Re: [-empyre-] Re: gaps and shifts

[Christian McCrea <saccharinmetric@gmail.com>]

> aren't  the gaps and intervals of net communication what makes it
> emotionally powerful..  the stripped down sensory input that allows fantasy
> to become stronger..?
> isn't the low res pixelated game environment more conducive to immersion ,
> rather than the other  way around..?
> when everything is spelled out  what room does that leave..?
> isn't the gap our portal into difference?

I happen to think so. Games, especially games of abstracted
relationships - say, classically, roleplaying games - rely on not only
on what we've come to term the imagination, but the continuing
relationship of a discrete system of relationships between objects
(the _RPG system_ underlying the game) and the analogue systems of
relationships (manifold experiences of play).

So if what is at stake is "realism", the construction of the real is
far more keyed into the ability of the two system-realms (rules and
experiences) to co-opt each other and generate significant meanings of
play rather than pixel shaders and sound mixing.

The more direct a game experience, we imagine the more opportunity
there is to put yourself in that space. So FPS games are considered
the closest to our senses. Maybe that's true. But perhaps other types
of games are closer to being that "portal into difference" (great
phrase) - ones that insist we develop a deep relationship with a
multitude of systems of meaning - in which we learn as much about the
computer's systems as it does about ours.

To imagine movement across the geographical boundary of the real -
displacement into a game - I've always required a stronger sense of
being-in-the-world than a first-person perspective. I'm not
in-the-world. Squall in Final Fantasy 8 is in-the-world, so my
relationship to a fixed position over 80 hours that should be alien to
mine is far closer that a direct, more real-time, first-person
experience. I do not only mean experientially or imaginatively, but
sensorially.

Just a few rambles.

Christian McCrea
---------------------------
University of Melbourne
Game Studies Unit, Cinema Studies