Real World vs. Game World

My reaction to Exitenz is very similar to my reaction to the idea of having technology so advanced that humans can become completely emerged in a gaming world. Though many feel that this phenomenal technological step towards the future is fantastic I feel that it may become a huge problem for our society. As the gaming world becomes more real many users may start blending, without realizing, their real world and gamer world. 

The fine line between violence and repercussions will become more and more blurred. In games currently violence is all fake, you put the controller down and the game is over. As games and simulators become more popular people will have a better “real world” experience of violence because the games are so lifelike. Which I feel poses a problem. I don’t think that Americans are all of a sudden going to justify shooting someone but the more real the game becomes the greater the possibility for humans to have this blurred image between game and reality.  It has been studied that violence in video games has caused the people, mostly children, to be violent in the real world. Today’s controllers only allow users to be looking at a screen or through goggles. With the new immersive software, users are literally immersed into the game. 

Exitenz is a movie about a similar phenomenon happening, immersive video games are created. Throughout the movie it shows characters justifying violence by saying it is only game, some characters even kill other players in the game that are their family in real life.  At the end of the film the users come out of the game to discuss how it was. It is then revealed that 2 characters are actually the “bad guys” and they then kill the game maker and some of his workers. The very last line of the movie is a man sitting on the other side of the barrel of a gun, asking the “bad guys” if they were in fact still playing the game. I found this very impactful. By that man simply asking if they were still in the gamer world completely sums up my argument as to how and why the line of reality will be blurred with the continuous growth in technology for video games.