A possible psychophysic aspect

The perceptual process involved in playing video-games is quite complex. Not only does it require eye movement to keep the primary action componants in the foveal (efficient image processing) range, but also a learned awareness of the patterns of movement for each particular game. This interaction between mind and body harkens back to some of the earliest childhood tensions between the limitations of one's physicality and the need to overcome them. The mastery over visual tracking does not end at infancy, but is an ongoing learning process throughout life--visual perception efficiency increases with task-specific training. This is a primal source of one's sense of inferiority, which because of its cognitive learning aspects, never quite leaves us alone.

When this is taken into perspective, the quest for mastery over video-games can be understood on an abstract/formal level, independant from referential content or meaning. They are simply games which supply both challanges to our superiority and the tools needed to overcome those challanges. The positive affective response to mastering such games is derived from the release of tension and anxiety raised by summoning the unresolvable quest for greater visual acuity, and the inhewrent sense of inferiority that reality makes salient.

Replies:

There are no replies to this message.

| Behavior OnLine Home Page | Disclaimer |

Copyright © 1996-2004 Behavior OnLine, Inc. All rights reserved.