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The Real World has a Ruleset

January 11, 2005 By Glenn Turner

Wired has a little report on incidents where gamers sense of reality starts to blur.

If you're at this site, I'm sure this is nothing new for you. Who hasn't had this kind of feeling after being immersed in a game? I recall having a smiliar 'run this red light, steal that better car' feeling after a particuarly lengthy GTA session (we're talking GTA1 though - not GTA3 or later iterations). And I did just write an article about experiental fear concerning SH4.

A lot of people say that they think that as games become more realistic, this is likely to occur more often. I say nay - in fact, two of the primary examples in the text are about as detached from reality (visually) as you can get. It's all about the repetition and duration of your gaming session, in my opinion. The gaming world is about putting yourself in a new world, and while while playing that game your brain is trying to figure out the rules & limitations of that world, not to mention the need to repeat many objective over again in an attempt to say, get the Holy Cow. I don't believe that an additional layer of visual realism is more powerful than those hours of oft-repeated tasks. Slicker graphics may not aid in it, but I certainly don't think they'll be the catalyst for loads of gamers taking to the streets and trying to throw an unsuspecting Sophitia 'out of the ring'.

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