I listened again to the audiocast of the MIT Communications Forum from last week. I’ve been thinking more about something Ian Bogost said during the conversation. He was referring to the often stated criticism that video games allow the player to escape into worlds they create to suit themselves. Bogost stated that he is most interested in just the opposite, living in a world you don’t construct…
By living a life that is constrained by a particular situation, we can gain insight into what it would be like to be in that situation.
Henri J. M. Nouwen talks about hospitality (I think in Reaching out the three movements of the spiritual life) as making space for the other. It seems to me that game players in a sense move into another space make available to them by someone else. I’m fascinated by the parallel. At another point, Bogost talked about an almost meditative state that into which the gamer enters. I wonder if I understood gaming better if I would view it as a kind of spiritual practice?
Tags: Digital Culture, gaming theory, spiritual practice