Week 5 - Blurred lines between virtual life and real world?

Dear Ms. Taylor,

            I found myself thinking a lot about the crossing path between the gaming world and the real world after reading your chapter, “Finding New World from Playing between Worlds”. I think it is really interesting how people differentiate their gaming lives from their real lives but then are able to combined the two worlds together within one meeting. What I am confused about is what is this fixation of living in a gaming world? I am not a big fan of virtual worlds and I am trying to understand why people are so fascinated with it. When you spoke about the connection between the two world and how people live behind a made up character I wondered to myself, is this their escape? People are pretending to be something their not is it because they are not happy with themselves in the real world. The most intriguing statement you made was “For some odd reason I am happy to have it when I see this. Suddenly I have something material on which to hang my participation in not just this event, but the game more generally.” (Taylor, 2) This made me realize how important these virtual worlds are to the people who live within them. They bring their virtual lives into their real lives. A simple article of clothing associated with the game justifies their virtual lives to become apart of their real lives. Once these people start participating in their groups, they seem to fall into a “fantasy” world that they have created in their head and are living their real lives WITHIN the virtual world. To me this seems crazy. You have a real life to live why not really live it? I did not understand why people are so drawn into these virtual worlds. I started using second life for a class in college and while using it, I started to understand why these people become so lost within the game. It sucks you in and by the time you realize you have been sucked in, you’ve already been playing for over 2 hours and you don’t know where the time went. Getting lost in the game is an escape for people to forget the real world for a little. I just wonder where people will cross the line. They can’t blur the lines between real world and virtual and that is where I feel this problem lies. You wrote about what happens when gamers all get together in the real world and reenact the virtual world but what I am left with asking myself after reading your chapter is, how far do these people go when combining these two worlds? We don’t know for sure but who knows if people have been so brainwashed as to dump their real lives and start living their fakes lives in the real world… just a thought.

Best,

Deanna Dimino