From the Greek haptikos or haptesthai, meaning to grasp or take hold of, haptic refers to the sense of touch. The word haptics has come to refer to the science of touch, a field of study that has its roots in German psychophysics, and also serves as shorthand for the field of haptic interface design, which attempts to technologically reproduce the sense of touch. Loomis and Lederman (1984, 1986) define the haptic as consisting of the cutaneous (skin) and kinesthetic (movement) senses, which is the meaning we will use in this chapter.
Published in Chapter:
Game Interfaces as Bodily Techniques
David Parisi (New York University, USA)
Copyright: © 2009
|Pages: 16
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-59904-808-6.ch007
Abstract
This chapter discusses the way that new video game interfaces such as those employed by Guitar Hero™, Dance Dance Revolution, and the Nintendo Wii™ are being used to invoke the whole body as a participant in the game text. As such, new video games involve more than cognitive education; they impart a set of body habits to the player. Drawing on Marcel Mauss’s concept of “bodily technique,” I propose a new vocabulary for understanding these devices, referring to them as bodily interfaces. Next, I discuss three aspects of bodily interfaces: mode of capture, haptics, and button remapping. In order to help educators take advantage of these developments, I conclude by pointing to theoretical literature on the relationship between the physical and mental aspects of the learning process that may be useful in rethinking electronic games.