I know I have read books that have set my heart pounding; words so set in place in planned perfection that the imagery was no less real than a bad memory that can still bring shudders. McCarthy’s Blood Meridian being one of the more recent.
But gaming demands spontaneity, immediacy, and a good portion of common sense and recall. No easy avenue of escape by closing the cover of the book, no covering the eyes at a movie, or skipping the gory parts in gaming. Pause offers just temporary relief–and only if you have spotted the danger in time to press the pause key; otherwise you are in the thick of battle and must, repeat, must, do something about it.
Your virtual life (or that of your protagonist with whom hopefully you have bonded) is on the line and in your hands in gaming; not so in non-interactive media.
As a character or participant you are often asked to make decisions that will stretch you beyond what reality offers in situational events. This forces one to think beyond the normal range of experience.
This then, is a self analysis learning opportunity as well. In the heat of virtual battle have we fully separated out the real from the unreal? Do we draw on experience to react quickly in a game setting that would be mimicked should the event occur in real life as well?
Would we fight, would we kill, would we do so with pride and a self-righteous cockiness that allows us to then calmly check our progress on a scoreboard?
This question is an almost direct reversal to John Timmons’ question at Five Fingers that seeks to supply a memory and life experience to the characters within IF narrative. But, aren’t the two interdependent; doesn’t game play depend upon the change (although limited by the writer) that the reader brings into it, as well as the reader being changed by the experience of the game?
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
Having just finished Half-Life (the first one) yesterday, I would answer the question “doesn’t game play depend upon the change that the reader brings into it, as well as the reader being changed by the experience of the game?” by saying that the game trains *you*. In challenging scenarios, where the player falls into the routine of play, save, fail, reload, play again etc., we learn through repeated experience that teaches us (and fine tunes) our characters strengths and weaknesses. It also teaches us our foes strengths and weaknesses. Our confidence builds as we learn and remember how to do certain things. I like to think of it as learning the game’s choreography.
The memory aspect in such RPG-style games comes when we replay. Now we know how to do things, we know our character, and accordingly what to do in various situations. Memory transforms us from tentative learners into experienced players.
So then, there is a social (dealing with characters) and cultural (game environment specific as well as general play) set of standards we must learn so that we can deal in a virtual world that attempts to mimic the real world that we exist in, but are attempting to escape from via gameplaying.
I’m admittedly a newbie, but the possibilities of how reality changes gameplay and gameplay changes humanity is mind-boggling.