Ways of being: pervasive game design ethos in urban codemakers

In this article we describe our approach to pervasive game design and provide examples of how this ethos is embedded in practice vis-a-vis the Urban Codemakers game universe. The theoretical foundations for this approach are outlined and unpacked: moving from Heideggerian phenomenology to a Situationist aesthetic for intervention in urban spaces. We illustrate the necessity of emphasising an understanding of the player's thereness for design; best surmised in Heidegger's term Dasein (there-being). In so doing, we collapse any Cartesian distinction between virtual/real, material/ideal, and subject/object for game design, to instead, a comprehension of different phenomenological worlds within which the player is necessarily embedded and embodied.