So you find yourself underground, in the basement of an abandoned house. All is quiet, the only sound you can hear is the door and floorboards creaking, wind smacking against the windows, water dripping from broken pipes, and strangely enough, you can hear the sound of wailing from the distance. With every minute you wait, the louder it becomes, murmuring, whispering, growling, roaring. You feel your heart beat thump faster, as you put down your weapon and stay still in the dark. Your vision is blurred as you drag yourself across the floor, time is running out and you know you’re dying away, these zombies are going to come in anytime now. You reach out to grab a life pack, and suddenly- “Why are my hands so manly?!”
First person shooter games tend to fall under the category of being immersive. Due to their highly realistic first person point of view and often popular themed narrative (e.g war), it is not surprising that we can find ourselves lost in a game. However, to what degree of immersion can we snap back to reality and notice that there is something strange with the games’ setting? For example, if you are playing a first person shooter game, and you happen to be a female, does it bother you that the hands you see holding that weapon infront of you is not one of the same gender? Does this create disturbance in the immersion of that game? Personally, I believe how much a person can be immersed in a videogame depends on the genre. If it is a horror game, then we can easily be immersed through the use of music and sound effects. These two important elements are combined to create atmosphere, which is always effective in giving us the creeps when we play, 99% of the time. The images we see on screen are still bearable; it is only when we mute the sound that we find it much comfortable to play, right? Because everybody is different, I’m sure everyone has their own personal disturbance from being immersed in a video game.
Fortunately for me, Left4Dead is considerate enough to have a female character in their narrative- so that I have the freedom to play her character (if having manly hands is a nuisance).
Good post, Saskia! The whole question of to what extent these features of the characters that players experience the game through is an interesting one for me. I think in the Representing Games and Gamers lecture there's a reading which argues that playing as Lara Croft renders male players transgendered, for example.
ReplyDeleteFor me, the details of the protagonist falls away when I get immersed within the game. On the other hand, unexpected features like what you describe might attract my attention, and make it more likely that I'll lose a level of immersion in the experience.
- Kevin.
The first time I was taken to an internet cafe to play FPS games with friends was a strange experience for a reason which you brought up. The game we played involved us using headsets with a mic, and we would talk to each other in the game through our characters but with our own voices. This became slighlty ridiculous when the girls in our group started talking with their characters, because the game only gave the option of playing as men, and it turned into this bizarre experience of hearing female voices from this ridiculously overbuilt GI Joe-type figure.
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