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.