Slides for keynote talk at the Nordic Game Research Network PhD-seminar 'Computer Game Research - Theory and Method' June 17-19 2008, InDiMedia / VR Media Lab, Aalborg University (DK) and Dronninglund Slot, June 17–19, 2008.

1. +
Are Computer Games
Real?
Patrick J. Coppock <patrick.coppock@unimore.it>
University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy

2. +
Computer Games: Half-Real or
Real?
 Jesper Juul (2005) suggests computer games are “half real”
because:
 Playing computer games is a real world activity people take part
in
 People feel involved with games and care about what happens
when playing them
 Game-playing has (or may have) negotiable consequences in the
real world
 My question:
 So why can we not just say that computer games are “real”?

3. +
Big Question:
OK. But what do we actually mean by
“real”?
Here: and first and foremost,”Cultural
Units”

4. +
Material Cultural Artefacts

5. +
Intangible Cultural Artefacts

6. +
Mediated Cultural Artefacts

7. +
Tangible, Intangible & Mediated
Cultural Artefacts

8. +
“Open” [Aesthetic] Works
 “Open works” are communicative strategies designed by
authors with an active interpretational role for their readers in
mind (Eco 1984)
 “An open text cannot be described as a communicative
strategy if the role of its addressee (the reader in the case of
verbal texts) has not been envisioned as at the moment of its
generation”
 “The reader as an active principle of interpretation is a part
of the picture of the generative process of the text.”

9. +
The Play of Intention in Text

10. +
Transmedia remediation

11. +
Speed Runs as Narrative Processes
 http://www.tv.com/uservideos/?search=speed+runs

12. +
Openness and Negotiation of
Consequences
 Juul (again):
 It is necessary to describe the relationship between the
game activity and the rest of the world, e.g. between:
 Game rules
 Variable and quantifiable outcomes of games
 Emotional attachments of players to various types of outcomes

13. +
Key sources and issues
 Sources:
 Player Experience
 Player Biographies
 Player Memory
 Issues:
 Player conjectures about, conceptions of, (past, present and
future) actual and possible consequences for self and others.
 Narrower (more “local”) and broader (more “global”) pertinence
and identity issues

14. +
Factuality and Fiction
 The actual world as a cultural construct (Eco):
 The experienced world as a “multitude of world pictures or
stated descriptions […] epistemic worlds that are frequently
mutually exclusive”
 Fictional possible worlds:
 “Small worlds”;“Handicapped worlds”;“Parasitical” on the
actual world. “Constructed by human minds and hands”.

15. +
Beyond Culture
 “Even though the real world is a cultural construct, one might
still wonder about the ontological status of the described
universe.

16. +
Self, Other and World as Process

17. +
Past, Present, Future Possibility and
Actuality

18. +
Intertwining Past, Present, Future
Possibility and Actuality
Past Actualities Present Actualities Future Actualities
Past Possibilities Present Possibilities Future Possibilities

19. +
Colin Powell Slides

20. +
Atom Egoyan

21. +
Orhan Pamuk

22. +
Elif Shahak

23. +
Kimveer Gill

24. +
Super Colombine Massacre RPG!

25. +
Dylan Klebold and Erik Harris

26. +
The Cultural Role of Fictional
Possible Worlds
 Fictional characters live in a handicapped world.When we
actually understand their fate, then we start to suspect that
we too, as citizens of the actual world, frequently undergo our
destiny just because we think of our world in the same way
as fictional characters think of their own.
 Fiction suggests that perhaps our view of the actual world is
as imperfect as that of fictional characters.
 This is the way that successful fictional characters become
paramount examples of the “real” human condition.
 (Umberto Eco)