The thing in this one is boundary-maintenance, aka The Magic Circle.
In the course of the conversation we ran into the problem of boundary-maintenance as a way of fostering a méconnaissance-laden identification not just with the player-character but, in the fluid identification we posited in June as creating immersion, with the ruleset itself. That’s a troubling idea because it suggests that breaking immersion may be an even more urgent matter than we might previously have thought (though immersion-breaking has always been important to my understanding of how games can achieve ethical critique).
August’s topic will accordingly be “What affordances exist in games to subvert identification?” I’ll be back the week before the symposium with some links for us to look at beforehand, and then discuss.
On this episode: David Carlton, Dan Cox, and Roger Travis.
Edited by Dan Cox.
Subscribe on our iTunes page!
Video Games and Human Values Initiative 