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MARCH Dunedin Game Dev Meetup - Designing Spaces as Characters: The Psychological Ruin as a Playable SpaceJoin us for our MARCH Meetup where we'll be joined by special guest, Marina Cone.
Designing Spaces as Characters: The Psychological Ruin as a Playable Space
Video games are sites for character-based exploration. This space can reflect a character's personality or, as I argue, even their mind. Ruins in particular tell fascinating stories about decay and the passage of time. Using a method of play I call ludo-archaeology, I will demonstrate how you can design a game that distills exploration, world-building, and character development and mechanics into a game's spaces and mechanics.
I will use various video game case studies, alongside supporting research from game studies, archaeology, and media studies scholars, to demonstrate how to use this design in many different games and genres. I argue that there is a specific form of playable ruin called a ludo-psychological ruin, that allows for us to consider video game characters as explorable spaces unto themselves.
About Marina Cone (she / her)
Marina is a current PhD candidate and recent MA graduate from Otago University's English and Linguistics program. Her thesis interrogated what it means to play with ruins in the digital age, and she worked to codify a form of play known as ludo-archaeology. She is interested in horror game design, the study of haunted things, and how we play with time, gender, and ecology in video games.
Marina runs the Otago Literary Games group out of the English department, which studies video game design and narrative, and treats video games as literary artefacts. Her research also focuses on digital preservation and assisting with the creation of the game studies curriculum at a tertiary level. Her favourite games are Silent Hill, Pathologic, and Crash Bandicoot.
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6:00pm - doors open
6:05pm - welcome and intro
6.10pm - Marina presents 'The Psychological Ruin as a Playable Space' followed by Q&A.
7:15pm CODE update and Q&A
7.30pm - eat, drink, mix and mingle, play games
8:30pm - close
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Come by for this special presentation, a catch up with other local developers and show off what you've been working on - we invite you to bring along your projects to share, and bring your friends too - can't wait to see you all there!
For catering purposes and venue capacity you must register for this event here: https://events.humanitix.com/oct-2025-dunedin-game-dev-meetup
Huge thanks to our sponsors CODE NZ and Otago Polytechnic.
Dunedin Game Dev Meetup is committed to maintaining the safety of our community. You must also make yourself familiar with our safe space policy, this can be found on our Facebook page. Dunedin Game Developers does not tolerate bullying or harassment of any kind.
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Event Venue
Otago Polytechnic, Forth Street,Dunedin, New Zealand
Tickets
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