“Fiction” Chapter 4 (Wednesday)

Reading Summary

This chapter discusses how video games project a fictional world where the player can use their own imagination to control characters and other aspects of the games. Yet, the author mentions that in order to have a fictional world in a video game there must be rules. These rules are essential in not only explaining why the fantasy is the way it is. They use the game of Donkey Kong and the fact that Mario has three lives as an example. It may be absurd or fantastic to think that a player has three lives after dying once but those are just the rules of the game. The reading goes on to describe abstract to representational games which just means how elaborate their fictional world is. Something important to note from the reading is how to create a fictional world. The author mentions that graphics, sounds, text, cut-scenes, manual, haptics, rules and player actions are the ways to create a fictional world. With this said, all these only create the world but the author emphasizes on the fact that “the game designer cannot control the player’s interpretation of the game world, and the player may additionally believe that the game contains nonexistent elements and imagine the world accordingly.”

Outside Example

I do not play video games but I do watch a lot of shows. Hence, when reading this chapter, the first thing that popped into my mind was the Black Mirror’s Striking Viper episode which was very uncomfortable but interesting. The episode is about a group of friends: Danny Parker, his girlfriend Theo and his best friend Karl. The episode opens with them sharing an apartment where Danny and Theo come home to have sexual intercourse and after doing so, Danny heads to the living room to play fictional fighting game ‘Striking Vipers’ with Karl all night. Flash-forward 11 years, Danny and Theo are married with a child and Karl is living his own life. On Danny’s 38th birthday, Karl shows up and gives him a virtual reality update of ‘Striking Vipers’ as a birthday present. In the VR environment, they have full-sensation skins of their favorite fighters: Karl as Roxette, a women, and Danny as muscular (and frequently shirtless) Lance. In their first attempt to play the game, they try fighting but it rapidly turns into the players kissing. They get scared and suddenly ask themselves who they are now and what happened in the video game. Yet, they continue logging into the game to continue to interact sexually. At one point they meet in person and kiss to find out if maybe they are gay but they find out they aren’t and that they just like how it feels in the VR game. The plot of the episode is filled with different layers of fantasy. Like any other video game, the Danny is faced with desire vs responsibility and reality vs fantasy but this one is not just an obsession with a fighting game rather it is with the VR update to be able to control the characters into doing other actions like sex.

Reading Connection

The episode of Black Mirror and the reading connect because they talk about how in order to live a fantasy in video games, there must be rules to explain what is happening. When it comes to Virtual Reality games, the possibilities are endless. Just like in the episode of Black Mirror, in which the players logged in with the purpose of actually playing the game by fighting but ended up in kissing because the VR game allowed them to interact in such way. Yet, different VR games have different rules so the one shown in the Black Mirror had no rules exempting from having sex in the game. Apart from this show, I have seen funny videos where a woman is with her husband and she tries the VR head gear which suddenly turns into a make out session with someone in the game but the husband can not see who it is because he is not wearing the head gear. Like in the episode of Black Mirror, the person seen in the VR game is a fictional character but the game experience allows people to interact in endless ways. This brings me back to the reading, which mentions that the actual player is the one in control of the character, their scenarios, settings and more. The reading was only talking about regular video games so imagine the experience with the new technology of VR games, where a person can experience being in a 3D environment and interact with it. It is safe to assume that the player has way more control than in a regular video game. Obviously VR games were not made for sex purposes but it’s not implausible for some to have that option. Going back to the episode, it goes deep into the fantasy that underlies many virtual worlds just like the reading discussed. The fantasy in the show was created by the players not the actual game. The actual VR game used sounds, texts of “Fight,” and graphics to create the fantasy world but the players extended their imagination to going beyond just fighting. The reading talked about how people can get so emotionally invested in the games that they start creating other fantastic scenarios for their characters like punching killing all the bad guys, doing your own thing on GTA or Sims without actually staying true to the games’ missions. Video games are appealing because they have an imaginary world where it is safe to play out fantasies. Just like in Danny and Karl did in the VR game. Yet, the episode just showcases another possibility that most games do not play out.