Gaming v Real life

"Uncritical gamers do not win what they desire; they desire what they win. The score is the thing." This is often true. A friend of Merel always plays online games, which are easy and there is no real goal. The games are ususally puzzle like games. However, he plays these games because you can win points and if you have enough points you can "buy" a key chain or a mug with those points. In the end this friend is spending a few hours every day playing, not because he likes the game, but because he wants to "buy" something. Even though a key chain or a mug is not really special. He is desiring what he can win, he is not winning what he desires.

The book also talks about knowing the game. The Sims is an allegorithm. As a player you learn the code of the game, you can win if you understand the system, any value can be discovered through trial and error. You can win if you understand that expensive objects make your sim happy and cheap ojects do not. You can win if you understand that you need 4 points in charisma, 6 points in creativity and have 4 friends. But then it just becomes a routine you go thourgh to get more expenive stuff.

Games take images from other media. So its not the content that is special to games, but it is the form. The more the game starts to look like real life, the more we discover how it is not like real life. In its simplest form we do not expect a representation of real life. But when the game becomes more complex we expect a better representation of real life than it can give us. In addition, the game is everything the gamerspace is not. The game seems utopian and therefore we see how the gamerspace is not.

The game and the gamespace have one very important diference. In the game you can quit, you can go back to a previously saved moment in the game, you can start new. In gamespace we however do not have that option. We cannot control time and therefore we cannot always tie the loose ends. In the Sims, when things go bad the Sim looks at the gamer to ask for help. However, in real life the gamer has no where to turn to when things go wrong.