+

Are Computer Games Real?

Patrick J. Coppock <patrick.coppock@unimore.it>

University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy

+Computer Games: Half-Real or Real?

Jesper Juul (2005) suggests computer games are “half real” because: Playing computer games is a real world activity people take

part in People feel involved with games and care about what

happens when playing them Game-playing has (or may have) negotiable consequences

in the real world

My question: So why can we not just say that computer games are

“real”?

+Big Question:

OK. But what do we actually mean by “real”?

Here: and first and foremost,”Cultural Units”

+Material Cultural Artefacts

+Intangible Cultural Artefacts

+Mediated Cultural Artefacts

+Tangible, Intangible & Mediated Cultural Artefacts

+“Open” [Aesthetic] Works

“Open works” are communicative strategies designed by authors with an active interpretational role for their readers in mind (Eco 1984)

“An open text cannot be described as a communicative strategy if the role of its addressee (the reader in the case of verbal texts) has not been envisioned as at the moment of its generation”

“The reader as an active principle of interpretation is a part of the picture of the generative process of the text.”

+The Play of Intention in Text

+Transmedia remediation

+Speed Runs as Narrative Processes

http://www.tv.com/uservideos/?search=speed+runs

+Openness and Negotiation of Consequences

Juul (again):

It is necessary to describe the relationship between the game activity and the rest of the world, e.g. between: Game rules Variable and quantifiable outcomes of games Emotional attachments of players to various types of

outcomes

+Key sources and issues

Sources: Player Experience Player Biographies Player Memory

Issues: Player conjectures about, conceptions of, (past, present and

future) actual and possible consequences for self and others.

Narrower (more “local”) and broader (more “global”) pertinence and identity issues

+Factuality and Fiction

The actual world as a cultural construct (Eco):

The experienced world as a “multitude of world pictures or stated descriptions […] epistemic worlds that are frequently mutually exclusive”

Fictional possible worlds:

“Small worlds”; “Handicapped worlds”; “Parasitical” on the actual world. “Constructed by human minds and hands”.

+Beyond Culture

“Even though the real world is a cultural construct, one might still wonder about the ontological status of the described universe.

+Self, Other and World as Process

+Past, Present, Future Possibility and Actuality

+Intertwining Past, Present, Future Possibility and Actuality

Past Actualities Present Actualities Future Actualities

Past Possibilities Present Possibilities Future Possibilities

+Colin Powell Slides

+Atom Egoyan

+Orhan Pamuk

+Elif Shahak

+Kimveer Gill

+Super Colombine Massacre RPG!

+Dylan Klebold and Erik Harris

+The Cultural Role of Fictional Possible Worlds

Fictional characters live in a handicapped world. When we actually understand their fate, then we start to suspect that we too, as citizens of the actual world, frequently undergo our destiny just because we think of our world in the same way as fictional characters think of their own.

Fiction suggests that perhaps our view of the actual world is as imperfect as that of fictional characters.

This is the way that successful fictional characters become paramount examples of the “real” human condition.

(Umberto Eco)