Searching For Virtual Venus in Life Simulation Games

Abstract

This article stipulates on the successfully generated social aspects of fictional virtual simulation games bound in time and space such as Sims and Farmville. These simulated virtual gaming worlds are an extension of our reality where we recognise motivation and self-fulfilment and approve of it as a successful, thriving and engaging society. A society that emerges and overlaps with the real world of the players, their families, friends and workplace; based on Anselm Strauss’s concept1 of overlapping social worlds (Lehdonvirta, 2010). Further, in time our actions and patterns of behaviour that prevail in the form of our ‘Avatar’ are being stored within these virtual gaming worlds thereby blurring the boundaries between virtual and real. Therefore, as an analogy, by examining the existing paradigms (mental and emotional frameworks) within these virtual gaming worlds and drawing on conclusions as to what makes virtual gaming worlds successful and thriving, I seek to propose if it would be possible to harness the ‘Virtual Venus’, a concept where paradigms of Utopia that may abide in virtual gaming world could be transferred into real social worlds to promote harmony. Therefore, the ‘Virtual Venus’ model would be a research tool in understanding the implications of combining the virtual with the real and observing mankind’s behaviour through the act of play. ‘Virtual Venus’ would then act as interactive, immersive virtual-real world that can overcome these limitations and foster a better understanding of communities or cultures.