Ruins, mountains, caves and subterranean corridors are elements of digital games that offer either hiding places or lookout points for the player. Games can either provide for anxiety or for the feeling of empowerment by staging the environment as transparent and conceivable, or – as Metroidvania games do – by keeping a high level of obscurity, dark lighting and unpredictability. The presentation will demonstrate how game designers accomplish atmospheric settings with the aid of light, particle effects, camera angles and geometry. Ludic experience is compared to the spatial perception and the related affective impact.

Mathias Fuchs is an artist, musician and media scholar. He pioneered in the artistic use of computer games and exhibited work at ISEA, SIGGRAPH, transmediale, PSi #11, futuresonic, EAST, and the Greenwich Millennium Dome. He has been Senior Lecturer at the University of Salford (UK) from 2002 to 2012. In October 2012 he became a professor at Leuphana University in Lüneburg. He was appointed Senior Fellow at the IFK Wien (International Research Centre for Cultural Studies), and is currently Senior Academic at the Institute of Culture and Aesthetics of Media (ICAM) at Leuphana University in Lüneburg.