This paper aims at presenting an initial taxonomy of the ways the meaning of Unreal Tournament's game space and behaviour can be altered. Examples from academic courses will be used to illustrate ways in which new meanings can be generated through Unreal Tournament. The examples range from creating new levels in the tradition of Unreal Tournament to new forms—even non-electronic forms—of the game.

Unreal Tournament is more than a First-Person shooter game. The game's modest price includes an editor to create new levels for the game and alter it in yet only marginally explored ways. The game's popularity on the one hand and the ease to modify it have lead to a culture of modding and a wealth of creative work expanding the original intent of the game. Unreal Tournament fulfils known preconditions to motivate creativity: It provokes, there is a promoting social milieu, and it's the knowledge necessary for interventions is accessible (Csikszentmihalyi 1996). This has resulted in a diverse community—gamers, artists, advertisers, scientists—that is using and exploiting the game according to individual interests. The attitude when modding the game can take diverse forms, like changing the game to criticise its main characteristic as a shooter game, inventing new challenges for the game as we know it, or using it in an expanded sense of a game engine with possibilities to create new kinds of games or other interactive virtual environments.



Author Bio
Maia Engeli is an information architect, specialized in the design of information access and exchange. She combines digital networks, computer graphics and artificial intelligence to create information and communication environments that supplement human talent and cognitive skills. Her work focuses on dynamic qualities of online information environments, their structural conception as well as their visual representation. This has been exemplified in numerous course environments and research projects. In 2001 she published the book "bits and spaces" and in 2000 the book "Digital Stories: The Poetics of Communication".

Since three years she also teaches courses and workshops on game modifications, with the aim to discover and exploit the potential of these media to carry social, political, and cultural messages.

Maia Engeli was Assistant Professor for Architecture and CAAD at the ETH Zurich, 1996-2002, acting head of the chair for Architecture and CAAD, 1998-2002, and the head of the ETH World Center that supports the ETH community in the creation of the new virtual/physical presence of the ETH Zurich, 2001-2002. Since 2002 she is working on her PhD at Roy Ascott's Planetary Collegium.