'ontological bleed' is a research-creation project that utilizes the development of an interface game called ‘the archive’ to discover emergent narrative mechanics. ‘the archive’ consists of a room size installation housing tangible artifacts and the database software that catalogues them. It explores the dualities of the virtual and the tangible, the fictional and the real, juxtaposing physical artifacts with their narratively augmented digital counterparts. It invites players to explore the mysteries of both domains, and creates an experience in which they enter another world as themselves, in their own bodies, with their own histories.

The game is crafted to deliberately provoke bleed, a spillover between player and character; and by mediating the gameworld through innocuous interfaces and anchoring it into an actual physical location, the game creates a metaleptic convergence between the gameworld and the actual world for players to step into. It further simulates these phenomena through the fictional history of the archive. Possible Worlds theory is used by the research paper to explain how worlds can intersect and overlap with each other, and how a person could be situated in two worlds at once.

This paper describes the mechanics that emerged through the development of ‘the archive’ and the experiences reported by players who visited the installation. The game itself becomes an illustrative metaphor for the narrative and ontological concepts that informed its development.

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