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Video Games as the New Frontier |
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Written by Ninox
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Saturday, 15 July 2006 |
Video Games as the New
Frontier
Once upon a time
there was lots and lots of unknown places in the world. There were new
continents to discover and the world’s highest mountains to climb. Even when we
did all of that we just knew that by the year 2000 we were all going to be
taking space ships to new colonies. Except we didn’t. So where does your average
man or woman go exploring nowadays? Where is the wild west, the Mars, the
Everest of today? What is the new frontier?
Some researchers into videogames have suggested that
they are the new frontier of this age. Henry Jenkins in his article with Mary
Fuller likens video games to the new world travel writing of the European
voyagers of the 16th and 17th century noting that both focus on navigation,
exploration and colonisation of space, relying more on geography than narrative
(1). He suggests this is like the opening of a new frontier, a border to unknown
space that somehow counters the often over familiar and over populated
neighbourhoods we live in today, restoring a sense of unlimited space and
possibility. In another article Jenkins wrote about video games as new play
spaces for home bound children, replacing the suburban street and the backyard
with virtual places (2).
If
you think about the ways in which we sometimes play then this starts to make
sense. If you have ever spent time base-jumping instead of fighting, detoured
into danger to remove the fog of war, brought loot “home” instead of selling it,
drooled over the map or simply flown out into the unknown for the sheer pleasure
of it then you too have been exploring this new frontier.
Like any good frontier it’s
often vicious out there in the PK’ing ganking wild west. I’m not just talking
about the combat here, I have heard of some seriously deadly guild squabbles in
my time and with the state of general chat in some mmo’s you are lucky to escape
with anything less than permament brain damage. At least its still cheaper and
less physically damaging than any frontier that I might be able to access in my
corporeal form and with the current price of real estate in Sydney these days
I’m all for virtual realty.
(1) Mary
Fuller and Henry Jenkins. Nintendo and New World Travel Writing: A Dialogue. In
Cybersociety, Steven G. Jones (Ed), Sage Publications,
1995
(2) Henry Jenkins. Complete Freedom of
Movement”: Video Games as Gendered paly Spaces. In From Barbie to Mortal
Kombat, Justine Cassell and Henry Jenkins (Eds), Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, 1998
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 15 July 2006 )
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