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Gameworld Interfaces as Make-Believe

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Digital Make-Believe

Part of the book series: Human–Computer Interaction Series ((HCIS))

Abstract

Make-believe is an important part of our engagement with many aspects of our lives and is often seen as central to our engagement with representational media. When playing video games, players must make sense of a range of information, and gameworlds include a selection of signs that either point to the game system, or to the fictional aspects of the game. The combination of health meters, experience bars, and symbols floating around in the world, with a recognizable environment featuring anthropomorphic inhabitants with intentions and motivations may appear paradoxical, but players tend to accept this contradiction without any confusion. With reference to Kendall Walton’s (Mimesis as make-believe. On the foundations of the representational arts. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1990) theory of make-believe where virtually anything has the potential of being props in the imaginative process, the aim of this chapter is to expand the understanding of make-believe by exploring how it is employed when players interact with gameworlds.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information Science and Media Studies, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway

    Kristine Jørgensen

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  1. Kristine Jørgensen
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Correspondence to Kristine Jørgensen .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computing, Edinburgh Napier University, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

    Phil Turner

  2. Management and Organization, Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki, Finland

    J. Tuomas Harviainen

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Jørgensen, K. (2016). Gameworld Interfaces as Make-Believe. In: Turner, P., Harviainen, J. (eds) Digital Make-Believe. Human–Computer Interaction Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29553-4_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29553-4_6

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-29551-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-29553-4

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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