My architect friend works long days in the office drafting plans and elevations. They also play videogames avidly. At night they close Rhino & Autocad and open other drawing editors, still clicking, scrolling, rotating, zooming in modeled spaces. Let’s follow their set of deliverables.

The historical film is a journey into the past. You watch as known narratives or even alternative ones unfold, catching a glimpse of idiosyncrasies, and at times, judging historical accuracy. So if the historical film is a journey into the past, then the historical game, in this case Assassins Creed III, is an experience of that past through the lens of a participant that has a hand in the unfolding of those narratives, occupying space and viscerally reacting to the events that have been coded in.

In an open-world game where you can own homes, what exactly do you experience as a player? What do these homes provide after stripping away our actions in real life, such as eating, cleaning, or sleeping? Here, the definition of home is literal: It does not imply the symbolic meaning of belonging to a player community. Home, here, is also interchangeable with a plethora of synonyms, such as a safe house, hideout, base, home plate, garage, HQ…