Elevator Co-Op Simulation

Here's a playthrough of a Gmod game that's been circulating around recently. In the game, the player(s) enter a large elevator and proceed to go up (or...down?) several floors. The only abilities that the players have other than directional movement are to check their watches or cough softly. The most interesting aspect is that we get to see how the players are reacting to the scenarios they are presented with. Have you guys played any interesting custom Gmod games?

So how about the idea of constrained spaces in games? Like in Super Mario 64, there is a definite border to the world that (usually) prevents the player from leaving that contained space. If they do, they die.

Although Fallout, Skyrim, and World of Warcraft are so expansive, they get to points where the player can no longer go further. Everything in a game is a contained space, right? So in that sense, this elevator is a full game environment despite our assumptions about elevators.

The only game that I can think of that works around this limit is Minecraft, which continues to randomly generate the world as you branch outward from the starting point. As you go further into this world, however, your computer begins to run out of memory and the world becomes increasingly fragmented (giant holes through the map). So there is still a limit.

The Earth itself is a contained space. Is the Earth gamespace? What if going into space in a rocket is a mod?!

Another thing to consider is the duration of time in spaces in games. Why would a house in an RPG exist with nothing there to interact with? But there they are. Why are they there? There used to be an empty town in World of Warcraft that could only be reached by swimming around the border of a continent for a few hours. Should every space in a game be carefully considered or is it healthy for our natural expectations in a game to be broken from time to time? When should spaces have a specific function and when should the player be expected to create the function for the space?