As opposed to visual realism, bodily realism refers to the subject’s felt experiences of the game interface. Like visual realism, bodily realism is not an absolute category; that is to say, bodily realism is not something that is either achieved or not achieved, but rather something sought for in the design process. One example of this is bowling for Wii Sports, which attempts to replicate the bodily feeling of bowling through the use of motion capture in the Wii Remote. The player has to go through the motion of “real” bowling, thus producing physical sensations that approximate those of real bowling.
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.