Week 3

According to Huizinga playing involves a person entering a specific frame or context created uniquely by the game the person wishes to play, this is referred to as ‘The Magic Circle’. The Magic Circle is basically a safe environment where we can perform fantasies not appropriate or maybe not attainable in our society. Poole believes ‘the inner life of a video game and how it works is tied up with the inner life of the player’ therefore we can relate this quote back to the idea of the Magic Circle and how a video game can so easily become real to the player, we become at one with the game and find it is easy to believe that we are performing everything we do in the game on our own and in our own environment. This could be seen as a large reason as to why we find playing violent games acceptable as we are only playing them within ‘The Magic Circle’ we understand that what we are performing would be quite unacceptable in real life where as in our own ‘cyber like’ environment we are fine. Philosopher Bernard Suits also focuses on ‘the state of mind of the game player’ (Salen, Zimmerman, 2006) . This is where the Magic Circle is clearly affecting the gamers, in the mind.

Almost every game currently available to us offers the player a chance to act out things that would clearly be unacceptable in today’s society, or something that the player may believe to be unrealistic in their lives. I can relate the idea of the Magic Circle to numerous games I have played, including Medal of Honour, Grand Theft Auto, and The Sims. I especially found the FIFA games met the criteria of the Magic Circle well as the gamer is able to act as if a world famous football player, due to the fact FIFA use the official league names, and cups the game becomes realistic to the gamer. The gamer may feel more passionate about it as they can play out as a player of their favourite team, something that could appear hugely unrealistic if the player chooses to play as Southampton and goes on to win the Champions League.