This week and the following week, my group and I are planning to get all the sound together for the individual games and also animate graphics in Flash. Having had feedback from the presentation, we have taken on board what has been said- we are planning on re-shooting next week as there are parts of the footage we have had further ideas about and that can be shot better. What was interesting when researching video games and theories we were able to relate theories of immediacy, remediation and immersive media for our project as ultimately our idea explores video gaming conventions and iconography through remediation into the video form. By intentionally using the video form, we are reiterating theories of immediacy and simulation within an ever-growing technologically advancing society. The games we have chosen reflect iconic moments within video gaming history that, through technological innovation, has resulted in a shift towards immersive game play.
Whilst thinking about the theories that can be related to our project, the one that we found most fitting and imperative to the project was the idea of the blurring of realities and how this is most common in video-game play. What is interesting about video-games in particular is its move from non photo-realistic such as Pong to more immersive, photo-realistic gaming such as The Sims where the users sense of control is magnified. The suggestion that the gaming medium is a unique cultural form is reiterated in Kings’s argument that ‘there’s no other cultural medium that, like games, reinvents its own technical abilities every few years. New game technologies mean more depth, more complexity and more ways to play. Technology drives innovation’.
Further influencing our project was the theory of immediacy. In using the video form we intend our project to be fully immersive and as a group we made a decision to reject putting the video in a website format as the user would be far more aware of the interface and therefore be a participant of hypermediacy which we are trying to avoid as little as possible. As Bolter suggests, ‘‘The logic of immediacy dictates that the medium itself should disappear and leave us in the presence of the thing represented: sitting in a race car or standing on a mountaintop’- in our instance being the character/main protagonist within our representation on blurring realities.
The inspirations for our project was firstly the movie adapted version of the comic book, Scott Pilgrim vs the world which remediates gaming conventions into the video form. From looking at this particular screenshot from within the film, it is just to say it is similar to our project it blurs reality with virtual reality, in this instance through the iconography of the ‘life’ image. The justification for our project to have a narrative is proposed through Giddings’ argument that ‘Films based on games and games based on films bring into focus the distinctiveness of the act of playing a game from other forms of screen media consumption. A sense of ‘being in’ the game is central to understanding the nature of player-game interaction and potentially, therefore a key element in the pleasure of digital gaming.
The second inspiration is from the film Existenz where the viewer along with the main protagonists are taken on a journey through to a ‘new world’ where the blurring of reality and virtual reality becomes apparent and even to the extent that the main progs and the viewer question which is which. This type of gaming is indeed very immersive and we chose Janet Murray’s explanation of the term as it is fitting to our project and apt towards the critical approach we are attempting to take- ‘Immersion is a metaphorical term derived from the physical experience of being submerged in water. We seek the same feeling from a psychologically immersive experience that we do from a plunge in the ocean or swimming pool: the sensation of being surrounded by a completely other reality’.
Comparing our vision of Doom to the actual game footage examples.
Footage taken from shots (DOOM and PONG) - Working progress/ still issues with PONG and
the recreation of this game.
From reading Atkins' book, more than a game: the computer game as a fictional form. I found the following interesting and very true and it reminded me of the online game- Second Life where people get so caught up in the excitement of this virtual world that they would rather spend more time 'situated' there than in the juxtaposed 'mundane' real world;
