The Performance of Belief in Pervasive Play

I finally took some time to read some Jane McGonigal and her A Real Little Game: The Performance of Belief in Pervasive Play. Well, ok I haven’t read it all… because she is too verbose at times. Nevertheless, she makes interesting arguments on demistifying the dangerous credibility of pervasive games. She focuses on two examples of pervasive play to show that gamers maximize their play experience by performing belief, rather than actually believing, in the permeability of the game-reality boundary. Her definition of pervasive play is “it consists of mixed reality games that use mobile, ubiquitous and embedded digital technologies to create virtual playing fields in everyday spaces.

Immeersive games promise to become not just entertainment, but out lives. But to what degree does a person belive her own performance? The critics say you never really know when you are playing. The contemporary games is charactarized primarly by his confused credulity. Sven Halling, CEO of It’s Alive, faced an international reception of his pervasive game that included a frequently expressed anxiety about players losing touch with reality and losing themselves in the games. Halling saying

“In countries like Austria and Switzerland, they like the games, but don’t dare launch it. They feel it might be dangerous.”