Virtual Culture: Gaming and Simulation

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1.        INTRODUCTION:

Popular culture is ever-increasing, not only in its own populace but in its amount of sub-cultures that allow individuals to partake in it. Popular culture has its tentacles in various fields of human activity and transgression. This includes a whole number of public spheres like fashion, music, film, sport etc. In the last two decades the number of fields grew larger as technology developed and created more and more possibilities for us. This is significant because of the fact that many of these possibilities that we now accept as being ‘normal’ were at a stage in history seen as being improbable or even impossible.

The focus here is not on popular culture but on different cultures that shape popular culture and also moves back and forth within its indistinguishable boundaries. Within this webpage I will refer to various notions like visual culture, virtual culture, gaming culture and the internet as a paradoxical international community. The main purpose of this webpage is to appropriate the gaming culture or the topic of gaming within the realms of virtual culture in a larger sense. I will also be using Will Wright and his work to sustain a purposeful argument.

2.        VISUAL AND VIRTUAL CULTURE:

2.1        VISUAL CULTURE:

Before I can continue my argument I first have to clarify the sense in which I mean to incorporate the notions of both, visual and virtual culture. Briefly, the term visual culture can be seen as what images, acts of seeing, and attendant intellectual, emotional, and perceptual sensibilities do to build, maintain, or transform the worlds in which people live.  (Morgan 2004)  Visual culture is made out of a large number of separate entities that are combined to form the different categories in this culture. This includes anything from street signage to film and lots more. The gaming culture is one entity that plays a large role in visual culture in the modern world.  Virtual culture refers to the notion of virtual reality. Heim (1993: 109-128) explains and defines the terms virtual and reality as two separate aspects to simplify the notion as a whole.

2.2        VIRTUAL CULTURE:

Virtual, Heim describes as being in essence or effect though not formally recognized or admitted and reality as a real event, entity, or state of affairs. He also comments on the fact that virtual reality is mainly based around simulation and the simulation of reality to form another reality called virtual reality. Simulation then creates the sense that something seems real and believable which in actual physical fact is not. Jaron Lanier’s name always comes up when one researches the notion of virtual reality. He is believed to have coined the term virtual reality as he was part of the first company who developed the notion into a consumable for the public sphere. He also led the initiative of multi-person virtual worlds like that of SecondLife or even The Sims. Lanier, together with the organization VPL Research, was the first to create the avatar element in the virtual realms (Heim 1993: 109-128).

Avatars are a way of Anthropomorphic Representations representing an individual in a virtual world (Murray and Sixsmith 1999: 315-324). They can take the form of normal photos or animated images that the active user finds most appropriate to his or her personality, appearance or object of choice. In a system like SecondLife or The Sims they take the form of Three-Dimensional animate entities that represents or embodies the visual aspects of humans in some way. In some cases they can even embody the similar appearance of the individual active in the virtual system (Lanier 2008).    

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Heim (1993: 109-128) continues to explain that there are several elements involved within the sphere of virtual reality. The first and most obvious is simulation which is done by simulating elements of reality to create another or virtual reality. This can be seen for example in an environment within a computer game where it is depicted via sharp images and textures. The combination of textures and visuals makes the environment believable and life-like. Another element as Heim explains is interaction. This interaction is of that of the user or individual active in the virtual reality with the environment, playing ...

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