[These 'thoughtful' posts are usually much more free-form and a-wandering than my other blog entries. You are more than welcome to jump in and finish a particular train of thought, or challenge something you think is false. This is as much about me getting my head around something as it is for you! You probably want to read yesterday's entry on 'Single-Player Immersion' before you read this.]
We know that our imagination is powerful — it is as powerful or more so than actual reality. Sure, it can’t physically take us places, but do people really claim that being scared by a horror film isn’t equivalent to being attacked by a knife-wielding maniac? (OK, don’t think about that one too much — just go with it!) And then there’s the matter of time-travel: our imagination can take us back in time! Through the media of books, films and games our infinitesimally short life-span can be expanded and extended to include different places and worlds from throughout history. Magical.
Why though must all of these virtual worlds exist outside the realm of reality? Can you imagine ‘losing yourself’ in the contemporary world — while reading the morning paper? No. You lose yourself while reading about the culture and creepy rites of Ancient Egypt. You readily find yourself escaping to alternate realities where vampires and undead exist, roaming and scheming under the cover of darkness. After that scene in The Matrix, did you stop to consider if it really is air that you’re breathing? I did.
Why can’t we be immersed in real life? Why can’t we attack and question our surroundings in real life with the same fervor?
A quick change of tack: yesterday, I mentioned how immersion can also occur to groups of people. The obvious examples here are table-top role-playing games (Dungeons & Dragons and the like), Internet forums and online games. This ‘multi-player shared reality’ is nearly always cooperative, towards some common goal. They take the same form as real-life teams and groups, only… they are virtual. Or rather, their sphere of influence is virtual (though their real-world impact can be quite significant too — some people get married in a virtual world, and later in real life too). The inhabitants of these shared, imagined illusions are avatars, projections of one’s self upon the fundament of a virtual world.
This won’t make a lot of sense if you’ve never been part of such a shared reality, but take my word for it: community and social bonds form a lot more readily in virtual spaces. It’s like… necessity throws people together, and somehow… it sticks. Not entirely without conflict, but generally these communities stick it out. This might be stretching it a little, but it’s a little like arranged marriages: you are thrown together, perhaps against your will, but for a variety of external reasons, you are compelled to try your best. Without other choices available, you are forced to survive and succeed (not a bad thing, really?) Those of us in the West look on in disgust at these teenagers being married off without their consent. We think our system is so much better. But their system does seem to work, no?
Anyway…
My point is this: if you think you’ve been immersed in a book or film or game, it is nothing compared to group immersion. It is nothing compared to running around with other people that also think they’re vampires or piloting the same spaceship as you. It’s nothing compared to working together with hundreds or thousands of like-minded friends in an online virtual world. By sharing the world with others, your imagination is being validated. By occupying the same world as someone else, it’s no longer ‘imaginary’ or ‘just in your head’, it’s actually — holy shit! — real.
So what about FarmVille? It’s a primitive game, sure, but it is a virtual world; a world full of rosy-cheeked, benevolent farmers that spend half their time harvesting, and the other half helping out other farmers. The level of immersion (or ‘gameness?) is limited at the moment, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the ability to group up with other farmers appeared soon. And that then is only one step away from building a town in the middle of a clutch of farms… and then cities and counties and…
Why can’t we be as immersed in real life? What stops us from enacting our imagination in reality? Is it just merely fear of failure? Or… something else?
I’m looking for a real-world analogy here, and again I’m thinking of the New World, America. A bunch of individuals lumped together in a new, harsh environment where the only way out of trouble (and death!) is teamwork. Are we simply ‘stuck’ here in the mundanity of real life because there is no necessity to try any harder?
I am just trying to work out why it feels so damn good to form a group in an online game and work together towards a common goal. I wonder why we so rarely do it in real life. Why is it every man for himself in London, while we readily cooperate in virtual worlds?
Historically, were we more immersed? When it was harder to survive and teamwork was a necessity, did we have to become more involved? I wonder if we need something dramatic like another war to force us back into our own lives, and our own world.
Clairebear
Sep 22, 2009
Immersion in real life….I find that with performance. Again, I suppose its the teamwork involved, or maybe its something thats outside of reality, it becomes your own little world. With plays, you become immersed in your character. But more than that, its the whole experience you become immersed in – the people you’re working with, the direction….in the whole dramatic world really – you become obsessed to a point with acting, seeing plays, analysing movies..
The same goes with musical performance. The planning, the setting up, the technical as well as the songs and the actual performance.
Don’t know if this was the kind of example you were looking for.
Chase
Sep 22, 2009
hmm, I like this. Community could change the world. I’m in the works with a post myself that runs hand in hand with this. Why are we so able to immerse in this social media thing, but not in “The Real World”?? Simply because it’s a new technology we’re excitedly exploring? I think it’s more than this. But you’re right, there are some ‘reallife’ analogies here… and real life applications. If we would just learn from it.
Sebbe
Sep 22, 2009
Immersion in real life is occording to me hard to find, you need individuals who share the same views in a certain area as you do to take the subject to a higher level. As no person is like you or me we will struggle to find the group immersion that you might seek. If i would point out a moment where it might succeed would be when a group of ppl fight againts a decision about a school or theater closing.
Like Communism it needs a specific goal or it wont succeed. Ppl want to be independant and all that….
Helen
Sep 22, 2009
Farmville scares me – I know so many people who have become completely obsessed… and not the ind of people you’d find on WoW or one of those type games, normal people with normal lives!
I think that group immersion is a powerful tool for uniting people – after all people with completely different backgrounds can unite to battle something together, maybe we should make presidents battle it out in virtual reality or something before peace conferences?
Clairebear
Sep 22, 2009
This conversation reminds me of that episode of Red Dwarf, where they wake up and it was all a game…..
is anybody with me on this one? Am I the only one who watches geeky english sci-fi comdies?
sebastian
Sep 22, 2009
I will respond properly later but…
My mind’s actually on another bit: shared ‘hallucinations’ or ‘illusions’… or… beliefs?
Are those that believe in a particular faith merely immersed in a spiritual world that they inhabit with other believers…?
*ponders*
zoeo
Sep 22, 2009
teamwork is therefore so hard for today’s human because of the narcissisms. children are educated to be a lone fighter. there is no space for teamwork. with teamwork you can not be the winner. but, everyone wants to be … the winner.
the virtual life is not so important. The existents not depends at it. so, its easier having teamwork in the virtual life than in the real life …
sebastian
Sep 22, 2009
Ah, Chase, maybe that’s just it! We’re so ‘into’ this social media thing because it’s so damn new and exciting.
While part of me thinks we need to try to ‘apply’ these things to real life, perhaps the definition of ‘real life’ is shifting. If we interact purely through Facebook and FarmVille and WoW — if that’s the primary communication channel — then does it matter if we’re not immersed in the real world?
Helen, I think FarmVille (and other social MMOs) are just proof that almost EVERYONE is willing or wanting to be immersed in something. We like playing games. They make life fun. But if only living life was more like a game… (well, it is, but for some reason everything has become so very serious…)
So Sebbe, you think that virtual worlds work because everyone is on the same level, the same footing. It’s almost as if the limited individuality in virtual worlds forces us to play together, rather than on our own. I wonder if, as games become more customisable, if we’ll end up sitting in our own in virtual homes, in virtual worlds…
Sebbe
Sep 22, 2009
Yes i do belive that it works cause everyone shares a goal. Would like to see a game were there is alot of goals…. like more specificly…. altough i think that might be to hard for designers to create. They probbly make a new game insted.
Kali
Sep 22, 2009
Farmville is fucking awesome.
MentalSarcasm
Sep 22, 2009
“I wonder if we need something dramatic like another war to force us back into our own lives, and our own world.”
Iraq and Afghanistan are enough for me. While the wars themselves are unpopular, there is no getting past the fact that the vast majority of the population are proud of our troops. The way injured soldiers are treated by certain sections of our country are a disgrace, but then the people come together and pick up the slack, that’s how charities like Help For Heroes get started and then hit all their goals one by one.
Immersion in the real world is possible. I’m guessing you’re not a football fan XD I support QPR, I’ve been at a match on a Tuesday night in May, QPR were in the playoff semi-finals against Oldham, it had been 1-1 at the first match (they play 2 matches, so both teams get to play at home) so we HAD to win to get to the finals. At one point Paul Furlong broke away, tore his way up the pitch with the ball.
19000 QPR fans, including me and my Dad, were screaming at him to keep running. It’s a very intense feeling, QPR had been through absolute hell for several years, this was our chance to get some glory back. In my ears everything went silent but I’ve seen footage of it since and apparantly the volume only increased the closer Furlong got. When the ball hit the back of the net the man next to me leapt up, smacking me in the back of the head in the process, and then my Dad gave me a huge rib-crushing hug. 20 minutes of singing, screaming, shouting, cheering and chanting, and we were still celebrating as we all piled out of the ground.
It’s not just happiness that does it though. There’s collective mourning too. QPR’s promising striker Ray Jones was killed in a car crash a few years ago. The messageboards were flooded with messages of sadness, grown men admitted openly to shedding a few tears, we all cried for a boy that many of us had never met, but he was a part of the club, and when a part of the club dies, you can’t help but cry. I read a newspaper report several weeks after, written by a journalist who had been at the memorial match:
“The Jones family stood, proud and dignified but plainly in pieces on the halfway line, the QPR players all wore their young team-mate’s name on their backs, the clapping softened, then the song ‘There’s only one Ray Jones’ began. But it was impossible to sing. My throat had tightened and dried to such a degree that I could barely produce a note. Looking at the men and women around me, I saw I wasn’t alone. Mouths gulped for air, eyes clamped shut in genuine pain, fathers wrapped protective arms around sons and daughters trying not to think the unthinkable.
Then, as one, Loftus Road found its voice and the skies of west London were filled with the most astonishing sound. Part operatic chorus, part tribal chant, part jet-engine roar. It was so powerful, the rusty rafters of the Ellerslie Road Stand all but swayed in time. ‘Stand up, if you love Ray Jones’ we sang with a passion wholly unrestrained. By God, it was loud. They say you could hear it south of the river.You certainly would’ve heard it in heaven.”
The ancient world wasn’t particularly well held together either. That was why the theatre was so popular, especially tragedies. Everyone was built up by the suspense of the story, culminating in the key point where all revelations were made and people died and were cursed, and then the population could go home having experienced the same emotions as a collective, all in one place at one time.
I don’t know if I’m explaining it properly XD or even if I understand what you’re talking about/aiming at, so I apologise if this is completely off-tangent.
The Demigoddess
Sep 23, 2009
This is indeed very thought-provoking. It pushed me to re-evaluate my current lifestyle where I am more open to share my weakness to people I know online, to bloggy friends, for instance, while I would not even think of involving my family and friends in real life with the horrors I’m going through now. Why, indeed, is it easier to relate to and collaborate with people in the virtual world. …
Matt
Sep 23, 2009
This is why I like to get out and do things, be it running, horseriding, motorbiking, paintball or social/lan events. I don’t necessarily have to do these at all, but they provide interesting challenges and goals to aim towards, to help provide a but of purpose to the mundane.
I’m just trying to work out when I can afford to do flying lessons now
sebastian
Sep 23, 2009
Good Matt! There’s no reason the real world should be any less exciting than a virtual world.
(God, that sounds geeky…)
Demi: this probably stems back to… growing up. For example, when we’re young, we don’t think twice about this kind of thing. We tell our mum because… there’s no one else to tell. But now, 20 years on, there’s so much ‘stuff’ in the air. So many layers of complication. It’s a shame
MentalSarcasm — will respond later. After breakfast… and lots of coffee.
floreta
Sep 23, 2009
lets not forget social media CAN be a TOOL for real life. and from there, joining together as community.. *shrugs* it’s definitely ‘in the works’ but i’m with chase.. I think community can/will change the world. i’m ready for this new model rather than everyone fend for themselves. what about communal resources/living. this would really help the planet/carbon imprint out a lot!
we don’t NEED so much stuff. why not share it.. >_<
sebastian
Sep 25, 2009
Mental — I think the point you (and I) are trying to make is… immersion is totally possible, but we have to throw ourselves into it.
It’s the classic ‘heart on sleeve’ thing, I guess. Is it better to be a frigid, heartless coward that goes through life never really scratching the surface? Or better to feel the entire gamut of pain, love, misery, exhilaration?
I guess it varies from person to person. Maybe depends on how you are brought up. Whether you think the cup is half full or not.
It saddens me that for some people, they may never experience real PASSION