My concept statement is that games are an avenue for the fulfillment of the player’s desire through immersion wish fulfills the need of excitement, sociability, adventure and beauty that may otherwise be limited in the real world.
As my concept has to do with the desire to escape into a virtual world, I decided to conduct my experiments around the relationship between reality and the virtual world through a series of posters using images that fulfill each of the four categories above. The “virtual” and the “real” are the two topics that are often contrasted side-by-side when talking about the concept of desire and immersion within video games. By superimposing the virtual over the real and contrasting them, I realized how the eye is naturally drawn towards the vivid colors and attractive landscapes of the virtual. This happens despite the players being aware of the world that is our reality or in that case the real world is neither fiction or fantasy. The natural desire for the eye and therefore also the mind to escape became very interesting to me and led me to explore this further.
"His description of the banal but emotionally important exchange, taking place in the vivid fantasy of the game, got me thinking about the nature of the game itself; it’s a world of surface appearances and symbols. Within that, their interaction had been reduced to text; it was a technological extension of psychological models — the imaginary, and the symbolic structure of language.” ~Robbie Coope
In my original work, my answer to my created question of Desire through video games was more general and simplistic in that people play them just because it was fun and helps to kill time while waiting for other things outside of their control to be completed. However, the more I have pondered over the question the more the answer defines into not just one single answer, but a combination of answers that more or less defines the enjoyment and addictive properties of video games. As there are many answers to the connection of Desire through video games, I have decided to categorize them into four main ideas. These four main ideas that cover multiple answers to the question of Games and Desire are of Environment/Adventure, Communication/Sociability, Excitement/Combat, Beauty/Aesthetics.
The first of these four ideas, Environment/Adventure, is of the game to use beautiful, breathtaking environment entices the players to immerse themselves into the game world as to explore both its natural wonders and its hidden secrets to acquire great treasure for themselves, fulfilling the player’s desire for adventure.
The second of these four ideas, Communication/Sociability , any game that supports a way for players to communicate with one another abroad, whether it be through voice chat or text chat, fulfills the player’s desire of social communication and interaction with other people of their kin.
The third of these four ideas, Excitement/Combat, flashy Combat and through the myriad of quests that players take to become stronger fulfils the player’s desire of excitement and fun as they brawl with each other without a care in the world.
The final of these four ideas, Beauty/Aesthetics, limitless Character design, alongside with fancy equipment allow the player to dress up on their appearance freely, fulfilling the player desire of self-vanity and beauty as the players themselves dress up their characters with whatever item or decoration they could put on their character.
As I continued to explore the idea of desire through video games through these four ideas, I began to be drawn towards the concept of a blurred reality. That is to say, in some of the images, I noticed that while I am still drawn towards the virtual, the “real” also seemed oddly natural next to the virtual. It was as if they were both rooted in the same desire of freedom and escape. This concept of blurred reality furthers the idea of immersion for me as it shows that a certain degree of realism can be found in the concept of desire found in video games. In other words, perhaps the escape into desire is not an escape into a virtual but into another “real” – which is what immersion is.
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Madigan, Jamie. "The Psychology of Immersion in Video Games." The Psychology of Video Games. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF VIDEO GAMES, 27 July 2010. Web. 15 Sept. 2015. <http://www.psychologyofgames.com/2010/07/the-psychology-of-immersion-in-video-games/>.
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