1 free read left. Create a free account for unlimited reading + AI research.
Create free accountWhitepaper
DiGRA
1 free read left. Create a free account for unlimited reading + AI research.
Create free accountWhitepaperDiGRA
The paper argues that deliberately arranging everything visible within a frame can convey meaning to players. It proposes this as a framework for level design.
This paper argues that mise-en-scène, the film concept of deliberately arranging everything visible within a frame to convey meaning, can be adapted to level design to deepen emotional engagement and communicate narrative and psychological subtext to players. The authors define mise-en-scène using film theorist Robert Kolker's framework, which covers spatial arrangement, props, camera relationship, color, lighting, and framing, and they map these elements onto the responsibilities of level designers, who handle set dressing, lighting, texturing, and object placement, while cinematography and character costuming typically fall to other team members.
To illustrate the approach, the paper offers close readings of two works. In Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, the authors trace how scale and the Overlook Hotel's labyrinthine architecture, shifting color temperatures that move from warm amber to cold blue, atmospheric effects such as snow and haze, and props repurposed against their domestic intent all reinforce the film's themes of isolation, decay, and supernatural dominance. In Konami's Silent Hill 4: The Room, the analysis focuses on how a confined apartment, with its low ceilings, muted palette, sparse furnishings, and a visible hole connecting to another world, builds a mood of slow dread and uneasy familiarity, and how environmental details reveal the protagonist's personality and history.
The conclusion holds that mise-en-scène has matured most in survival-horror games, but that level design techniques are seldom pushed to the same emotional depth found in well-crafted film. The paper is a qualitative, analytical essay presented at the DiGRA 2005 conference rather than an empirical study, so its claims rest on interpretive reading of selected examples and on prior scholarship, including Jenkins and Squire's work on contested spaces and developer commentary on Silent Hill 4, instead of on survey data or statistics.
