The Film Inception: Architects Designing a Game

The much-discussed shifting environments of Inception.

Watching the much-talked-about Inception, I couldn’t help thinking about the overlap between the movie and level design, the aspect of game development involving the creation of in-game environments. I was not the only one. Reading this very interesting take on Inception from game development blogger Kirk Hamilton’s site, I was struck again  by how the role of the architect (or would that be Architect?) should have instead been that of a level designer. Hamilton’s piece looks at the movie in gaming parlance (and finds it lacking), it’s reliance on tutorial (the frequent explanation of the rules) putting him off from the narrative. What I found interesting, however, was how quickly one could jump from a discussion of this movie to one about games.

The heavily-hyped, and generally well-received, Inception stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Cobb, an emotionally damaged thief whose specialty is stealing information from the dreams of marks. The twist in the film is that he’s tasked by billionaire Saito, played by Ken Watanabe, with performing inception (the planting of an idea) on the mind of business heir Fischer, played by Cillian Murphy. Cobb’s team of dream thieves is comprised of a chemist, an impersonator, and most importantly, an architect.

This last role is filled by the portentously-named Ariadne, played by Ellen Page. She acts as that of map maker and builder of labyrinths for Cobb and his team. What this infers is that Nolan’s screenplay considered the role in terms of how the 3D space of dreams was being constructed and how effectively it could be used by Cobb’s team to counter the mental obstacles in the mind of  the mark.

I was interested in the function of the architect in the film and how it described a more broad meaning for the profession. Erik Larson’s brilliantly historical novel, Devil In the White City, brilliantly describes the role of the architect, specifically in the portrayals of real-life architects Daniel Burnham, the chief architect of the Chicago World’s Fair, and Fredrick Law Olmstead, the embittered and embattled landscape architect of the World’s Fair. Like Burnham and Olmstead, Ariadne is tasked with managing relationships between humans and the environment. The key contrast being the former duo’s management of crowds with an eye towards aesthetics, while the latter is responsible for the interaction between a small group, with a mind towards escape routes.

But in the modern parlance, shouldn’t Ariadne’s role more appropriately be given to a level designer? I wonder if this was something Nolan had in mind when writing the script for the movie – he seems to be someone very cognizant of games, rules, and play, and must have some interest in those people who create the mechanics of each. My reading of Ariadne’s role in the film throws in language like “enemy encounters,” “spawn points,” and “critical path.” Indeed, as with a game, the characters are occupying goal-centered worlds with known sets of rules. If anything, a subtext of Inception, relevant to game and level designers, is how play can be impacted negatively when the rules are upset dramatically and frequently.

It would have been interesting (to me, at least) if Nolan had made the connection between rules and play more explicit by recasting the role of architect as level designer. How then would the designer deal with a “player” (in this case, Murphy) who was able to change the rules of play (I suppose this could be considered emergent play for the sake of this conversation)? Likewise, how would a designer counter a known unavoidable bug, or programming error, like Marion Cotillard’s Mal? Given the focus on combat in several scenes, how would the designer account for resting points, places to relax and recharge, for her players?

Whether or not Nolan ever considered the role of designer in lieu of an architect, it’s easy to see why he used the more traditional profession: we have a rich popular and fictional history of architects whereas outside of the gaming fandom and careers not many people know the names of important game designers. I love this quote on the use of architects in film from this article: “There are very, very few professions that still have a ring of heroism about them, and architecture is one of the few that does.” With regards to game industry professionals, what do we have in film besides Flynn from Tron and the lead from the forgettable Adam Sandler-produced Grandma’s Boy? Again, it feels easier to add emphasis to “Architect” via capitalization than it does to “Designer” simply because one role has a certain cultural heft that has either not been earned, or remains unrecognized in the second. How would audiences have responded to Ariadne if she were described as a Game Designer or if Michael Caine’s Miles was an instructor of Game Design? Raise your hand if the first thing that came to mind with the second was online university Full Sail Technologies and their ubiquitous ads.

I think this is, in large part, because the role of game designer, and any game industry profession, really, remains generational, a relatively new profession that hasn’t the cultural cache of say, writer or artist. I won’t say Ariadne’s not being a game designer is a missed opportunity. It feels more like playing a losing game of what Chris Sims describes as “you forgot.” But I do feel it’s a valid point of departure especially given the game industry’s – our industry’s – insistence on being taken seriously.

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