Video Games, Holodeck & Reality
When I talked about cyberspace in my previous post, I briefly mentioned video games and how drastically they have changed. Video games represent a whole different world of virtual reality and sometimes change our own perception of the world.
More and more people prefer this kind of entertainment and get stuck in the virtual world. Definitely, video games have a lot to offer. They are very complex nowadays; they have characters, settings, chained actions and endings. All of that makes video games an expansion of traditional narrative or drama. Basically every game has a story. Even Tetris. You would say that it is not true, but think about it. Tetris is about winning or losing. That is a story. And when it comes to the video games that we have nowadays, I don’t need to mention the complexity of their narrative.
There are all kinds of games existent. You can choose a basic shooter game or a race game, or you can play a dating simulator that will allow to feel like you are actually performing those actions in a real world.
More and more simulators are coming out right now. Let’s take Sims as an example, I would say that it is not just a game but also not just a story. It is a simulation of the real world that allows the player to imagine and pretend to either be one of those created characters or make it live its own life. This is definitely something that needed to be explored to see what effects it has on its players.
Janet Murray in her book Hamlet on the Holodeck talks about this tendency and how that virtual reality affects our everyday lives. But what is a Holodeck? Good question. Holodeck is a fictional virtual reality that was introduced in the world of Star Trek. It is a place where the characters could relax and the environment will simulate familiar places. Also that place could be used as a training facility. So basically it is a full simulated space where you could imagine anything that could become true. It has always been a fiction idea, many writers and movie makers talked about it long before the simulation could even be possible. Thus Ray Bradbury talked about this kind of thing in his book of short series that came out in 1951, The Illustrated Man. In one of the stories that is called “The Veldt”, the children’s nursery could create objects based on thoughts. Sounds great, right? But what if the idea of a full simulation will come true?
Janet Murray coined a term “cyberdrama” to discuss a new type of storytelling that “is emerging as the computer becomes an expressive medium.” The more video games are developed, the better design and stories they have. They do not look like something made 10 years ago. The simulator games bring the joy and a whole new experience to its users. Even if there are a lot of advantages in video games playing, there are always negative effects as well. When you play a highly violent game, it increases the chances that your behavior in a real life will be impacted by the game and you will be more violent as well. It might seem like it is the other way around, because shooting games are a great stress relief, but you have to watch yourself- this happens unconsciously. Another terrible effect that virtual reality might have on you is that games can confuse reality and fantasy. And that’s when you become a NEET. I’m joking. Hopefully, not.
Even though we know about the negative effects of video games playing, we all still wait for the day when we can finally fully plunge into virtual reality and be able to touch, smell and feel in the game like in a real life. Every time I think about it, the show I watched a while ago comes up to my mind. This show is a Japanese animation and is called Sword Art Online. In the nearest future we will be able to just put the helmet on and plunge into the game. But when the newest game came out and a lot of users put their helmets on, the creator decided to make a challenge for them and made it unavailable to log off the game. From now on if you die in the game, the helmet burns your brain and you die in a real life. The only way to survive is to clear the game. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But I think that even though Japanese anime creators often times have a much distorted view of life and reality itself, this creation is something that could possibly happen in our world if we move from real world to a virtual reality.
That is why we have to pay a closer attention to the game studying, or Ludology, and try to find the way to play the games and plunge into the virtual reality without a risk of losing the ground and losing ourselves.
