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DIGITAL MEDIA AND CONVERGENCE

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At least since the days of Johannes Vermeer, the Dutch master of photorealism painting in the seventeenth century, humans have sought to create real-looking visual experiences; that is, virtual reality (VR). Part of the technical challenge has been generating three-dimensional (3-D) images—something Vermeer couldn’t quite do with a two-dimensional painting. By the 1830s, inventors had developed stereoscopes, binocular devices with left-eye and right-eye views of the same image that, when combined by human vision, created the depth of a third dimension. From the mid-1800s through the 1930s, viewing collections of stereo cards—of places like Egypt’s Sphinx, New York’s Flatiron Building, or Yosemite Valley—was a popular home entertainment. From the 1940s onward, plastic View-Master devices were popular toys for viewing a wheel of 3-D images of tourist attractions, television scenes, and cartoons.

Since that time, of course, there have been advances into 3-D film (first in the 1950s, with viewers wearing cardboard glasses with red and blue lenses, and now with more advanced digital 3-D, as seen in movies like Avatar) and amusement park experiences (which often add motion effects). Now we have 3-D television in addition to digital 3-D films. Still, the ultimate goal for enthusiasts of virtual reality has been to immerse themselves in a digital world. A recent breakthrough might finally accomplish this: the Oculus Rift.

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In 2014, Facebook purchased a small virtual reality company called Oculus VR, which invented the Oculus Rift, a virtual reality headset. Oculus invites us to “Step into the Rift. The Rift is unlike anything you’ve ever experienced. Whether you’re stepping into your favorite game, watching an immersive VR movie, jumping to a destination on the other side of the world, or just spending time with friends in VR, you’ll feel like you’re really there.”1 The device is scheduled to be released in 2016, and it has already received rave reviews. TechRadar reported that when combining the Oculus headset with Oculus Touch handsets, “total immersion” was complete. “I was not only able to pick up objects, I could shoot guns, slingshots, punch objects, pull heads off robots, and light sparklers on fire with a lighter,”2 the reviewer wrote.

But Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s bigger bet is that virtual reality will be the next generation of gaming style and then the leading interface for everything else in the media business, describing Oculus as a potential platform for experiences like sporting events and virtual classrooms.3 Facebook envisions digital games as a way for virtual reality to enter every part of our lives. After all, why would we want to “share” our experiences via two-dimensional posts on Facebook when we can be there—virtually—on the Facebook of the future?

Still, the leading edge of virtual reality has always been entertainment. Competing with the Oculus Rift are the Sony Project Morpheus and the HTC Vibe, VR headsets and controllers for gaming also scheduled for release in 2016. Another competitor takes users out of the house. The VOID, a virtual reality play park, plans to open in 2016 in a suburb of Salt Lake City, and then expand with a chain of locations (the company calls them Virtual Entertainment Centers) around the world.4 Players will wear an Oculus-like head-mounted virtual reality display, plus a virtual reality vest and virtual reality gloves. The environment is a VR game played out like laser tag in real space—a series of 60-by-60-foot rooms with digital overlays creating any number of scenes, such as a haunted castle, a futuristic battlefield, or a dinosaur safari. The haptic feedback in the vest means players can “feel” laser blasts, fire bursts, and creature attacks.

For those who find this new tech too complicated, another option combines the advancements of smartphones with the low tech of a craft project: Google Cardboard, which turns a smartphone into an old-fashioned stereoscope or View-Master through a cardboard viewer and accompanying app. Google says, “Google Cardboard brings immersive experiences to everyone in a simple and affordable way. Whether you fold your own or buy a Works with Google Cardboard certified viewer, you’re just one step away from experiencing virtual reality on your smartphone.”5

And here we are, once again, on the quest to experience virtual reality—holding our smartphone to our eyes with a cardboard viewer, at home with an advanced headset device, or in a virtual theme park, running through a completely digital world. We may have finally reached it.

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ELECTRONIC GAMES OFFER PLAY, ENTERTAINMENT, AND SOCIAL INTERACTION. Like the Internet, they combine text, audio, and moving images. But they go even further than the Internet by enabling players to interact with aspects of the medium in the context of the game—from deciding when an onscreen character jumps or punches to controlling the direction of the “story.” This interactive quality creates an experience so compelling that vibrant communities of fans have cropped up around the globe. And the games have powerfully shaped the everyday lives of millions of people. Indeed, for players around the world, digital gaming has become a social medium as compelling and distracting as other social media. The U.S. Supreme Court has even granted digital gaming First Amendment freedom of speech rights, ensuring its place as a mass medium.

In this chapter, we will take a look at the evolving mass medium of digital gaming and: