Ludic Spatial Structure

The Ludic Spatial Structure orders the places of a game in relation to one another - where: adjacent, distant, connected. It determines where something can be, what borders on what, which paths exist between places and how far something is from something else.

It is a coordinate structure: every game has one, at the zero point if need be - a game without spatial fixation, such as a pure guessing game, orders no space, and the place is occupied by the zero value. The concept is the range of values, the spatial structure of a game the choice set within it; the values are set by Ludic Regulation. Regulation, appearance and ascription adhere to its places: a topology has no colour, this place has one.

It is dimensional. Instead of a list of spatial types it has twelve dimensions in four groups - articulation, connectedness, constitution, relation to the agents (§10) -, on each of which every game takes a position. Named types such as grid or linear chain are combinations of these values (§11).

It is form-independent. The same order of places and connections can be a printed board, a rendered room or a building that people walk through. The Ludic Form spans the space of possibilities of the spatial structures; it is not itself the structure.

Place and design access

Place on the axis: CORPUS - a coordinate structure of the corpus. Its values are determinations; the match played on it is the process.

Design access: designable - the articulation, connectedness, constitution and relation to the agents of the space are determined, as are how its places appear and what they count as.

Relations on the axis:

• CORPUS: Ludic Regulation sets its values; Ludic Appearance and Ludic Fiction determine at its places how they appear and what they count as. It orders Ludic Entities by where - not each has a place: the hand card, the supply. It opens and limits which Ludic Actions are possible - movement, reach, neighbourhood; bidding or voting need no space. It corresponds with the Ludic Social Structure in multiplication (who owns which place), with the Ludic Temporal Structure in movement, which is place and time at once, with the Ludic View Structure in what one perceives of the space - the labyrinth hides because it is laid out that way. Pattern structures lay themselves over it - Territory orders who controls which places; spatial patterns such as hub-and-spoke are named combinations of layout and regulation.
• FORM: The Ludic Form spans the space of possibilities of the spatial structures - continuous space in sport, spaces on the table, the walkable world in digital games. The same order can be realised in several forms.
• AGENT–CORPUS: Content frames suggest spatial structures - the frame labyrinth yields one.
• AGENT: It orders the space in which the agents act - where a move leads, what lies within reach, who has which area. What the agents want, feel and how they decide it does not determine.

The trias at this concept

In a coordinate structure the three terms take hold at the places - at this space, this edge, this location. The question of appearance becomes: how is it recognisable?

Regulation - the choice set: spaces border on each other along their edges; from the prison the only way on is over the bridge; the penalty area is a zone with its own rules; the offside line shifts with play. Appearance - how the place is recognisable: the chalk line, the outlined space, the door that looks different from the walls, the path that stands out from the grass. Ascription - what the place counts as: in Risk the territories count as countries, in Monopoly the spaces as streets; the same place can be home, border or enemy land, the room the forbidden one.

The three can be set independently. Where they diverge, coherence costs arise: a door that looks like a door and never opens. How spacious or cramped a space feels only follows from the whole and belongs to the derived layer.

Process formula. The determinations adhere to the places and hold for a process:

A Ludic Spatial Structure has a Ludic Regulation for a Ludic Process. A Ludic Spatial Structure has a Ludic Appearance for a Ludic Process. A Ludic Spatial Structure has a Ludic Fiction for a Ludic Process.

The prepositional construction is binding; the possessive genitive is to be avoided.

Delimitations

Delimitation from Ludic Form

Against the Ludic Form: order versus space of possibilities. The form spans which spatial orders can be realised - at the table the whole space can be overseen, in a building it cannot, and continuous space with measured distances requires bodies or a simulation. The order itself belongs to the corpus: the same network of places and connections remains the same whether printed, rendered or walked. Until this concept, spatial structure existed only as a property of the form and therefore had to be duplicated for each form.

Delimitation from Ludic Pattern

Against the Ludic Pattern: position versus content. Whatever can be fully reconstructed from dimension values is a value label of this concept (§11). Hub-and-spoke brings more: the hub is safe, the spokes are dangerous, one sets out and returns. That is a spatial layout together with regulation - a pattern, more precisely a named combination within regulation, because regulation sets the values of the spatial structure. Likewise arena, labyrinth, puzzle room, social space and platform course. Two reach across several terms: the multi-level world, where its levels differ in appearance or ascription, such as the light and dark worlds in Zelda: A Link to the Past, and 2.5D - played in the plane, depicted with depth. The patterns instantiate the Ludic Pattern and decompose onto this concept; they attach at the differentiation of places.

Delimitation from Ludic Organisational Structure

Against the ordering domain “space and access” of the Ludic Organisational Structure: layout versus happening. The spatial structure determines how the space is laid out. The patterns of the ordering domain order what happens on it in play - who controls, connects and opens up places, such as Territory or Exploration. The coordinate structure determines the layout, the pattern orders what happens on it in play.

Delimitation from Ludic Social Structure

Against the Ludic Social Structure: place versus constellation. Multiplication - one shared space, personal areas alongside it, or personal areas only - articulates places: who owns which place? It therefore belongs here. Who plays with and against whom is set by the social structure; what someone sees on their area and the others do not, by the Ludic View Structure. The three touch at the same layout and remain separate.

Delimitation from Ludic View Structure

Against the Ludic View Structure: layout versus perception. The spatial structure determines how the space is laid out, the view structure what one perceives of it and from where. The two are connected: the labyrinth hides because it is laid out that way, the arena shows everything. A line of sight that only determines what a figure may attack while everyone sees everything - in Warhammer 40,000 - is regulation at the spatial structure; if it determines what the players perceive - the fog of war in StarCraft - it is a value of the view structure. Whether the space is two- or three-dimensional belongs to the layout; with which camera and in which projection it is shown, to the view.

Examples

Game	Spatial structure
Chess	discrete · regular adjacency · one place · undifferentiated · static · shared. Almost everywhere at the simple end, and still inexhaustible: the depth lies in what happens on the space
Pandemic	discrete · arbitrary adjacency · many places · branched · in-between space played. Which cities border each other decides spread and defence - adjacency is the actual object of design
Wingspan	multiplication in pure form: each person orders their own area, alongside a small shared display
Hive	without a board: the area arises from the tiles placed and changes in play - persistence at the mobile end
Football	continuous and still articulated: fixed zones (penalty area, centre circle), a moving line (offside), goals as distinguished places. Continuous does not mean unarticulated
Escape room	one place · continuous · highly differentiated: the architecture is the task
Dark Souls	many places · branched · returnable · in-between space played · highly differentiated. Shortcuts back to the starting point are the core - a statement about returnability, not about a spatial type
Battle royale	continuous · one place that shrinks in play - persistence “changed during play” as the core of the game

Explanation

Every game orders space, even one that has none.

Some do so obviously: a board with spaces, a map with cities, a building you walk through. Others do so unobtrusively - the display on the table, your own area on which you build. And some not at all: a pure guessing game needs no spatial order. That is not a missing structure but its zero point.

Spatial structure is not the same as the material. An order of places and connections can be printed, rendered or walked - it remains the same order. What changes is what becomes possible with it.

Instead of a list of spatial types, this concept asks about dimensions. What does the space consist of - spaces, nodes, or is it undivided? How are the places connected, and can you go back? Is the way between two places played or skipped? Does the space change? Does it have depth? Does each person have an area of their own?

The advantage: familiar spatial forms can be read as combinations of answers, and new ones arise when you change one answer. A branched network in which the way is skipped rather than played makes a different game - and you only see this decision when you ask it as a question of its own.

Usage context

• Ideation: Which spatial order carries the intended Ludic Activities?
• Development: setting the values of the twelve dimensions; choosing and decomposing spatial patterns.
• Evaluation: as a test grid - are the intended paths used? Do unplanned bottlenecks or dead spaces arise?
• Material: the form-independent spatial stack (stacks/corpus/spatial-structures/) with one card per dimension (§10), the value labels, which carry their reconstruction (§11), and the spatial patterns; until 2026-10-11 two form-specific stacks, play surface and topology (analogue) and spatial structures (digital).

Theoretical foundation

• Michael Nitsche, Video Game Spaces (2008): game space as a layered space, not a container. Espen Aarseth, “Allegories of Space” (2000): space as a constitutive, not decorative element.
• Bill Hillier and Julienne Hanson, The Social Logic of Space (1984): space syntax models space as a graph of reachabilities and derives social consequences from it - the same move that the group connectedness (§10) makes in games.
• Christopher Alexander et al., A Pattern Language (1977): named, recurring spatial types with function and context. That they do not lie in this concept but with the Ludic Pattern follows from the matter: a pattern is more than a coordinate.
• To be delimited: Henri Lefebvre, La production de l’espace (1974). The triad of conceived, perceived and lived space is close to the trias but works at the level of society, not of a designed game - a reference, not a foundation.

Dimensions

Twelve dimensions in four groups. Every game takes a position on each, the zero point included. The dimensions are independent: a game can be discrete and highly differentiated, continuous and undifferentiated, one-way and fully connected.

A - Articulation: what does the space consist of?

• Continuity: zero point (no spatial fixation) → discrete (spaces, zones, nodes) → continuous (free placement, measured distance, bodies in space).
• Adjacency: regular and symmetric (grid 4 or 8, hex 6, path 2) → arbitrary and asymmetric (nodes and edges). In continuous space it stands at the zero point; neighbourhood follows from distance.

B - Connectedness: how are the places connected?

• Number of places: one place without an outside → many places.
• Degree of connection: linear → branched → fully connected.
• Returnability: one-way → freely returnable.
• Playedness of the in-between space: the way is played → crossed but not played → skipped - fast travel, abstract movement, “you travel for three days”.

C - Constitution: what is the space like?

• Persistence: static → variably set up → changed during play → generated.
• Verticality: flat → multi-layered.
• Extent: one glance → one table → one building → beyond the venue.
• Dimensionality: zero point → 2D → 3D. At the zero point where continuity stands there and where the places form a network - in a network only the connections count. Verticality does not capture it: a side-scroller is vertical and has no depth. 2.5D is not a value but a deviation - played in 2D, depicted in 3D (§5).

D - Relation to the agents: how does the space relate to the players?

• Multiplication: one shared space → shared space with personal areas → personal areas only.
• Differentiation of places: undifferentiated (all places alike) → highly differentiated (each place with its own function). This is where spatial patterns attach.

Two dimensions are new compared with the card stock: the playedness of the in-between space, so far only a difference between two cards (branched network, node network), and the differentiation, the remainder of the dissolved axis place function. Visibility, the twelfth in the draft, belongs to the Ludic View Structure; from there came dimensionality - it is a matter of the layout of the space, not of the standpoint.

Value labels

Nineteen named types of the card stock are value labels: they can be fully reconstructed from dimension values. The reconstruction is at the same time the proof. As an entry point in a workshop they remain useful - “hex grid” is easier to work with than “discrete, adjacency degree 6”.

Value label	Reconstruction
No play surface	continuity at the zero point
Path, track	discrete · adjacency linear (degree 2)
Grid	discrete · adjacency regular 4/8
Hex grid	discrete · adjacency regular 6
Network, node graph	discrete · adjacency arbitrary
Free surface	continuous
Open field	continuous · extent: one building · undifferentiated
Single room	number of places 1
Linear chain	many places · linear · one-way
Open world	continuous · many places · fully connected · returnable · extent: beyond the venue
Branched network	many places · branched · returnable · in-between space played
Node network	many places · branched · in-between space skipped
Individual tableaus	multiplication: personal areas
Modular set-up	persistence: variably set up
Procedural world	persistence: generated
Corridor	linear · in-between space played · extent: one glance
Transit space	linear · in-between space crossed, not played
2D	dimensionality 2D
3D	dimensionality 3D

Corridor and transit space aim at pacing, anticipation and guiding the gaze; that is their aim, not their content. Three pairs look alike and still remain separate because their values differ: free surface and open field, modular set-up and procedural world, corridor and transit space.