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25.
INVASTION OF THE SOUL
Gamers
are believers. The gaming mechanism is their church. They have
realized their soul in the avatars they embody, and they gather
online for mass. Unlike the bricks and mortar religions, those
who commune in cyberspace have no need to praise a god, for they
are aware of the nature of digital cause and effect. When they
act, beings do. At once, the gamer is congregator and omnipotent
deity. Games themselves often put the player in the position of
all-seeing, disembodied entity. An excellent and conveniently
popular example of such a title is Will
Wright's revolutionary and oft-cited The Sims. As the
player controls the actions of her characters, she is made aware
of her ability to affect action through her identification with
the avatar on screen. As I have suggested elsewhere, the game
causes one to reflect on the state of one's life. By virtue of
being a game in which you decide which actions a human representation
will take, the authoritative nature of "god-games" -
as they are known - is underscored.
So
what does one label the position of the maker of a god-game? Designer
Will Wright has been hailed
a genius among many gamers, and I am inclined to agree. His
project to simulate the processes of life is revolutionary for
its parallel to the ultimate project of the game universe: the
invention of an alternate reality through simulation. The popularity
of The Sims is perhaps the most promising aspect of contemporary
gaming; liberating in its foregrounding of the divide between
reality and the virtual while remaining wholly captivating. Rather
than skewing conceptions of the actual world, the game operates
in a non-realist style yet allows immersion into it.
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