Video games and it's players behold a dynamic and vast link with each other. The game and the player both have a voice in the game, which can be affected from either side by various means. Though this is true, it has become apparent that the virtual world and real life are becoming entwinded.
The magic circle is the environment the game creates which is supposed to be intended for all players, although, some players either distort the circle or intend not to abide by it at all. The magic circle is like a cloak or cage, which harbours certain attributes, rules and ideas to keep the virtual system running. If there is not a stable magic circle then the reality of the game itself and the success of it could be in jeopardy as players do not want to take part in broken game play.
In order for the game to be in harmony, the magic circle's rules normally need to be adhered to for the virtual world to be successful. Some way's in which the player gets joy out of the game is through achievement, progression,a sense of victory or multi player participation(with strict rules). If these fundamentals are broken , then the developer is likely to lose it's audience along with it's revenue.
Hackers,cheats,spoil sports or you could say the outsider, are a group of players who undermine the magic circle's rules of play, environment and disrupt the magic circle's ethics. This group play the game to experience a different enjoyment as opposed to the average player who abides by the magic circle. They get an enjoyment from stepping outside the virtual norms, to hack or annoy without any regard to other gamers playing experience.
Bowyer says "to cheat, not to play the game that reflected the norm, indicated that there was another world, the world of deception, in which people did not play the game, your game, but their own”.
I think that this is because it gives them the sense of being powerful and having an advantage of the game which other players do not. As well as this, it helps them to reach the end game, if there is one at all in the game they are playing. The average player will grow a hatred for this group as it shatters their game reality as well as ruining their chances of succeeding in their objective. If there is to much hacking then the player will simply stop playing the game because there is no enjoyment for them any more. This is why it is important for the game maker to monitor hackers and ban players otherwise they will lose revenue, especially in games such as World of Warcraft.
Johan Huizinga says “The spoil-sport shatters the play-world itself. By withdrawing from the game he reveals the relativity and fragility of the play-world in which he had temporarily shut himself with others. He robs play of its illusion-a pregnant word which means literally “in-play” (from inlusion, illudere or inludere). Therefore he must be cast out, for he threatens the existence of the play-community.”
Glitchers on the other hand, are a group of players that don't really ruin the magic circle for other players but often take advantage from development errors. They do not altar the game's system.
"Glitches vary significantly in their scale and severity and range from graphical artefacts or anomalies that do not dramatically affect or alter gameplay to those that can crash the game, and even the system on which it is running, or corrupt save data, thereby eliminating a gamer’s recorded progress."
It could be said that they take advantage of the magic circle for their own pleasure but do not distort it. Here are some of examples of glitching.
Halo 2 plasma glitching
World of Warcraft Glitching
Although the magic circle is intended to keep the game intact and running whilst keeping the theme and feel of the game coherent, this does not mean that the game cannot be affected by real life attributions or by game modifications. As well as this, businesses often invade the magic circle with advertising as well as Governments using games to advertise for they're Political campaigns.
Expect to see a rise in in-game advertising as the market is growing rapidly. Will this effect the coherence of the magic circle as it becomes more rife? It could be a deterrent for gamers to play certain games or it may just go unnoticed.
The Political world has also entered into gaming, well at least the U.S parties have. Political campaigns have seeped into the magic circle as to broaden they're influence on the voters for elections. In 2008 Obama had a lot of advertising in-game in Second Life. This included a virtual party Headquarters, billboards and also t-shirts with his face on. Other politicians included Hilary Clinton and John Mcclain who did similar things in Second Life.
Whether it made any political impact is unknown but it seems there is a growing trend for this kind of campaigning.
My final point is that i have found that the Virtual world and real life seem to me moving together. For example, a synthetic marketplace in an online game although virtual, has the ability to have real connections to the real market outside the game. This because company's have been set up to farm resources on a mass scale in game to sell to other players for real money. It is illegal but a very lucrative business, for example World of Warcraft has 10.2 million subscribers, if only a handful use an external company's service for resources then they have made a handsome revenue."In 2009 the global market for gold farming was valued at around $3bn annually". Here we have a connection between the real life economy and the virtual one, which can have an effect on the value of items in game e.g inflation and deflation. This merging of the economy begs the question, is the current definition for real life correct when we can see the line being blurred in so many ways?
Two worlds blurring together.
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