Digital Games and Players (Game Studies)

Gaming most certainly isn’t a new hobby; playing games can originate as far back as the Egyptians when they played Senet. According to Wikipedia, “Senet is a board game from predynastic and ancient Egypt.” The invention, as well as population of video games has grown dramatically over the past few years. It is now almost certain that everyone you come across has had some sort of interaction with a video game at some point in their life. To define a game, it doesn’t necessarily have to conform to the stereotypical image of an online video game played by “nerds” or “geeks”.  According to a variety of statistics, many of us would have played games throughout our life. Further in this blog post I will explain the conventions of a video game as well as expanding on the concept of the magic circle.

“As the game goes on, the game gets harder”

It seems obvious now, but before the theory of making the gaming components harder as the time span develops on a game wasn’t well known to many people. This furthermore, allows the principle of cheats to arise and take place in many games. Questions are often asked about what is considered cheating on a video game; some may regard modifying the actual game as cheating, where as others would consider this just enhancing their ability to play. Mia Consalvo produced a lot of research revolving around this idea and additionally compared it to “transgressive behaviour”. People creating technological devices to enhance their game play and to give themselves an advantage is formally known as transgressive behaviour.

Video games represent space, so obviously we expect the space to be coherent. However, there are certain characteristics that video games can not actually conform to. For example, on some games you reach stages where there are invisible walls or the end of a road with nothing in sight further. These images are not real life; so many people formally question why they are allowed to be represented on games. These design systems are often considered cheap and aren’t favoured by many professionals. With this in mind, it leaves me in the position to agree with those who consider false images presented online or on games to be wrong. I personally do not think any images should be created or shown online; it eventually leads to a misrepresentation and can ultimately cause many problems.

My last point focuses on the magic circle of gaming. In life we are used to playing games. In the society we live in we have been brought up to understand wining is good and losing is at the end of the day bad. We are always encouraged to win, regardless of how difficult the situation is. The magic circle is a representation of real life and how gaming affects us. Whether you do not consider yourself a keen video game player, there still is no doubt about it, which you formally would have played some sort of game.