Let the Magic Circle Bleed. Bridging the Gap Between Games and Reality

Abstract

Games are often intended to draw us so completely into a fictional world that we forget that there is a world outside of the game, however, forgetting ourselves in a game means we must come back to ourselves at the end, begging the question: who were we when we were playing? The conventional wisdom of the magic circle (Huizinga 1949) suggests that we press pause on our real lives when we enter a game space. Identity permeability in games, or bleed, (Stark 2012) suggests that there is no such pause button; that players lend their agency and identity to an in-game role, where that agency and identity is altered by the gameplay such that when the players return to themselves they are in some way changed. Bleed occurs when in-game learning is so effective that players experience that learning across two realities, evoking a shift in world view. This is where educational environments become necessary; providing context and community as players learn to re-think their out-of-game reality based on in-game experiences. In this report, I will outline the relationship between the safety of the magic circle, the illuminating potency of bleed, and the role of educators and facilitators in bridging the gap between games and reality.