Immersive virtual game worlds

“What we think of as ‘mind’ is only a sort of jumped-up gland, piggybacking on the reptilian brainstem and the older mammalian mind, but our culture tricks us into recognizing it as all of consciousness. The mammalian spreads continent-wide beneath it, mute and muscular, attending its ancient agenda. And makes us buy things.” — William Gibson, 2003 (Pattern Recognition)

Advertising often embodies worlds that don’t exist, at least in the physical sense. It makes use of myths and portrays an appropriate moment or environment in order to prompt a certain emotion or reaction in the reader. Like film or TV it  often provides guidance when handling real life events. Advertising and media act as a powerful informers of local culture.

I’ve been ‘exploring’ video games recently — I think this is where some of the leading ideas around interaction is focussed. I’ve lost many hours lost in these virtual worlds. It turns out advertising and gaming are not too dissimilar; they both attempt to create artificial worlds, often based on our own reality, and offer some kind of escape for their reader. 

Advertising’s primary goal is to sell a product, service or idea that the world portrays; games on the other hand need to excel in immersion and interaction in order to enguage and in turn succeed and make money. I’ll often come out of a good game as though I’ve actually experienced something amazing or been somewhere new. Books, movies and other forms of media also offer a form immersion in to a story. I’ve felt compelled (addicted?) to go back to a book or follow a tv series, but haven’t felt the same level of character immersion as I have from a game, and from an interaction point of view I find games a lot more interesting because they are not limited to one or two senses.

I’ve noticed that all of the games I’ve been felt compelled to continue playing are games with a strong sense of place and story, and provide a seemless (as possible with current technology) interface with physics that mimic the real world. I assume because that makes them seem more real to me, as they are similar to what my own interpretations of the rest of my life have been. Or they’ll offer a strong social connection — to other real people, giving another level of realism to their world. Whether that’s fighting with them on a virtual battlefield, or chatting about virtual armor sets while standing on the streets of an MMO. If you’re interested in a preview of where interaction and immersion are going I’d recommend these worlds, my highlights of a year of gaming:

Fallout 3 Washington DC, 2277 AD; 200 years after nuclear war

Fable 2 Albion, in a colonial era resembling the time of highwaymen or the Enlightenment; guns are still primitive, and large castles and cities have developed in the place of towns

World of Warcraft; Wrath of the Lich King Northrend, high fantasy period of elves, dragons, orcs, trolls and gnomes

Mass Effect 2183 AD, 35 years prior, humanity discovered a cache of technology built by a technologically advanced but long-extinct race called the Protheans

Assassin’s Creed 1191 AD, the Third Crusade in the Holy Land

If this level of immersion continues to use more of our sense as technology develops is there a place for a cyberpunk future? Will people surrender their real life for a virtual existence?  What is the real world anyway? Can we believe our senses.. if all that’s required for something to be real is just an interaction with our brain why can’t we just bypass our biological senses (ears, eyes, nose etc) and interface directly with our brain? Is it ok to form relationships in virtual worlds, or with artificial people, machines, or dolls?