> the illusion of a Nakatomi Space, but in truth the developers intended all its pathways to be traversed

I don't think that logic works, because if we apply back onto Die Hard, we get a bizarre conclusion: The movie's Nakatomi Plaza lacks any of the eponymous Nakatomi Places it supposedly showcases. (Because that protagonist, too, is traveling intended routes that were planned and put there by screenwriters.)

When it comes to works of fiction, what we need to be looking at are the intents and assumptions of the in-universe fictional architects and/or typical users of the space.

> When it comes to works of fiction, what we need to be looking at are the intents and assumptions of the in-universe fictional architects and/or typical users of the space.

I agree in the context of films, but this ignores the relationship between creator and player/user in interactive fiction like games.

Your argument is incomplete, everyone agrees differences exist, but you haven't explained how any of those differences make "Nakatomi spaces" in games somehow less legitimate than in movies like Die Hard.

If anything, you've got it backwards: The fact that each individual player must notice and choose to exploit alternate paths makes them more authentically unusual and innovative than in movies, rather than less.

> everyone agrees differences exist, but you haven't explained how any of those differences make "Nakatomi spaces" in games somehow less legitimate than in movies like Die Hard.

I meant the opposite - games have an additional layer in which "Nakatomi space" can exist. The misunderstanding seems to be my fault (oops)

> When it comes to works of fiction, what we need to be looking at are the intents and assumptions of the in-universe fictional architects and/or typical users of the space.

I failed to grasp this initially; I agree with you here - but only for films and novels where the reader/viewer/audience lacks agency. This is what OP (jl6) seemed to be driving at:

> in gaming we must look to the world of speedrunning. This is where players move through the game’s spaces in ways almost certainly not intended by the architects

Games contain not just a relationship between fictional architects and fictional entities (with fictional agency), but additionally a relationship between real developers and real players (with real, albeit constrained and often imagined, agency).

> each individual player must notice and choose to exploit alternate paths

If these paths were planned by the developers, they are akin to hallways and stairwells in a skyscraper. In the creator-player context their traversal is within the norm, excluding them from being "Nakatomi space". I agree with OP that glitches/exploits better embody this concept:

> A gamer wishing to emulate John McClane wouldn’t demolish a wall using the rocket launcher that the level designer put in a crate: they would exploit a clipping bug to glitch right through it.

Games are unlike films because in a game, players have agency that separates them from the characters they play. In a film, characters interact only with the in-universe architects and can only subvert the intentions of those architects, not those of the author. But in a game, the player is not the character. The player can make out-of-universe choices too, and can subvert the intentions of the architects (developers) of the game.

Uh, yeah, and those are all reasons to reject the conclusion that games (like Deus Ex) merely offer second-rate "illusory" Nakatomi Spaces compared to movies.

A human deciding to pile crates and sneak in through a ceiling window--even in a game--is a more authentic subversion of plans than reading a a tale where the author dictates the fixed story.

Beyond that, the freedom to glitch/hack/mod the game merely raises the ceiling, it does not lower the floor.

I don’t think it is all that subversive to use a route that the developer built for that purpose.

Then it is even less so when it is a route a screenwriter or author placed as the only possible route that could ever be taken for all time.

Indeed, and I think the point here is giving the feeling of architectural subversion to the player/audience, which both Die Hard and Deus Ex achieve.

That has parallels with Escher’s ‘paradoxical’ image of two hands recursively drawing each-other: it’s not paradoxical once you realise a third hand drew them sequentially in order for them to appear paradoxical.

I recommend the Mario 64 "Half A-Press" video if you haven't seen it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpk2tdsPh0A

I've had a similar thought about magic in fantasy games. In our world, a person throwing a fireball or teleporting across a chasm would be--at the very just--startling. But in the world of a fantasy game, these things are de rigueur. In extrapolation "what would be a startling display of power", I end up imagining the sorts of exploits that like https://youtu.be/H9nMezJvr-k?si=hWL_JrB0v94RO_91

I'll comment from the architect side. Having made a substantial puzzle game about movement through a very escher-esque space. Sometimes subversive "Nakatomi" solutions are intentional. Sometimes they are accidental but I know about them either by discovering them for myself, or seeing them get discovered during a playtest. Usually I leave it in. If you managed to play by my rules and win in a way I didn't intend, you deserve the victory.

I'll share an anecdote about one of my favorites. So the objective in my puzzle is to collect all the gold orbs spread around the space. Once I saw a player get a gold orb in a way that was suicidal. Under any other circumstances they would have died immediately afterwards and revert to the last check point. But because they saved it for last, they beat the level in mid air just after touching the orb but before touching the lava.

What's the game? This sounds super cool!

A fun trip in this vein is the speedrun of Control that its developers react to. Speedrunners, of course, scamper through the immaterial areas between levels. However, Control famously features a Brutalist-styled SCP-like office complex whose non-Euclidean spaces shift - even behave - outside the bounds of known reality. Traversal of the meta-architectural spaces therefore melds with traversal of the architectural spaces in a way that is canonically elegant.

https://youtu.be/uTNibYqpKwE