All our experiences consist of a comfort zone in which we live comfortably and another that we could define as unknown, unfamiliar, an unexplored jungle that inexorably attracts us and to which we can hardly resist. Like human existence, after all: a journey in which our being moves from point A to point B, in a constant and continuous sequence.
The advent of Virtual Reality in the world of video games was a truly unique historical moment, foreshadowed by the first timid attempts in the Eighties with speculative fiction novels and more or less successful films that highlighted its immersive power. Today, VR headsets and titles that are increasingly competitive with one another are a reality that is anything but virtual: Oculus Rift and even the too-underrated PlayStation headset have set new reference standards. As a result, it goes without saying that the average user, accustomed to gripping joysticks or joypads to tackle the shooter levels of R-Type or the merciless moral choices of any Life is Strange, finds themselves entering the video game with all five senses massively engaged.
From A to B, we were saying.
E when it happens, the perception one has of the Game with a capital G changes radically. Since childhood, each of us has dreamed at least once of taking the helm of the galleon and escaping from pirates while sailing through stormy waves (or of being the buccaneer with the eye patch ready to board, the dark side always seduces!) or the hero who defeats drooling orcs and gigantic monsters with sword, spells, and a good dose of recklessness.
Entrar with imagination between the pages of a book is unmatched, but everything evolves, people and generations themselves change with the favor of the wind of change and one cannot ignore something as epochal and overwhelming as the very concept of Virtual Reality. Thanks to titles like the epic Asgard’s Wrath and the adrenaline-fueled Star Wars Squadron for Ps4, we can become the absolute protagonists of the adventures on screen. We put on a headset and then, as if by magic, we face incredible duels surrounded by the clang of swords and sail toward Coruscant in search of an enemy Sith base, and so on.
And what about the Classic Videogame? The one we grew up with, children of a time god anything but minor, blessed to have seen the first arcade cabinets set up in the most hidden corners of bars wrapped in cigarette smoke haze and the comments of the elders, “those infernal machines make more noise than anything else?”. As the Blade Runner replicant would say, will all this be lost forever like tears in the rain?
No. It cannot and must not happen. And believe me when I tell you that this is not the stoic and pathetic verbal resistance of a nostalgic person, but the awareness that if it is true that everything changes and evolves, there are exceptions that even confirm this natural rule. What makes the video game medium so unique and fantastic is not the industry or the billion-dollar revenue of titles like Zelda or Elden Ring, ordinary video games, certainly not in virtual reality: I believe that as long as the player's imagination exists, the most powerful passive skill of all time, we will keep playing for a long time to come just as we always have.
The Real Virtuality is not the enemy, but a tangible symptom of technological evolution, something to embrace and understand and not demonize. The audiovisual involvement and the experiential magic of a game enjoyed with the helmet on your head and the special gloves catapult us body and soul into the adventure we choose to live.
Our senses, even if aware of the fact that they are literally being taken in by the fictional structure of a world whose walls do not actually exist, give us emotions and thrills in abundance, making us feel unique in a completely new way, one that is still waiting to be discovered.
But what makes the difference, I repeat, is us. The ability to imagine, even before a cold and artificial tool does it for us, is what makes us human, players, protagonists.
Vivi.
