ABSTRACT
The categorization of video games as a form of 'experience' is, to some extent, identified and explored by some game scholars. Ian Bogost suggests that the representations of reality that video games involve, though not identical to what we could consider as an 'actual experience', are still capable of simulating 'real or imagined physical and cultural processes'. Interpreting video games as experiences opens up a vast field of theoretical and practical possibilities, and plays a central role in discerning the different aspects – material, symbolic, political, and social – that constitute video games as culture. Video games are also helpful to shed light on our understanding of the notion of experience in a wider social context. Video games push players into the shoes of others, allowing them to experience the world from their perspective. Video games, understood as experiences, are not entities sitting out there that exist apart from the act of playing them.
