User:Andre Castro/research/1.2/annotationpervasiveInterface
Eva Nieuwdorp The pervasive interface: Tracing the magic circle
In this text the Nieuwdorp discusses pervasive games. Pervasive games live from a intermingling of real and virtual worlds, which create the game's scenarios in our everyday environments. The player swings between fantasy and reality, and such motion constitutes the centre of the player's experience, which transforms everyday environment into a "world in play"
Because pervasive games exist only when being played by their players, the interface is partly in their thoughts and imagination. Similarly to the suspension of disbelief one assumes when watching a movie, one has to accept the game's world entrance into the real world, so Nieuwdorp argues that pervasive games not solely dependent on hardware and software, but also in the players acceptance of the game world; [I would add that then the player becomes part of game's interface].
According to Nieuwdorp pervasive games, since no longer dominated by the screen, challenge the notion of interface. As the game's technology becomes mobile, the interface is contextualized by a constantly changing social and geographic surrounding.
Also when a pervasive game takes place some elements of the real environment change. It alters reality's conventions by, for example, stating, as in the example taken from the game The Go Game, that a key can be anything except a key. Such change promotes a different view on the familiar environment, shifting the rules and conventions from reality to those of the game. Nieuwdorp asks where then does the border that the player has to cross in order to enter the game reside.
[In order to provide answer, we can take Fuller's statement that what is important about an interface is not what it is, but what it is doing that it did not do before. In this case, the interface (being it the player's mind, the environment, or the game instructions) in question is changing the player's view on reality.]
[One could say that the experience of playing this game, will most certain enrich the player's view of reality; he or she will see and look for things that others will not, however it also generates a distancing effect, which will make him/her be there but not really present (echos of Katherine Hayles about virtual realities)].
---
- relate to magic and code