Spatial Games

For this post I decided to talk about games that I know and discuss how people interact with the environment spatially. First off I will start with World of Warcraft where everything is spatial. One of the main things that comes to mind is how player vs player combat sometimes plays. The people in the game who are experienced us the terrain to their advantage and try and use hills walls and such to hid themselves or break a lock on themselves from another player targeting them. Even hiding the opponents flag until you get yours back is an experiment in how spatial aware other players are. I my self have hidden in plain view and have had many people walk by me because I hid in a dark corner that people would run by without looking at.
Also in the game you get people asking where to go and, after a lengthy conversation, find out that they have not explored the map at all and have no clue what the the small sections within each area are called. Now it is an ongoing debate to whether these type of people are lazy or if they just do not care to explore on their own and discover the area themselves. Sometimes though it is because they are exploring, just that they got their east and west mixed up and went the wrong way, which is amazingly common. I too get mixed up and head east when I am suppose to go west. This is one of the spatial problems that I cannot figure out in the game and I wonder if a full fledged compass would reduce this problem.
Next I want to discuss any first person shooter because when a person plays that type of game you have to be spatially aware and if your not you will not last long. When playing a game like and FPS you have to know the layout and where good hiding spots are. You just can not run into an area and just willy-nilly shoot at everything because the more experienced player is probably hiding and waiting for you to do just that. To play a game like that effectively you have to understand where you can go, what type of supplies are there, and is it closer or farther away from enemy territory? It is always interesting to see how people react to an in-game spatial problem and how the ope with others using the area more effectively.