Through the Looking Glass Sharply - The Video Game Industry: Formation, Present State, and Future - page 237

Internet, but we have not yet advanced to the state where we have our own
daemon. The parallelism of the two worlds and extensive usage permits
meetings to occur even before individuals meet in the physical world—
although one never can be sure how true to life the avatars may be. 5
Of course, there are some futuristic items described in the novel. The
special goggles provide a transition between the virtual world defi nitions
and anticipated technological developments. Naturally, they are high defi -
nition, laser driven and a few other things that are hard to understand or
appreciate. There are some interesting comments made of smart wheels
and ultravehicles, but things get really wild with the rat things, a type
of cyborg—heavily armoured, built on the bodies of dogs and capable
of speeds up to seven hundred miles per hour; they are pictured as mean
motorcycles when it comes to destroying bad guys. Finally, Y. T. carries
some interesting things in her purse—liquid knuckles, high-voltage cuf s
and a bundy stunner. She is pretty nasty herself when she goes into action
as she did at the Fed building (1992, 291).
As sometimes happens in writing texts, surprising things occur. In this
instance, the Wall Street Journal (Winfi eld 2011) published on page 1 a
story of Zynga, Inc. It was surprising for two reasons. First, Zynga is an
online video game producer (the Journal 's terms—we might prefer to call
the company a virtual world producer). Who would have guessed that a
video game developer would capture above the fold, fi rst page interest of
the Journal ? Secondly, it indicated that players were laying down signifi -
cant money to purchase items to use in the game. Shades of Hiro and his
oi ce in Metaverse!
In his treatise on video games, Gaume (2006, 299 & 301) suggested, “A
video game is an imaginary, perception-linked product.” He noted there
were two types of games: “toboggan games and sandpit games. In toboggan
games the player is completely guided along several predetermined paths. . . .
In these games, (one attempts) to get to the end and then moves along. In
sandpit games, the game never ends.” We like the “imaginary, perception
linked” aspect of that defi nition, but balk at product and would prefer
service or something else (preferably experience from Kotler's [2000] list).
Nevertheless, the business model of video games has changed from being
a one-of sales approach to a relationship where the customer acquires vir-
tual goods in game worlds, virtual worlds, in order to complete missions
and objectives in the game. The game per se has in that sense stopped being
the object purchased, and is instead an environment, perhaps marketplace,
where people can travel and have dif erent experiences. In that sense we seem
to be moving toward games being extension worlds that spread out from our
physical world as dif erent possible extensions of ourselves. Who do we want
to be today? The hero in shiny armour storming the countryside on his horse,
the khaki-dressed heroine shooting the villains with her guns or the latex-
dressed sex slave in a dungeon obeying the words of a dominatrix? A cynic
might say there are no games anymore, only possible marketplaces.