ABSTRACT
Huizinga once famously described games as being bounded by magic circles: they are ‘temporary worlds within the ordinary world, dedicated to the performance of an act apart’ (1955, p. 10). Single-player games are now powerful enough to convey the impression of shared worlds with social presence and social agency. Unfortunately, there are few clear definitions of ‘world’ as it applies to commercial computer games or as it could be used to help improve these games. In Playing with the Past (Champion, 2010), I explored a simple framework for defining virtual worlds. Here I will apply my earlier simple framework to ‘Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion’ in terms of phenomenological, social and cultural aspects.
