Realism in play
The uses of realism in computer game discourse
There is no school of realism in game development, but the
term ‘realism’ is used extensively by game developers, players, critics and
journalists. This chapter analyzes 1,039 documents written by these groups to
investigate how the term ‘realism’ is deployed in gaming discourse. Within this
corpus, the term realism is used to describe two kinds of formal characteristics of
games. The first – functional realism – relates to how a game behaves as a
simulation; the second – perceptual realism – relates to how a game looks and sounds
as a set of moving sound-images. In both of these forms, realism discursively
constructs gaming in two contradictory ways. On the one hand, authors use the term
realism to align gaming with other media forms in a way that elevates gaming to the
status of cinema, art and literature, on the other, they use the term to distinguish
gaming from other art forms and media to establish gaming within its own autonomous
cultural space. Drawing on Roger Caillois’s categorization of play, the chapter
argues that the discursive construction of games through the term realism is a form
of boundary work that seeks to establish what counts as a game and who counts as a
‘gamer.’
Article outline
- 1.Games and reality
- 2.Games and realism
- 3.Realism in gaming discourse
- 3.1Functional realism
- 3.2Perceptual realism
- 4.The mimicry-play of simulation/cinema versus agonistic gameplay
- 4.1Simulations as not-games
- 4.2Cinema as not-games
- 5.Realism as boundary work
- 6.Aligning games with other forms
- 7.Conclusion
-
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