Yaewon Jin
Yonsei University, Communication, Graduate Student
This article focuses on 'gaming' as a continuing activity in everyday lives. 'Gaming' is cultural, social, and also intertwined with everyday lives of players. Previous approaches toward the understanding of player-experience mostly... more
This article focuses on 'gaming' as a continuing activity in everyday lives. 'Gaming' is cultural, social, and also intertwined with everyday lives of players. Previous approaches toward the understanding of player-experience mostly focused only on the 'moment of playing', considering 'game' as a special artifact to enter the 'magic circle' or 'virtual reality'. This article reexamines 'gaming' as a overall process of player participation, while it is patterned in everyday life and is continued for long-term. Through the concepts of 'Blended Space' and 'Conceptual Blending', this article attempts to understand the experience of player and the layers of the experience as players' familiar world and game world blends together through long-term participation.
Research Interests:
This study is about the experience and perception of players who participate in everyday game play on a long-term basis. It is an attempt to comprehend what the types of experiences are offered as a game visits a player’s everyday life... more
This study is about the experience and perception of players who participate
in everyday game play on a long-term basis. It is an attempt to comprehend what
the types of experiences are offered as a game visits a player’s everyday life and
what lingers once the game’s visit is over, possibly affecting the continuing
scene of player’s everyday life. Because it is considered to be significant to
understand a player’s experience embracing the overall process of gaming
including surroundings as much as focusing on the ‘playing’ time only, this
study examines the players’ gaming experience as a whole, while it is
patternized in everyday life and is continued for long-term.
MMORPG was chosen as the object of study as it seemed to be the most
suitable genre to observe the continuing relationship between the game world and the familiar world, and among many MMORPGs, this study conducted in- depth interview of <AION> players over the course of several years. For more
concrete analysis of players’ experience, the concept of lifespan was adopted to
arrange play experience in to three stages. Additionally, in order to thoroughly
comprehend the operation of relationship between the game world and the
familiar world, the concept of ‘blended space’ was used to define the degree of
connection between the two worlds
The beginning stage of Lifespan includes ‘introduction’ and ‘adaptation.’
Players encounter the game world for the first time and gradually revisit the
game world more often. During this stage, players actively turn game spaces into
‘places,’ and through the collision of oppositional stances of convergence and
divergence, players establish the boundary that defines how much of the game
world is allowed to interfere with the familiar world. This also set the boundary
of the blended space where the conceptual blending of two input spaces, the
game world and the familiar world, happened.
In the blended space, two input spaces interacted with each other. During
the ‘Development’ stage of Lifespan, revalidation, expansion, and emotional
involvement of the game world through collective action was achieved. The
conceptual blending phenomenon of the established familiar world and newly
experienced game world transformed how players viewed the familiar world and
their reality.
At the end of Lifespan, during the phases of ‘consumption’ and ‘breakaway,’
the position of the game world progressively shifted toward outside of the familiar world. The ‘consumption’ of game contents and of the values players
pursued in game play naturally led players to ‘breakaway’ from the game world;
this ‘breakaway’ happened rather abruptly when compared to the ‘introduction’
and ‘adaption’ phases. During this period, players’ perception about the game
world became rapidly detached from that of the familiar world.
Once all three lifespan stages were completed, it seemed that the game
world and blended space ceased to exist in the familiar world. Instead, players
were left with fragmented memories of the game world and blended space and
tended to store the memories in certain places of the game world. Such places
not only contained memories of the game world, but also acted as a repository
for memories of the familiar world of that time. Lastly, ‘people’ from the
collective actions which are a distinct feature of MMORPG were left in the
familiar world.
The qualities of the game’s lifespan and blended space that can be drawn
from the above findings are as follows:
The experience of blended space is entering the imaginative situation, the
mental space which players arbitrarily create. The game world’s dense and vivid
representative elements abundantly provide agencies of imagination, thus
provoking the possibility to think beyond the familiar level of imagination. In
addition, revalidating/expanded notions or conceptual blending/collision,
blended space now possesses the possibility to create endless imaginative
situations, omnificence, and to realize countless intensions.
The blended space continued throughout lifespan, even then players were not participating in actual playing. However, the blended space involves the
condition of instability; it is always in a state of tension and its boundaries
delimitate restlessly. Players continued to interfere with blended space as if they
were an independent input space apart from the original two input spaces. Even
though such participation is carried out subconsciously, it clearly shows that
there exists desire to maintain ‘self-consistency,’ in contrast to the common
postmodern belief of the loss of authentic self.
It seems that the blended space disappears after lifespan is completed, as it
loses the game world as its input space, however, the blended space actually
becomes more substantial by going through secondary blending. The secondary
blending is composed of the blended space and the familiar world. Since the
blended space was the mental space where the experience created was in
emotional form, the result of secondary blending becomes the memory of both
familiar and emotional form. Later in the familiar world, this memory becomes
an authoritative reference point that affirms the individual identity. The
secondary blending delivers the leftovers of the game world and the blended
space to a different layer, from formerly somewhat ‘virtual’ to the familiar
world’s past. Consequently, regularly conducted game play is the mental process of
exploring meanings in the purest form; it is also relatively free from physical and
social constraints. What this activity leaves behind is the experience processed
by the players themselves, which is transferred to the layer of the familiar world
through a series of spatial blending. The experience stays in a player’s familiar world and influences a player’s self-perception and notion of his surrounding
worlds, until another blending occurs.
in everyday game play on a long-term basis. It is an attempt to comprehend what
the types of experiences are offered as a game visits a player’s everyday life and
what lingers once the game’s visit is over, possibly affecting the continuing
scene of player’s everyday life. Because it is considered to be significant to
understand a player’s experience embracing the overall process of gaming
including surroundings as much as focusing on the ‘playing’ time only, this
study examines the players’ gaming experience as a whole, while it is
patternized in everyday life and is continued for long-term.
MMORPG was chosen as the object of study as it seemed to be the most
suitable genre to observe the continuing relationship between the game world and the familiar world, and among many MMORPGs, this study conducted in- depth interview of <AION> players over the course of several years. For more
concrete analysis of players’ experience, the concept of lifespan was adopted to
arrange play experience in to three stages. Additionally, in order to thoroughly
comprehend the operation of relationship between the game world and the
familiar world, the concept of ‘blended space’ was used to define the degree of
connection between the two worlds
The beginning stage of Lifespan includes ‘introduction’ and ‘adaptation.’
Players encounter the game world for the first time and gradually revisit the
game world more often. During this stage, players actively turn game spaces into
‘places,’ and through the collision of oppositional stances of convergence and
divergence, players establish the boundary that defines how much of the game
world is allowed to interfere with the familiar world. This also set the boundary
of the blended space where the conceptual blending of two input spaces, the
game world and the familiar world, happened.
In the blended space, two input spaces interacted with each other. During
the ‘Development’ stage of Lifespan, revalidation, expansion, and emotional
involvement of the game world through collective action was achieved. The
conceptual blending phenomenon of the established familiar world and newly
experienced game world transformed how players viewed the familiar world and
their reality.
At the end of Lifespan, during the phases of ‘consumption’ and ‘breakaway,’
the position of the game world progressively shifted toward outside of the familiar world. The ‘consumption’ of game contents and of the values players
pursued in game play naturally led players to ‘breakaway’ from the game world;
this ‘breakaway’ happened rather abruptly when compared to the ‘introduction’
and ‘adaption’ phases. During this period, players’ perception about the game
world became rapidly detached from that of the familiar world.
Once all three lifespan stages were completed, it seemed that the game
world and blended space ceased to exist in the familiar world. Instead, players
were left with fragmented memories of the game world and blended space and
tended to store the memories in certain places of the game world. Such places
not only contained memories of the game world, but also acted as a repository
for memories of the familiar world of that time. Lastly, ‘people’ from the
collective actions which are a distinct feature of MMORPG were left in the
familiar world.
The qualities of the game’s lifespan and blended space that can be drawn
from the above findings are as follows:
The experience of blended space is entering the imaginative situation, the
mental space which players arbitrarily create. The game world’s dense and vivid
representative elements abundantly provide agencies of imagination, thus
provoking the possibility to think beyond the familiar level of imagination. In
addition, revalidating/expanded notions or conceptual blending/collision,
blended space now possesses the possibility to create endless imaginative
situations, omnificence, and to realize countless intensions.
The blended space continued throughout lifespan, even then players were not participating in actual playing. However, the blended space involves the
condition of instability; it is always in a state of tension and its boundaries
delimitate restlessly. Players continued to interfere with blended space as if they
were an independent input space apart from the original two input spaces. Even
though such participation is carried out subconsciously, it clearly shows that
there exists desire to maintain ‘self-consistency,’ in contrast to the common
postmodern belief of the loss of authentic self.
It seems that the blended space disappears after lifespan is completed, as it
loses the game world as its input space, however, the blended space actually
becomes more substantial by going through secondary blending. The secondary
blending is composed of the blended space and the familiar world. Since the
blended space was the mental space where the experience created was in
emotional form, the result of secondary blending becomes the memory of both
familiar and emotional form. Later in the familiar world, this memory becomes
an authoritative reference point that affirms the individual identity. The
secondary blending delivers the leftovers of the game world and the blended
space to a different layer, from formerly somewhat ‘virtual’ to the familiar
world’s past. Consequently, regularly conducted game play is the mental process of
exploring meanings in the purest form; it is also relatively free from physical and
social constraints. What this activity leaves behind is the experience processed
by the players themselves, which is transferred to the layer of the familiar world
through a series of spatial blending. The experience stays in a player’s familiar world and influences a player’s self-perception and notion of his surrounding
worlds, until another blending occurs.