Abstract
This contribution argues principally that we ought to be able to conceive of computer games as ontologically real since they embody, like any other component of our broader, culturally endowed and constructed, sense of reality, characteristic aspects of three principal types of cultural units that we shall refer to as material, immaterial and mediated cultural artifacts.
The complex blends of phenomenal experience we conjure up as we engage enactively in various forms of gameplay in the fictional possible worlds of digital games are seen as culturally inherited, commonplace kinds of experience that blend seamlessly with, and link meaningfully to, our experiences of many other types of material, immaterial and mediated cultural artifacts that we casually interact with on a day to day basis in similar, but nonetheless quite different, ways.
I also argue that all our enactive experiences involving interactions with blends of material, immaterial and mediated artifacts can be seen as constituent facets of our very rich, culturally constructed everyday experience of what we refer to normally as the actual world, the real world, or “reality”.
Further, I claim that these experiences, whatever form they may take, and whatever effects they may have on our personal and collective ways of “being in the world”, and our shared relationships with other beings, human or otherwise, with whom we share this world, are all, in this particular sense, real too.
On the basis of the above considerations, it appears it ought to be possible to learn a good deal more about our on-going relationships with both the real world, ourselves and others, by focusing philosophically (and scientifically) on how the fictional worlds of computer games are experienced and appraised by players and others they may encounter during gameplay, and on which, if any, meaningful relationships players are able to establish between their gameplay experiences and their day to day experiences of interactions with other blends of material, immaterial and mediated cultural artifacts that we consider part of the real world as we know it.
If this way of reasoning about such matters is a viable one, we will probably also be able to learn a lot more about computer game fictional possible worlds too by focusing on alternative ways of describing and understanding our day to day experiences of the real world, and our own intimate interactive relationships with this world, of which computer games, their material platforms and their immaterial fictional possible worlds are of course only one tiny – but very real – part.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
See the two reviews by Carbonell and Nichols on the RCCS (Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies) website: http://rccs.usfca.edu/bookinfo.asp?ReviewID=381&BookID=310. Accessed 8 December 2010. http://rccs.usfca.edu/bookinfo.asp?ReviewID=412&BookID=310. Accessed 8 December 2010.
- 3.
Schneider (1968:1–2) introduces the notion of cultural units as follows: “A particular culture, American culture for instance, consists of a system of units (or parts) which are defined in certain ways, and which are differentiated according to certain criteria. These units define the world or the universe, the way things in it relate to each other, and what these things should be and do. […] A unit in a particular culture is simply anything that is culturally defined and distinguished as an entity. It may be a person, place, thing, feeling, state of affairs, sense of foreboding, fantasy, hope or idea.”
- 4.
The notion of bodies as designed artifacts may seem counter-intuitive. But I have decided to include it here since human bodies, though by no means perfect examples of design principles are essentially products of a long period of evolutionary steered, but socio-culturally mediated process of refinement and specialization.
- 5.
See Montfort and Bogost (2009: 145–150) for an introduction to the nascent field of platform studies. The authors distinguish five strata of digital media studies, of which platform studies is one of the more recent: (i) Reception/Operation Studies, (ii) Interface Studies, (iii) Form/Function Studies, (iv) Code Studies and (v) Platform Studies.
- 6.
See Galloway (2006). For further discussion and exemplification of game-engine types see http://gpwiki.org/index.php/Game_Engines. Accessed 14 December 2009. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_engine. Accessed 14 December 2009.
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
http://www.wow-europe.com/en/index.xml. Accessed 14 December 2009.
- 10.
http://secondlife.com/. Accessed 14 December 2009.
- 11.
http://www.lotro.com/. Accessed 8 January 2010.
- 12.
For further details see these online ESA Newsletter reports: http://www.theesa.com/facts/index.asp. Accessed 11 June 2010. http://seekingalpha.com/article/32842-profiting-from-the-love-of-gaming. Accessed 11 June 2010.
- 13.
For further details see this New York Times online article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/07/technology/07game.html?scp=1&sq=grand+theft+auto+IV&st=nyt. Accessed 11 June 2010.
- 14.
http://www.theesa.com/newsroom/esa_newsletter/february2009/index.html. Accessed 11 June 2010.
- 15.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/06/06/us-videogames-factbox-idUKTRE75552I20110606. Accessed 11 June 2011.
- 16.
For some recent work on multimodality see Baldry (2000).
- 17.
- 18.
- 19.
Norm Friesen and Theo Hug (2009: 67–68) define mediality as “designating the interaction of technology, society, and cultural factors through which institutionalized media of communication such as the press, television, or the World Wide Web produce, transform, and circulate symbols in everyday life. It is this total media system, and not specific instances of communication, that are of principal importance. Mediality in this sense can be said to develop out of or to supersede communication activity or communicativity”.
- 20.
For an overview of recent interdisciplinary multimodality research see the website of the Third International Conference on Multimodality: http://www.multimodality.it. Accessed 5 December 2010.
- 21.
Henry Jenkins (2008: 95–96) defines transmedia storytelling as storytelling “across multiple media platforms with each new text making a distinctive and valuable contribution to the whole. In the ideal form of transmedia storytelling, each medium does what it does best.”
- 22.
We could also have used the more commonly used term “man-machine interface” here, but the above choice of terms seems to fit our present context best.
- 23.
MUD website: http://www.british-legends.com/. Accessed 14 December 2010. See also Bartle (1990) for a historical overview.
- 24.
See Eco (1994b).
- 25.
http://youtube.com. Accessed 10 June 2010.
- 26.
http://secondlife.com/. Accessed 10 June 2010.
- 27.
http://twinity.com. Accessed 10 June 2010.
- 28.
A definition of the notion of transmedia navigation as “the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities” is to be found in Jenkins (2006). http://www.projectnml.org/files/working/NMLWhitePaper.pdf. Accessed 14 June 2010.
- 29.
See for example the following websites: http://www.iot-a.eu/public and http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/The_Internet_of_Things_2538. Accessed 10 June 2010.
- 30.
“Cooperition” is a technical term used increasingly today in global business environments. It stands for a working agreement between companies or businesses, whereby a potential competitor becomes a strategic partner. See this article online for a documented example of this: http://www.pfmonthenet.net/featuresarchive/article.aspx?ArticleID=9094. Accessed 10 June 2010.
- 31.
Thanks to Michael Liebe at DIGAREC, Potsdam http://www.digarec.org/ for sharing this information, and providing examples of speed runs recorded in World of Warcraft.
- 32.
For some examples of recent machinima productions see http://www.machinima.com/ and http://www.strangecompany.org/. See also the following Machinima Archive online: http://www.archive.org/details/machinima
- 33.
- 34.
Though massively multiuser online environments (MMOE’s), Virtual Worlds, CVE’s, MUVE’s and so on (see http://www.virtualenvironments.info/) like Active Worlds, Kaneva, Second Life, Sims Online, Whyville, Twinity and their peers may contain in-world gameplay zones, functions and tools for play, their users are not expected to participate in game activities. Clients of massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG’s) such as World of Warcraft, Everquest, Entropia Universe and their peers, on the other hand, are expected to do so.
- 35.
See Leino et al. (2008) for some recent research on player experience. Note too, that both the 2011 (Athens) and 2012 (Madrid) editions of the Philosophy of Computer Games international conference series (http://gamephilosophy.org/) have been dedicated to player identity and player experience.
- 36.
See Juul (2010: 145–218) for examples of semi-structured methods for tapping and valorizing player and game designer experiences of, and their thoughts regarding, games and gaming, using individualized conversational interviews to document and collect “player stories” and “designer interviews”.
- 37.
Here I include games on mobile phones, iPads, Facebook and elsewhere, on desktop or portable computers, play-stations, massively multiplayer games online, virtual reality games, pervasive urban games, augmented or alternative reality games that use mobile GPS devices to navigate and gather information in real world environments during play (De Souza e Silva and Sutko 2009).
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Coppock, P. (2012). Are Computer Games Real?. In: Sageng, J., Fossheim, H., Mandt Larsen, T. (eds) The Philosophy of Computer Games. Philosophy of Engineering and Technology, vol 7. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4249-9_17
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