11 million player deaths in Just Cause 2 – a big open world game – plotted in 3D; a map of the world made only out of player-deaths.

What happens is: the map becomes visible, but not it’s quite the “real” map. Unstead, you see obvious things like the really tall buildings – skyscrapers – and the really tall sites – mountains – becoming very evident.

Strange things happen underneath tall stuff – under the biggest skyscrapers, and the casino that hangs in the air like an airship – the shape of the object is very clear at the top, but then disappears into fountains and fluid shapes underneath it, as everybody falls off, hits things on the way down, corpses collecting on the ground underneath the airship – see 00:58 for a really obvious example.

So it visualises both the objects in the world, and the physics of the world. Yes, there are surfaces where people have been shot or run out of health for other reasons, but then there are all the points that extruded from those surfaces according to curves defined by velocity and world-gravity. The world and the system all at once. You could, I suppose, reverse-engineer one from the other. And, of course, what you’re seeing here isn’t geography – it’s just the visualisation of a systemic layer in the game (player-death).

And in that sense, the visualisation shows just how closely the world and its systems are linked. Pretty.

I’m writing a new column for the online component of excellent games magazine Kill Screen.

It’s called The Game Design of Everyday Things, and is about the ways that the ways we interact with objects, spaces, and activities in the everyday world can inform the way we design games.

Which is, you know, a big topic, but one that pretty much encompasses lots of my interests and work to date. I think it’s going to cover some nice ideas in the coming weeks and months.

I’ve started by looking at that fundamental of electronic games: buttons.

Every morning, I push the STOP button on the handrail of a number 63 bus. It tells the driver I want to get off at the next stop.

I’m very fond of the button. It immediately radiates robustness: chunky yellow plastic on the red handrail. The command, STOP, is written in white capitals on red. There’s a depression to place my thumb into, with the raised pips of a Braille letter “S” to emphasize its intent for the partially sighted. When pushed, the button gives a quarter-inch of travel before stopping, with no trace of springiness; a dull mechanical ting rings out, and the driver pulls over at the next stop.

It’s immediately clear what to do with this button, and what the outcome of pushing it will be. It makes its usage and intent obvious.

This is a good button.

Read “Buttons” over at Kill Screen.