Introduction

In an increasingly technological society removed from the physical needs of sustenance, escapism is
generally seen as a negative phenomenon, both within academic and popular views. As theorists like Tuan
(1998) and Evans (2001) have observed, escapism is often viewed as an avoidance of the “real”, in its varied
manifestations: real work, real friends, real facts, in other words: the real world. But reality is a thorny
concept to deal with. It tends to appear more as the opposite of other intangible concepts than as a stand-
alone phenomenon in itself. In the digital age, the real appears most often in binary contrast with the
virtual. The relationship between the virtual and the real, like that between escapism and reality, is seldom
questioned.

Digital games are often seen as suffering from a double binary of unreality: their virtuality and their
gameness. The latter view is present not only in popular discussions of games but also finds support in
current scholarship in the concept of the “magic circle”. The magic circle assumes a separation between
games and the “real” world, imbuing games with a sense of artificiality that is often seen as one of their
defining elements. If some physical games are absolved from the avoidant negativity of escapism by virtue
of the physical exercise they involve, the monetary rewards they yield or the social status attributed to
them, digital games are scarcely ever afforded this luxury. In fact it would be no exaggeration to say that
digital games are considered the epitome of contemporary escapism. This direct association of digital
games with the trivial, if not downright negative, connotations of escapism displays a lack of informed
understanding both of the specific qualities of digital games and the conceptual underpinnings of escapism.

The first part of the paper discusses the ontological underpinnings that contribute to seeing digital games
as inherently escapist. This will be established through a critique of a perspective that places virtual
environments in binary opposition to an external real and the related notion of the “magic circle” that
views games as being separate from the real. The second part takes the discussion on a phenomenal level
arguing against the idea that games are escapist by the virtue of their being designed to be engaging. The
paper ends with a renewed view on digital games and escapism that takes into account their distinctive
qualities and their role in everyday life.

The Binary Illusion

There seems to be a straightforward association made between digital games and escapism that plagues
both popular and academic discussions. I say “plagues” here because the implications of this taken-for-
granted perspective on digital games as inherently escapist are scarcely positive. As Evans (2001) and Tosca
(2003) have argued, the negative connotations of escapism contribute to an all too common (at least
outside game studies) view of digital games as trivial activities of pure waste disassociated from a more
worthy “reality”.

In this part of the paper I will argue that this association of digital games with escapism is problematically
reinforced by two binary relationships that underpin the formal qualities of games. The first binary
positions the virtuality of digital games in contrast to a world of physical reality. The implication here is
that digital games are imbued with unreality by virtue of their being computer generated. The second
binary, which is more overtly stated in game discussions, is the supposed artificiality that, for some
theorists (Juul, 2005; Salen & Zimmerman, 2003), defines games. This artificiality, referred to by the term
“magic circle”, conceptualizes games as being separate from everyday reality and thus contributes to the
their association with a negative view of escapism.
Virtual Frontiers
The Internet and 3D virtual environments have been characterised from their earliest days by their
separation from the real world. Barlow and Kapor (1990) were two of the earliest writers to adopt the
rhetoric of the frontier to describe the Internet:

Over the last 50 years, the people of the developed world have begun to cross into a landscape
unlike any which humanity has experienced before. It is a region without physical shape or form. It
exists, like a standing wave, in the vast web of our electronic communication systems. It consists of
electron states, microwaves, magnetic fields, light pulses and thought itself…

In its present condition, Cyberspace is a frontier region, populated by the few hardy technologists
who can tolerate the austerity of its savage computer interfaces, incompatible communications
protocols, proprietary barricades, cultural and legal ambiguities, and general lack of useful maps or
metaphors.

The application of the frontier metaphor to cyberspace was taken uncritically from cyberpunk fiction and
fostered the idea that virtual worlds lie on the other side of a geographical boundary that separates them
from the real world on the other side of the screen. The image of the “hardy technologists” venturing into
an austere and savage “landscape” appealed to the imagination ignited by Vinge’s True Names in 1981 and
further fuelled by the popularity of Gibson’s Neuromancer, published in 1984. There is an uncanny
resemblance between the register used above with reference to actual developments with that used by
Gibson in his fiction. The fictional image of cyberspace presented in Neuromancer became a fact looming
on the foreseeable technological horizon. The frontier rhetoric became a common trope of writers
describing new technologies like Rushkoff (1994), Rheingold (1993), Mitchell (1995) and others in the
nineties. The comparison with the frontier also appealed to the early days of settlement of America, the
excitement enhanced by the potential dangers of this newly discovered wild landscape:

The early days of cyberspace were like those of the western frontier. Parallel, breakneck
development of the Internet and of consumer computing devices and software quickly created an
astonishing new condition; a vast, hitherto-unimagined territory began to open up for exploration
(109).

The rhetoric of the frontier is problematic because it positions the virtual in a binary opposition to the real.
Fundamental concepts like the relationship between the real and the virtual underpin any discussion of
digital media and it is thus crucial to consider carefully the assumptions they entail. In the context of
escapism, this binary division places virtual environments (of which digital games are a subset) on the other
side of a boundary whose crossing implies escapism. This sort of logic leads to normative assumptions that
mis-represent our engagement with virtual environments as being necessarily escapist, without considering
the particular qualities of the specifically situated engagement.

This tendency of viewing the virtual as opposed to the real is still common, both in popular and academic
discussions on virtual environments (and hence digital games). In Synthetic Worlds, Castronova takes issue
with the term virtual worlds and argues for a replacement of “virtual” with “synthetic”. He outlines how
the rise and fall of the hype around virtual reality created a negative association with the term virtual:

Finally, while being conservative in writing is one decision imposed by the nearness of this book to
early VR writing, another is the importance of avoiding words like “virtual”. That word points a
misleading finger from the game worlds back to the earlier VR paradigm. As I have said, no such
 connection is warranted. And therefore where I use “virtual” in this book, I just mean “rendered by
a computer”: a virtual world is a world rendered by computer (Castronova, 2005, 294).

The solution to the misrepresentation of the virtual in such discussions is not to remove the term from use
or relegate its signification to its least interesting use. Castronova argues that we should move away from
the virtual/real binary by replacing “virtual” with “synthetic”. Synthetic is useful in highlighting the
designed nature of virtual worlds, but in so doing creates another binary; between the man-made, crafted
synthetic world and a “largely unmodified reality that has been in existence for a while which he refers to
as “the Earth” (294). The problem with binary oppositions is that they create either/or relationships which
ignore the richer middle ground. As Haraway (1991) has argued, contemporary culture is best expressed in
terms of hybridity; of dialectic relationships between poles of difference, rather than reductionist dualisms.
Castronova (2005) does remain caught in the binaries he identifies as problematic. Synthetic Worlds is
steeped in such relations, in many instances characterising interaction with virtual worlds as a form of
encroaching migration from the Earth onto a domain which is distinct from it.

This topic of migration is picked up again by Castronova in his subsequent book Exodus to The Virtual World
where he rekindles the frontier rhetoric by arguing that virtual worlds are creating an unprecedented form
of mass exodus from the real world that will fundamentally transform both:

The exodus puts us back in touch with a phenomenon we thought we had lost forever: the frontier.
Virtual worlds are new lands. Several writers have said that the internet is a new frontier, but we
haven’t been able to see the implications until now. The bottom line is this: when people move
from one country to another, both countries change. As synthetic worlds emerge, our real world
will return to the situation that America experienced in the first three hundred years of its history
(Castronova, 2007, 14).

According to Castronova, virtual worlds engender a form of “continuous migration” (Castronova, 2007, 71)
which involves a back and forth movement between the starting point and the place migrated to. He
claims that we only need to make a simple modification to our current, “old-style” notion of migration in
order for it to be applicable to the “virtual exodus” (71): reduce the cost of moving between worlds to zero.
If there is no significant social, monetary and time cost involved in migrating, what exactly defines
migration? How do we differentiate migration into the virtual world from any form of activity that regularly
engrosses our attention? Would reading, as a regular, engaging activity, count as a form of continuous
migration into a fictional world? What about a weekend trip to a Crete? As Tuan (1998) argues, a
migration is such because it involves a cost, it involves risk; it involves a wholesale physical, cultural and
social displacement for an extended period with all the confusion, excitement and challenge that entails.

But the problem here goes beyond a definition of migration, but the underlying binary of here (real
world)/there (virtual world) that makes the conception of migration between distinct places possible. This
taken for granted opposition of the virtual to the real makes the association of virtual environments with
escapism a logical next step. If the virtuality of digital games lies on the other side of a boundary,
movement across it is a form of escape from the point of departure. That boundary is tied to an
understanding of the virtual that is limited to the computer generated, and thus not physically real. The
analytical richness of this distinction is somewhat poor. What is the utility of comparing a 3D model of my
living room to the actual living room, for example? The difference in physicality is scarcely a comparison
worthy of academic scrutiny. The more interesting overlaps surface when we consider that both computer
generated and physical living rooms are designed artefacts with very specific qualities and affordances, and
it is here that virtuality, as a theoretical concept proves most useful.

The opposition of the virtual to the real is a relatively recent idea. Marie-Laurie Ryan (2001) locates the
origins of what she calls “the virtual as fake” in 18th and 19th century discussions of physics and optics. The
connotations of illusion and inauthenticity associated with the mirror image carried over to the virtual.
Ryan identifies two perspectives on the virtual, what she calls the “virtual as fake” and the “virtual as
potential”. The latter finds its strongest expression in the work of Levy (1998), Serres (1994) and Deleuze
(2004).

The virtual here is not viewed in opposition to “the real” but as a constituent of it. The virtual is
characterised by movement and creative transformation. It is a force whose coming into being, its
actualization, is never fully determined at its origin. The virtual is an event, a processual generation of an
outcome through the interaction of a multiplicity of elements and contexts. Levy characterizes the
movement between virtual and actual as a resolution to a problem “not previously contained in its
formulation” (25).

Virtuality can therefore be understood as a form of existence related to a transformation of time and
space. The virtuality of a virtual community radically shortens the geographical distance between
participants and the speed of communication. The community is not pinned to a physical location but can
be accessed from any terminal that provides a suitable gateway. The actual, represented by the material
context of the participants, is transformed into a contingent variable, subservient to the new focus: the
participants shared interests and passions.

The utility of the concept of the virtual applied to digital games and other forms of virtual environments lies
in emphasizing their creative potential for actualizing a theoretically infinite range of possible experiences.
The ontological value of these experiences are very much of the order of the real, not its opposite. Virtual
worlds are not the sites of migration from the real, as Castronova claims, but artefacts that are intimately
woven into contemporary reality. Accessing virtual worlds, like any other form of virtual environment,
does not automatically imply escapism, much less escape. Erasing the boundary between the virtual and
the real is a first step towards exorcising the commonly held, but erroneous assumption that digital games,
as forms of virtual environments are, fundamentally escapist in nature.

Magic Circles

The first problematic binary dealt with the virtuality of digital games; the second deals with their game-ness
and relates to the concept of the “magic circle”. Initially coined by Huizinga (1955) in Homo Ludens, the
magic circle has been widely adopted by Game Studies theorists (Juul, 2005; Salen & Zimmerman, 2003) to
articulate the spatial, temporal and psychological boundary between games and the real world. The
context of its contemporary deployment varies somewhat from Huizinga’s (1955) original use which
emphasized the cultural pervasiveness of play:

All play moves and has its being within a play-ground marked off beforehand either materially or
ideally, deliberately or as a matter of course…The arena, the card-table, the magic circle, the
temple, the stage, the screen, the tennis court, the court of justice, etc., are all in form and function
play-grounds, i.e., forbidden spots, isolated hedged round, hallowed within which special rules
obtain. All are temporary worlds within the ordinary world, dedicated to the performance of an act
apart (10).

For Huizinga the term refers not solely to games but to a number of social contexts where social rules
distinguish one particular type of social space from another. An important aim of Huizinga’s work was to
propose that play is not an activity that is limited to games but a salient aspect of all facets of human
culture. A number of theorists in Game Studies have adopted the concept and applied it without
considering the wider discussion in which it was developed:
 Although the magic circle is merely one of the examples in Huizinga’s list of “play grounds”, the
term is used here as short-hand for the idea of a special place in time and space created by a game.
The fact that the magic circle is just that-a circle-is an important feature of this concept. As a
closed circle, the space it circumscribes is enclosed and separate from the real world… Within the
magic circle, special meanings accrue and cluster around objects and behaviours. In effect, a new
reality is created, defined by the rules of the game and inhabited by its players (Salen &
Zimmerman, 2003, 95-96)

Juul also adopts the use of the magic circle, but differentiates between its status in the context of what he
calls “physical games” like football or tennis and digital games. He applies the magic circle in a more
specific formal capacity in terms of game-space. According to Juul, physical games and board games take
place in a space which “is a subset of the space of the world: The space in which the game takes place is a
subset of the larger world, and a magic circle delineates the bounds of the game” (Juul, 2005, 164). The
boundary can be made up of spatial perimeters and is often also temporally defined. The game can be
limited to a specific area such as a tennis court or fencing piste or woven into the everyday world such as
the case in Live Action Role-Playing Games (LARPs), treasure hunts and other forms of pervasive gaming.
Here the spatial perimeter is less defined than the temporal one. The spatial and temporal boundaries of
the magic circle, in physical games, are upheld by a social agreement clarifying the interpretation and
validation of actions, utterances and outcomes; in other words, the rules.

But in the case of digital games, where is the magic circle? Juul traces the magic circle of digital games
along the hardware devices that enable their representation:

But in video games, the magic circle is quite well defined since a video game only takes place on the
screen and using the input devices (mouse, keyboard, controllers) rather than in the rest of the
world; hence there is no “ball” that can be out of bounds (164-165).

Juul goes on to compare the magic circle in physical games with that in digital games based on the spatial
qualities of each. With physical games the magic circle separates real world space from game space while
in the case of digital games the magic circle separates the fictional world of the game from the game space.
The latter is based on an assumption that “the space of a game is part of the world in which it is played, but
the space of a fiction is outside the world from which it is created” (164). In the case of digital games, the
utility of the magic circle’s function as a marker where rules apply loses its analytical relevance. In physical
games the distinction is needed because the game rules are upheld socially. Actions that take place within
the marked area of the game, if this exists, are interpreted differently from actions outside that area. In
digital games the distinction is void since the only space that one can act in is traversable space. The
stadium stands in FIFA 05 (EA Sports, 2005) or the space outside the combat area in Battlefield 1942 (Digital
Illusions CE., 2002) cannot be traversed. The interpretative role of the magic circle as spatial marker is
redundant when applied to digital games.

The concept of the magic circle has also been applied to the experiential dimension of game-play. Within
Game Studies, it is often taken as a given that game-play involves entering what Suits (1978) has called
“the lusory attitude”. There are distinct problems with viewing the game-space as somehow separable
from the everyday when viewed from an experiential perspective. Any attempt to create a clean
demarcation between the game-experience and the experience of the world (supposedly) external to it will
be severely challenged to explain how the players’ personal and social histories can be excluded from the
game activity. It is hardly possible for the game-space to block out the complexity of social and personal
relation. The lived experience of the players invariably informs, to different degrees depending on
circumstance, the experience of the game and vice versa.
The clear demarcation of game-space from non-game-space becomes even more problematic when
contemporary developments in digital games, like Massively Multiplayer Online Games (hereafter referred
to as MMOGs), are considered. Activities like planning and coordinating 40 man raids in World of Warcraft
(Blizzard Entertainment, 2004), which include several hours of tedious “farming”i of items that will be
needed to ensure the success of the raid, are often viewed as boring chores rather than pleasurable play.
Nick Yee has collected a wealth of quantitative data on MMOG players and in a recent paper published in
Games and Culture he observes how MMOG “playing” can often feel like a second job:

The average MMORPGii player spends 22 hours a week playing the game. And these are not only
teenagers playing. The average MMORPG gamer is in fact 26 years old. About half of these players
have a full time job. Every day, many of them go to work and perform an assortment of clerical
tasks, logistical planning and management in their offices, then they come home and do those very
same things in MMORPGs. Many players in fact characterize their game-play as a second job: “It
became a chore to play. I became defacto leader of a guild and it was too much. I wanted to get
away from real life and politics and social etiquette followed me in (Yee, 2006a, 69).

Further examples of the limitations of the magic circle come in a host of other forms: companies employing
people to farm in-world gold and sell it on e-Bay or offer character levelling services, social and cultural
issues that crop up whenever you have masses of people interact in persistent environments, virtual worlds
which require real money expenditure for the acquisition of virtual goods, such as Second Life (Linden Lab,
2003) or Project Entropia (MindArk, 2003) and more. Dibbell (2006) has written a compelling account of his
forays in trade of virtual assets and gold. In order to investigate the phenomenon often referred to as “real
money trade” or the exchange of virtual world items for widely accepted currency, Dibbell embarked upon
a year long stint buying and selling property, goods and gold in the popular Ultima Online (Origin Systems,
1997) MMOG. Dibbell’s Play Money is a self-reflexive meditation on the wide spectrum of experiences that
MMOGs enable and the profound impact these experiences can have on a person’s life. Dibbell describes
how his engagement with Ultima Online transformed from a form of entertainment to a full time job. He
uses his experiences to foreground the inadequacy of the magic circle and the application of the work/play
binary to MMOGs.

Malaby (2007) affirms these observations in his paper “Beyond Play: A New Approach to Games”, where he
argues that games studies needs to move beyond the a priori association of games with concepts like fun
and play. Malaby draws on a series of anthropological studies of play in various cultures to support his
view that the separability of games from everyday life and the related separation of play from work are not
empirically tenable concepts. In Malaby’s own ethnographic work with gamblers in Greece, it was clear
that players of various games did not view games as separable from everyday life on the grounds of their
being games. Here we have an example of how an aspect of Juul, Salen and Zimmerman’s models does not
hold up to practical application. The idea that games must have negotiable consequences is severely
problematized when consequences are not related only to material gains but also to social issues like
reputation and honour. In Malaby’s ethnographic work, it was clear that even in non-gambling contexts,
issues of cultural standing and social network are in fact highly consequential for the players involved. This
runs counter to Roger Caillois’ (1962) view of games as a activities of “pure waste” (5) where the “pure
space” (6) of the game should not be encroached upon by the outside world.

All of the issues discussed above frustrate attempts to set firm boundaries between game and non-game,
work and play. As useful as a neat separation between game and non-game might be from an analytical
perspective, the above arguments and examples, derived both from theoretical and ethnographic work,
demonstrate the severe shortcomings of such a concept when applied to the study of games, particularly in
contemporary developments of multiplayer digital games. Copier (2007) stresses the fundamental
problems that the magic circle gives rise to:
 The concept of the magic circle refers to a pre-existing artificiality of the game space that,
combined with the strong metaphor, creates a dichotomy between the real and the imaginary
which hides the ambiguity, variability, and complexity of actual games and play (139).

As Copier points out, the magic circle creates an a priori condition of bracketing from the real world that
mis-represents their complexity. The fact that this artificiality is seen as a defining element of games
increases the severity of the issue. With this commonly held assumption in place it is not surprising that
games are seen as inherently escapist. If they belong, by their very definition, to the domain of unreality,
any engagement with them is a move away from the real. And as we discussed earlier, any departure from
reality across the boundary that defines its many binaries is an act of escapism. As escapist activities
removed from reality they become imbued with triviality and other, usually negative, connotations of
escapism. This becomes doubly problematic in the case of digital games where the normative assumptions
of the game/non game binary are combined with those of the virtual/real binary:

Play becomes a method to escape reality by entering a new and computer generated reality…
Games are about immersing the players with different forms of entertainment that creates an
escape from reality (Dymek & Bergvall, 2004).

Now that we have considered the ontological grounds upon which games tend to be seen as inherently
escapist we turn to the phenomenological association of games with escapism by focusing on the
problematic equivalence of escapism with engagement or immersion.

An Engaging Escape
On the phenomenal level, the level of engagement required by the ergodic (Aarseth, 1997) nature of games
(Calleja, 2007b) is often seen as a source of escapism in itself. The following quote by Messerly (2004)
exemplifies this view which equates escapism with engagement without exploring the varied complexity of
the latter:

Escapism is the primary appeal. Moreover, as the graphics get better and the game play more
sophisticated, playing becomes even more engrossing. It is easy to understand why anyone would
want to escape our difficult and complicated world and fall into a vivid, compelling game
environment. One can live there with little or no interaction with the ordinary world (29).

Games are seen as being escapist because they make it so easy to lose track of time; so easy to ignore other
things that could be done or should be done instead. They are designed to be engaging and are sought by
players because they are engaging. Of course, other forms of media are also designed to be engaging, but
the feedback loop that games set up between media object and the player extends the capacity to be
engaged by virtue of the need for players to act, to explore the represented text and the algorithmic
structures that animate it. Players are beckoned to push the limits imposed by designers, to improve their
dexterous and cognitive abilities and be emotionally affected by the digital game. Games afford the ability
to communicate with, compete against and collaborate with remotely located players or friends in their
living rooms. It is not merely a matter of games being engaging, but of games affording a variety of ways to
be engaged. To understand why games are so appealing it is not enough to claim, as Messerly does, that
games are escapist, immersive, addictive or fun. Saying that games are appealing because they are [insert
one of the above labels] creates a circular argument that does not go very far into understanding the forms
of engagement that they afford. Game involvement is not a single experiential phenomenon, but a
multiplicity of overlapping and fluid forms of engagement (Calleja, 2007a, 2007b). Saying that games are
escapist determines the mode of interaction with them, rather than describing a possible aspect of the
engagement in any meaningful way. The following sections will discuss cognitive and emotional
dimensions of game engagement and consider how these relate to escapism.

As Johnson (2005) has argued, games are great at presenting players with cognitive challenges of all sorts,
often needing to keep in mind a number of nested objectives that need to be completed in specific
sequences. Beyond the thin layer of the surface sign lies a depth of interconnected problems that players
strive to solve. Games involve all forms of goal-directed decision-making going from making planetary
invasion plans involving hundreds of remotely located players to deciding which player on the transfer list
in a football game will work best as a right winger.

This category of engagement emphasizes the need to look beyond the surface sign when trying to
understand games. Although, on the surface, the game may have the appearance of an illustrated
children’s fairy tale or a muscle bound blood-fest, the feedback loop that captures the player’s attention for
extended periods of time is made up of these affordances for pattern seeking, problem solving, and
decision making. Once one looks beyond the veneer of representation, games have the potential to
stimulate cognitive skills that can be useful in everyday settings (Beck & Wade, 2004; Gee, 2007; Johnson,
2005; Wark, 2007). It is no surprise to read of senior position job applicants having their MMOG guild
leading experience considered in positive terms:

A guild is a collection of players who come together to share knowledge, resources, and manpower.
To run a large one, a guild master must be adept at many skills: attracting, evaluating, and
recruiting new members; creating apprenticeship programs; orchestrating group strategy; and
adjudicating disputes. Guilds routinely splinter over petty squabbles and other basic failures of
management; the master must resolve them without losing valuable members, who can easily quit
and join a rival guild. Never mind the virtual surroundings; these conditions provide real-world
training a manager can apply directly in the workplace (Brown, 2006).

The similarity between the underlying structures of games and “serious” activities rests on their
commonality as designed algorithmic artefacts. Accounting, recruitment, stock management or market
speculation all depend on a finite set of practices codified by the regulations of the relevant corporate
context and having a set of recognizable objectives. Games are similarly structured upon an algorithmic
logic that codifies the potential avenues of action leading towards the resolution of a series of nested
objectives. This is not to say that the repercussions and magnitude of complexity involved in the above
mentioned jobs are similar to those of games, but the engagement with the individual problem solving
activities may bear considerable affinities.

The cognitive, emotional and kinaesthetic feedback loop that is formed between the game process and the
player makes games particularly powerful media for affecting player’s moods and emotional states (Bryant
& Davies, 2006; Grodal, 2000). For those suffering from a lack of excitement, games offer an immediate
channel of emotional arousal. Conversely, for those whose work or personal lives are too hectic, their
compelling nature makes them ideal for shifting one’s attention to a performative domain that suits the
players’ needs: vent frustration through intense first person action, get absorbed in the cognitive challenge
of a strategy game or stroll leisurely in aesthetically appealing landscapes. The appeal of beautifully
rendered environments can be particularly powerful when contrasted with unattractive everyday
surroundings.

“Excitatory homeostasis” is a term within media psychology that refers to “the tendency of individuals to
choose entertainment to achieve an optimal level of arousal” (Bryant & Davies, 2006, 183). If one’s
emotional state is considered to be negative, under-stimulated persons will tend to choose media content
that is arousing while over-stimulated persons tend to choose calmer media content. Games offer a variety
of participatory means of affecting mood as well as allowing players to tweak game settings to bring about
the desired affective change.

The designed pacing of mood affect varies on the genre and expected target audience. MMOGs, for
example, are dependent on extended participation of players in their vast geographical expanses and thus
designers need to provide places which create positive emotions for their inhabitants. The creators of
World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment, 2004) placed considerable importance on creating appealing
regions with varying palettes of tastefully blended colours and a design policy that aimed to appeal to the
masses. Eight million paying subscribers confirm the wisdom of Blizzard’s design. There is a particular kind
of attraction to inhabiting beautiful landscapes wherein one can roam without the stringent pressure of
other games, that can have stronger affective qualities than viewing attractive images in non-ergodic
media.

But some players find other forms of affective arousal appealing. The action FPS F.E.A.R (Monolith Inc.,
2005) is designed to maximize excitement by combining the captivating, fast paced characteristics of FPSs
with hair-raising techniques borrowed from the horror movie genre. Players progress through F.E.A.R by
following a linear plotline that takes them from one environment to another. Although there is no
possibility of veering from the episodic nature of level progression, the environments themselves can be
explored in any way the player likes with specific events triggered the first time an area is crossed. The
game alternates between combat situations and paranormal horror scenes which may require a specific
reaction from the player to overcome, or less active sequences which are meant to further the plot and
often make players jump three feet off their seats.

This is just one perspective on the ways F.E.A.R’s designers use aspects of the game to affect the player’s
emotional state. As the success of the game confirms, players look for different sorts of experiences in
games: the pleasure of aesthetically beautiful and peaceful places like those described by the World of
Warcraft participants, the appeal of visual styles borrowed from other popular media or the exhilaration
brought on by startling effects of horror games such as F.E.A.R. At times, players will sacrifice great game-
play for the chance to have experiences in specific settings they find appealing. More powerful graphics,
audio and physics might not be a determinant of good game design, but the appeal of representational
strategies points to other considerations. Salen and Zimmerman (2003) are among a number of game
designers who deplore the trend towards improving representation at the cost of innovations in design.
There is no doubt that these game designers are right from the perspective of creating interesting game-
systems. But we must not forget that digital games do not only attract players looking for interesting and
cleverly designed game-systems, they also attract armies of players whose interest is to live a specific,
packaged, experience: a Formula One car driver, a World War 2 sniper, the manager of a football team or a
murder victim on the Orient Express. Digital games are not only algorithmic game-systems, they are also
digitally mediated experiences that aim to satisfy the desires generated by movies, literature or free-
ranging fantasy.

As Csíkszentmihályi’s (1990) extensive research on optimal experience has shown, long spells of mental
stagnation have disastrous effects upon our well-being. Rather than a pathological disavowal of duties,
escapism can be an important means to regulating our emotional states and enable us to sustain an
otherwise unbearable situation or to turn a tedious stretch of time into a cognitively and emotionally
engaging activity.

This evocative power of representation is one of the main reasons why fictions are often seen as being
escapist. Some escapist activities have the particular quality of being set within aesthetically pleasing
environments that have a certain consistency in their logic that makes them believable as places, whether
they draw their representational qualities from the physical world or the media. The conjunction of such
represented worlds and the engaged consciousness of the affected reader/player can lead to a sensation of
inhabiting them, not necessarily because the reader enters another realm, but because that realm becomes
part of their immediate surroundings, infusing the immediate environment with the qualities of the
represented environment (Calleja, 2007b). This intensity of involvement is not a symptom of negative
escapism, as is too often assumed, but a form of engagement that is inherent to finely crafted worlds. If
researchers (Gelter, 2007; Guasque, 2005; Yee, 2006b) continue to consider this experiential phenomenon
as a form of escapism, it would be worth bearing in mind that, as Evans (2001) and Tuan (1998) argue, it is a
crucial part of our everyday life and culture.

What are we running away from?

The notion of escape presupposes movement. It entails a shift from an environment or situation to one
that is perceived as being more favourable. Leaving a rough neighbourhood to avoid the threat of danger,
migrating from a war-torn country to a more stable one or fleeing an armed assailant to safeguard one’s
life are all examples of escape from undesirable or downright dangerous situations. The imperative here is
an attempt at a permanent move away towards a more desirable state of affairs.

Escapism similarly presupposes movement to a more desirable place or situation but, unlike the uni-
directionality of escape, escapism also implies an eventual return to the point of departure. The escapist is
grounded in a location or social context that they return to. The escapee, on the other hand, aims for a
permanent, or at least long term, change of situation. What both have in common is the striving for a
betterment of a current situation. For the escapee positive change comes from a wholesale shift, while the
escapist hopes for improvement of the original situation upon return, or at least, a temporary lightening of
current burdens. There is, of course, no guarantee of the positive nature of this change, nor that any
change will actually occur, but often the expectation of bettering one’s present situation is there.

Escapism does not require a specifically negative situation to rectify. It also plays an important part in
breaking away from stagnation and is often a favoured antidote of boredom. Escapism is intimately related
with the uniquely human faculty of imagination.

The flights of fantasy commonly associated with escapism are made of the same stuff as the most intricate
corporate plan or any formation of a solution to a problem at hand. Mental imagery allows us to retain in
consciousness past experiences and potential future actions as well as the present moment. Our ability to
imagine also inspires our emotions and passions, motivates our lives and, in short, defines who we are.
Imagination allows for the possibility of mentally detaching ourselves temporarily from the present
moment; a defining element of escapism. Indeed if we think about it, many cases of escapism are in fact
ways of exercising our imaginative faculties. Tuan (1998) similarly links escapism with imagination and
views them as defining elements of culture and humanity:

Culture is more closely linked to the human tendency not to face facts, our ability to escape by one
means or another, than we are accustomed to believe. Indeed, I should like to add another
definition of what it is to be human to the many that already exist: A human being is an animal who
is congenitally indisposed to accept reality as it is. Humans not only submit and adapt, as all
animals do; they transform in accordance with a preconceived plan. That is, before transforming,
thy do something extraordinary, namely “see” what is not there. Seeing what is not there lies at
the foundation of all human culture (5-6).

For Tuan then, escapism is not a negative avoidance of the necessary “real”, but very much part of human
reality. The question of reality is as old as philosophy and it is beyond the scope of this paper to take a
position in this debate, but it would nevertheless be useful to convey Tuan’s notion of reality in relation to
escapism.

The real is contrasted to the imaginary, the forged, the fictional, the computer generated or, more
generally, the mediated. Reality can stand for the indifferent presence of nature: mountains, rivers and
oceans are real. Storms, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis are real. A bull charging straight at you, is real.
Here nature is contrasted to the man-made, the designed. But the man-made is also often considered to
be real. The White House is real, the Danish Kroner is real, Sony Corporation is real. And within the tangled
web of human society, certain activities are more real than others: having a full time job is real, graduating
from college is real, winning the football World Cup is real. On a more personal level, my sense of home is
real, headaches are real, and the love I feel for my partner is real. All the above objects, places, activities
and feelings are real yet very few of them, if any, are universally so. Reality is thus always relative to the
social, cultural, geographical and personal context in which it is discussed. There is nothing natural or self-
evident about the real.

As Tuan (1998) argues, one form of the real is that which makes itself felt on the individual. This can take
the form of a natural phenomenon or a socially created one. The most immediate form of reality, and that
which is often taken as the base-line for the real, is that which makes an impact upon the individual often in
a negative way:

“Reality” in this sense is intractable, and it is indifferent to the needs and desires of particular
individuals and groups. Facing reality, then, implies accepting one’s essential powerlessness,
yielding or adjusting to circumambient forces, taking solace in some local pattern or order that one
has created and to which one has become habituated (7).

This sense of the familiar is another form of reality that Tuan calls “local pattern or order” (7). This is a real
that is nurturing, all-enveloping and understandable. The legibility of this form of real makes it comforting
because it allows for decreased contingency. Tuan importantly emphasizes that both the natural and the
designed belong to the real. The chief determinant of the real is lucidity:

What one escapes to is culture- not culture that has become daily life, not culture as dense and
inchoate environment and way of coping, but culture that exhibits lucidity, a quality that often
comes out of a process of simplification (23).

If reality is relative to context, it is reasonable to argue that a phenomenon that is defined by the avoidance
of reality is also relative to context. Once the universality of the real is undermined, so is the universality of
its avoidance. If escapism is relative to context it stops making sense to label any specific type of activity or
artefact as being, in itself, escapist. An activity can only ever be seen as escapist from a particular context
of a particular individual. If I sweep floors for a living, I would be inclined to yearn for a more creative
activity, like say, being a fiction writer. Fiction writing, for me, might be a form of escapism from the daily
drudgery of floor sweeping. For the published fiction writer, who needs to produce enough novels each
year to feed her family, writing is the everyday chore, possibly even a form of drudgery, particularly when
the writing stops flowing. She puts off her writing by doing house chores, sweeping the floor of her study is
her form of escapism from writing. It gives a concrete task that does not require the effort of original ideas
and the stress of placing one’s creative work to the critical eye of the masses. Sweeping for the writer
yields satisfaction of task completion. Writing sates the sweep’s yearning for creativity. Both are forms of
escapism, in the general understanding of the world, yet neither is defined as such in itself.

So are digital games escapist? Not any more than any other engaging activity. Having said that, if we
consider digital games as forms of simulated experience, it is fair to say that their most distinct escapist
trait is their ability to provide such a variety of designed experiences, not their addictive or immersive
nature per se`. Perhaps they are treated with so much caution not only because the individual game can be
highly engaging, but because there are games to suit most forms of escapist desires. DICE’s (2008) Mirror’s
Edge emphasises the acrobatic thrills of Parkuor, thus simulating the speed and momentum of movement
that overcomes the restrictions of urban environments. It appeases the escapist desire to overcome
horizontal and vertical barriers with the elegance and adrenaline rushing energy. Medieval Total War 2
(Creative Assembly, 2006) provides both an escape to a well researched historical setting and a deep
cognitive engagement with the strategic complexities of its turn-based campaign and real-time battles.
MMOGs like World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment, 2004) offer an escape into beautifully designed
lands to be explored and new (human) players to meet and share one’s experiences with. The clever
simplicity of Tetris (Pajitnov, 1985) draws players by appealing to their ability to focus on mental rotation,
pattern recognition and spatial ability. But we could extend these examples into any other activity the
individual finds more appealing than the task at hand or the lack thereof; from cooking to accounting or
DJing. If the relative nature of this conception of escapism seems overly broad, it is exactly because
escapism is an important and unavoidable aspect of our culture (Tuan, 1998). Escapism is the homeostatic
force that defines our culture and being, and if digital games enable such a process, it is because they are
able to simulate experiences beyond the ludic and agonistic.

In concluding this paper, I would like to make a clarification. In opposing the idea that digital games are
inherently escapist, I am by no means claiming that they can never function as means for procrastination
and avoidance of more unpleasant duties. Rather I am arguing that no particular medium or activity can be
labelled as being escapist in itself. The value judgement implied in the term escapism is always dependent
on the context in which it is exercised not the form of activity itself. Working late hours to complete an
appointed task can be seen as a positive exertion of willpower, productive efficiency and discipline. Or it
can result in the neglect of family or other pressing matters that the laborious employee prefers avoiding.
One can be just as readily escapist through their job as they are playing a game. As Raboteau (1995) and
Tuan (1998) both point out when discussing the subject of escapism, what we should be weary of is not
escapism in itself, but of “losing sight of the interconnectedness of both worlds - the ordinary and the
wondrous” (Raboteau, 1995).

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i
Farming refers to the activity of mechanical harvesting resources or repeatedly killing mobs that are known to drop
items, materials or gold as a goal in itself.
ii
MMORPG stands for Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. This term is sometimes used
interchangeably with MMOG or Massively Multiplayer Online Game. The former is a subset of the latter
which includes other MMO genres such as MMOFPS or Massively Multiplayer Online First Person Shooter and
MMORTS, Massively Multiplayer Online Real Time Strategy. I will be using the term MMOG to refer to all these
genres of online games.