Game writer Tim Stevens has an interesting short piece up this week in The Escapist’s “Casual Friday” section called “Supplemanting Reality,” which gives a quick glance at the question of virtual reality vs. real life experience (as expressed through a game like Nintendogs).
Tim’s overall point seems to be that gaming offers players opportunities they might not be able to endulge in in real life, a valid if somewhat simplistic argument. He raises this example though, which seems, in a way, to bring into question and even combat his conclusion:
[Can a game give a sense of friendship of companionship?] In Japan, at least, there’s compelling evidence that they can. Think of the incredible popularity of dating sims among Japanese gamers. There are hundreds of romantic video games there that feature nothing more explicit than a modest bathing suit or more titillating than a kiss on the cheek, yet they sell like hotcakes, and their success extends far beyond the games themselves. Players genuinely become attached to the characters they’re trying to digitally woo, spending their salaries on figurines and posters depicting them, even dressing up like them; trying to make them real.
So what does it say about us when we escape the real world through the virtual world, only to make the virtual world the standard for the re-creation of the real? Digital puppy care may be one thing, but in the overall are we really engaging in virtual worlds because we’re content with the wide array of possibilities of in-game experience, or are we trying in some way to shape the actual world around us by displaced extension? When we as real-world human beings are playing, are the implications of the virtual ever merely contained to virtual worlds?
December 5th, 2005 at 10:16 am
That last paragraph has a lot of questions and no answers. ;)
December 5th, 2005 at 11:52 am
Sorry about that, James; they’re questions and also attempted answers. I mean, cut me some slack, it’s a difficult topic and I don’t want to pretend like I’ve got it figured out :-).
December 5th, 2005 at 6:54 pm
Strange synchronicity with a text I wrote in my notebook this morning.
I’ll just (try to) translate the last paragraph:
[When people adorn themselves in the strappings of virtual life, whether it’s publicty, video-games, litterature, political or religious ritualism, whatever], it’s not:”I want to look like this depiction of life” they’re saying, but rather “I beg of you, I don’t know what it means to be alive, please let me be part of the picture - may the picture become life”.
Sill need to read the latest edition of the Escapist, but life’s been hectic recently.
December 5th, 2005 at 7:52 pm
MD^2, it all goes back to a question qDot posed around here recently: essentially, are games meant to reflect real life, or are they meant to enable fantasies we wish we could act out in real life?
December 5th, 2005 at 9:46 pm
“essentially, are games meant to reflect real life, or are they meant to enable fantasies we wish we could act out in real life?”
Yes. :-)
I think David Wong said it best: someday, it’ll be all about Awesome You.
December 5th, 2005 at 10:11 pm
Wow, I quoted David Wong on this blog too. Have we talked about porn addiction over here already?
December 6th, 2005 at 10:14 am
Porn addition… *I* want to know more about porn addiction… :-)
December 6th, 2005 at 12:41 pm
I understood that, Ms Bonnie, and my answer was that the questions may be overlooking the fact that it may be the codes of life and the codes of fiction depends on the same market (=existence ?), and really are just specialisations of one and the same emission
Going all around with a shotgun shooting people is not considered an accepted social behavior… except in games (in fiction), and you know it is not acceptable in life because it’s the stuff of games as well as you know it’s the the stuff of game because it’s not acceptable/accepted in life.
The code is meant to actualise the possibilty of gradations that defines the frame of our existence.
Think in linguistic how words/structures define class by being in theory mutualy exclusive to every other iterations.
December 6th, 2005 at 2:03 pm
I hear you, MD^2. You’re saying that the question of fantasy vs. realism is negated by the concept that game space and real life are innately distinctuated by their separate roles in the levels of existence. And I think, theoretically, that works. But at the same time a lot of the people who are playing and designing games are looking at it within this fantasy vs. realism model, and thus it still needs to be considered in understanding the meaningful consumption of games. (Also, “Bonnie” is fine; I don’t know if I’m “Ms.” material :-)).
December 9th, 2005 at 1:14 pm
BTW, not to burst Tim’s theory or anything, but I can find at least one person who argues that dating sims ain’t as hot as he claims - not with the mainstream Japanese gamers, at any rate. Doesn’t invalidate his argument or anything - just means it may not support it as strongly as he thinks.
December 9th, 2005 at 3:32 pm
Huh, thanks for the link, Ferrous, that’s really interesting. I think the general conversation still stands as an interesting issue - since, after all, whether it’s dating sims or any kind of cosplay we’re constantly messing with the boundaries of fantasy and reality - but it seems Tim fell into some good, old-fashioned stereotyping (not in a hateful way, just in a cultural pressumptious way) about Japanese culture.
October 30th, 2007 at 8:22 am
freeplay online greyhound betting games…
outperforms unnatural!thug Molochize …