Blurring the Line...

Since the rise of gaming in the late nineteen-eighties and continual progression through to the present, it is no wonder that the virtual worlds we once thought were so foreign have become so familiar. In the world of gaming, this separation of what is real and what is virtual is known as the magic circle. The magic circle refers to the “distinct boundary between the artificial world of the game and “real life” contexts...”.(Linser, Ree-Lindstad, Tone Vold, 2008, p2) It seems however, that the line between what is known as a state of play and reality is being deliberately blurred allow for not only further immersion, but eventual combination of what is regarded as real and what is virtual.

If you are paranoid, you probably don't want to keep reading...

Nobody would have believed it, but ludologists have accepted the fact that “virtual worlds are now a reality.” How do they come to this conclusion? By simply defining what a modern virtual world allows you to do. “Virtual worlds allow everyone to create a digital character representing themselves and interact with other computer-generated individuals, landscapes, virtually run global businesses and in-world situations in real time.” (Lehdonvirta, 2010, Web) The push towards realism has not only evolved in the richness of hardware and technology, but also the revolutionary game play styles and abilities that allow the player to become less of a puppet-master and more of the player they control. Jonathan Steuer defines virtual reality as “a particular type of experience, rather than…a collection of hardware”. (1993, p3) This definition allows us to break the process and effectiveness of virtual reality into two components; medium effectiveness and experience.

Firstly, it is important to understand the devices and hardware that are allowing the virtual world to converge on what we perceive as reality. The effectiveness of the hardware is reliant on the user’s presence and the “degree to which a virtual environment submerges the perceptual system of the user.” (Giuseppe, 2003, p4) The hardware in this sense is more effective if it can work on a psychological level to remove senses of time and space to bind or exclude reality with the virtual world. There have been many leaps and bounds in technology to get to the stage we are now, where it seems such hardware is present within almost every household today. Microphones, Wii controllers, Playstation Move, Microsoft Kinnect, smart phones and countless other peripheral devices have been extremely successful in promoting a more authentic experience to the user. Most contemporary digital media devices have some way of connecting the user to an aspect of reality in some way, whether it is through motion control, voice chat or augmented reality visual systems, the focus of hardware is to make the line between the virtual world and real world more indecisive.

Kinnect: Microsoft isn't going down without a fight when it comes to virtual hardware.

Hardware however, is only one way game developers have been able to utilise their work to blur the fine line of reality. If the games and its hardware cannot uphold visual realism in the form of graphics or narrative believability, it tends to place particular focus on social realism; “a process of revisiting the material substrate of the medium and establishing correspondences with specific activities existent in the social reality of the gamer.” (Galloway, 2004, Web) With this in mind, gaming then becomes a process of the medium it is presented and what about that medium links the player to their own social reality and psychology. Take the massively popular Facebook game Farmville for example. The narrative and graphical elements of the game in no way resemble that of reality, yet its success has been unmatched as far as simple online games are concerned. Why? Because it utilises your social circumstances and understanding of psychology to make you compete not against a puzzle or artificial intelligence, but against your friends. Simple tricks in game play, like the ability to compete against friends, immerses the player within the game with much higher stakes: they are no longer playing a character, but a representation of themselves.

Once the psychological, realistic, narrative driven, hardware and social aspects of games are combined, they aim to immerse the user and reach a state of immersion. “Players do not just engage in ready-made gameplay, but also actively take part in the construction of these experiences…”. (Ermi, Mayra, 2005, p2) Thus the richness of immersion has become a crucial element for all game design. For something to be assigned value, you must be able to invest time or physical objects/energy into its creation. Through combining revolutionary hardware with gameplay tricks and allowances, designers have been able to, and will only progressively continue to blur the line between what is real, what is virtual. There is no telling how games will then be used in the future, but at the rate the immersion qualities have developed, we may one day consider our virtual experiences as important as those in reality. Why? They will be a part of who we are.

I personally think this is all awesome...

References:

Ermi, Laura. Mayra, Frans. (2005) Fundamental Components of the Gameplay Experience: Analysing Immersion. DiGRA 2005 Conference – Changing Views – World in Play.

Galloway, Alexander. (2004) Social Realism in Gaming. The International Journal of Computer Game Research, Volume 4, Issue 1. Sourced From: http://www.gamestudies.org/0401/galloway/

Giuseppe, Riva. (2003) Virtual Reality as communication tool: a socio-cognitive analysis. IOS Press, Amsterdam.

Lehdonvirta, Vili. (2010) Virtual Worlds Don’t Exist: Questioning the Dichotomous Approach in MMO Studies. The International Journal of Computer Game Research, Volume 10, Issue One. Sourced From: http://gamestudies.org/1001/articles/lehdonvirta

Linser, Roni. Ree-Lindstad, Nina. Vold, Tone. (2008) The Magic Circle – Game Design Principles and Online Role-play Simulations. World Conference on Educational Multemedia, Hypermedia & Telecommunications.

Steuer, Jonathan. (1993) Defining Virtual Reality: Dimensions Determining Telepresence. Journal of Communication, Stanford.

The Goods On the Game Industry

In the past three decades, video games have established themself as a major entertainment force and what could now be argued as the stimulus for one of the largest public goods cultures in the world; the video game community. As the term ‘public goods’ can be considered as “intangible items…[that] fall into the category of information or knowledge”(Linux Information project, 2006, web), it can be determined that the game worlds themselves are based off an intricate fusion of rules, back-stories and information to be explored, expanded and shared. Even though gaming is mainly supported and hosted by commercial goods, groundbreaking advancements in both game design and social interaction have created a knowledge economy amongst gamers that relies heavily on the circulation of ‘public good’. To understand how this has impacted on not only the way we play games, but the way we live our lives. We can examine the importance of knowledge in games and how games are aiding the expansion of knowledge as visual learning systems.

In order to understand why knowledge and the sharing of information has become such a crucial part of our digital culture, we need look no further than the most popular MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) game to date, World of Warcraft. On the surface, the game may seem like a fairly straightforward adventure, but in order to play the game successfully, you must understand more than what is immediately obvious. As Adam Ruch states, "Blizzard's (Developer) primary goal is to regulate the space which they have created, so that the game may function as intended. They seek to protect their rights over intellectual property, as well as provide protection for the rights and expectations of their players." (2009, Web). This suggests that not only is there an entirely new legal system within the game-space itself that must be learnt and abided by, but also a requirement to use information in such a way that does not breach their intellectual property.

Wow...WoW requires a lot of extra knowledge. Lucky it is free, otherwise there would be a lot of poor addicts around.

The knowledge behind how this universe works is not limited to what you get with the software or what you can buy, but a limitless resource that is forever being expanded by its community. There is no charge that applies to the use of this information on how to play the game, what to do at certain points and how to be the best you can be and certainly no lack of producers of such content. It has been recognised that "in order to make sense of how games are used and made sense of, there is a need to analyse learning as an integrated part of participation in social practices."(Arnseth, 2006, Web) That is, the social interaction with social aspects of the game whether it be speaking to other players, reading forums or using a WOW walkthrough (all free) is just as valuable to learning the game as playing the game itself (something you must purchase). This is just one example of the importance of accessible and limitless information in a virtual world; however any game could have been used effectively as an example because the concept of ‘public good’ is universal when it comes to videogame intelligence.

Without 'public goods', nobody would have ever made it past the water temple...

Skills learnt in games don’t always necessarily relate exclusively to the world it was created. Instead, games can also be seen as mass educators for ‘the public good’. This claim is best summed up by The Economist (2005):

Games are widely used as educational tools, not just for pilots, soldiers and surgeons, but also in schools and businesses…Anyone who has learned to play a handful of games can generally figure out how to operate almost any high-tech device. Games require players to construct hypotheses, solve problems, develop strategies, and learn the rules of the in-game world through trial and error. Gamers must also be able to juggle several different tasks, evaluate risks and make quick decisions…Playing games is, thus, an ideal form of preparation for the workplace of the 21^st century, as some forward-thinking firms are starting to realise. (The Economist cited Flew, 2008, p127)

As suggested, videogames almost have an embedded and implicit ability to teach players translatable skills, even if education was not the primary purpose of the game. Once a game is purchased, it is a limitless resource. They can be played in any number of ways and follow any set of governing rules within the bounds of the game. Anybody can then play the game if they have access to it and learn implicitly. It can then be theorised that videogames have the potential to revolutionise education and learning systems by incorporating the ability to subconsciously teach ‘public good’ skills to a broad audience.

"Public good" is more than sharing information as a limitless resource; it is a part of the knowledge economy and digital media society in which we live. Interacting with visual learning systems is growing in popularity and will allow game developers to utilise their tools and creativity to train a more organised and efficient generation of workers and change life as we know it.

References:

Arnset, Hans Christian (2006). Learning to Play or Playing to Learn – A Critical Account of the Models of Communication Informing Educational Research of Computer Gameplay. The International Journal of Computer Game Research, Volume 6, Issue 1. Sourced From: http://gamestudies.org/0601/articles/arnseth

Flew, Terry (2008). New Media: An Introduction (3^rd Edition). Oxford University Press, New York.

Linux (2006). Public Goods: A Brief Introduction. Web. Sourced From:

http://www.linfo.org/public_good.html

Ruch, Adam (2009). World of Warcraft: Service or Space?. The International Journal of Computer Game Research, Volume 9, Issue 2. Sourced From:

http://gamestudies.org/0902/articles/ruch

Image Source:


http://geekspodcast.com/2010/03/25/the-wow-infographic/