What a struggle! All last week I wrestled with Brenda Laurel’s articles, “The Six Elements and the Casual Relations Among Them” and “Star Raiders – Dramatic Interaction in a Small World,” trying to find the stimulation to write something. I appreciated learning about Aristotle’s elements of qualitative structure and was impressed with her application of them to human-computer activity. But reading and reflecting about video games resurrected feelings of disappointment spiked with betrayal. My on-again-off-again relationship with digital media includes being enticed time and again by video games only to be disillusioned by their seemingly pointless activities. Whether it was Pac-Man, a Madden’s football game, or one of the plethora of adventure games, the pattern was the same. An enthusiast would motivate me to try the latest and greatest. After investing hours in learning the rules and honing my coordination skills, the experience of playing the game left me feeling as though I had wasted my time. For a brief while, I thought SimCity with its socially constructive potential was a match for my interest in community development; but my enthusiasm and visions of constructing utopia were swallowed by the quicksand of rules and logistics.

I had just about given up writing an entry for my blog this week, when I began reading “Video Games and Computer Holding Power” by Sherry Turkle. At last! Here was some explanation for my failure to connect with video games. One quote sums it up best: “Children musing about objects and their nature has given way to children in contest. Reflection has given way to domination, ranking, testing, proving oneself. Metaphysics has given way to mastery” (Wardrip-Fruin & Monfort, p.500). I have no problem substituting “adults” (i.e., myself) for “children” in this statement. It seems that to have a really positive experience with video games requires emersion or fusion with the mind of the game, including total acceptance of its rules and the underlying logic of simulation. And many (most?) of the games are violent and competitive to the max.

What an exorbitant price to pay to be entertained or manage stress! Turkle reports that for some users, there is the euphoria of feeling that the game can go on forever and that they can achieve perfect control over the simulated world in which they have lost themselves. That is not even appealing, let alone motivation for me to engage in any activity. I wrestle with my own demons of perfectionism and certainly don’t need to test myself against some programmer’s manufactured demons. Likewise, an endless game is not my notion of an eternity worth pursuing.

After a week of wrestling with this topic, I am feeling a degree of satisfaction about having the good sense not to surrender myself to anyone’s simulated world. That’s not to say there are no simulations worth exploring … but that’s a topic for another week!