In games, reality can seem beside the point. Carved boards, decorated cards, dotted cubes and colored pebbles become instruments of war. The fate of a bouncing spheroid determines one's fortunes. The more artificial an object is, the more arbitrary the restrictions are on its movements, the simpler the rules governing the play, the more powerful a game seems to become. A game establishes its own world.
Yet over the last two decades, the evolution of video games has involved a quest for the opposite. One of the major goals of video game systems has been to simulate the real, to create images so lifelike, and movements so natural that there is no sense of artifice. There really is a haunted house being explored, a football team arrayed on a field, a car racing at 150 miles an hour through a city street. In the early years of arcade games, invaders from space were squiggly white doodles arranged in rows, threatening a player with oblivion. Now they can speak, gush green blood and wield advanced weaponry.
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