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Fantasy, Realism, and the Other in Recent Video Games

Leigh Schwartz
Space and Culture 2006 9: 313
DOI: 10.1177/1206331206289019

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 Fantasy, Realism, and the
Other in Recent Video Games

Leigh Schwartz
San Diego State University

Despite the growing use and complexity of the virtual environments of video games, geographers
have neglected investigation of the representation of video game spaces. Game spaces are entirely
artificial, and whether they feature swords-and-sorcery fantasy worlds or gritty urban streets,
video game environments are embedded with metaphors and ideas for political and mythological
constructs. This article examines the virtual environments of four recent games, conducting visual
and textual analysis of the representation of fantasy, realism, and othering.

Keywords: virtual; geography; othering; media; fantasy

From online worlds populated by thousands of players, to single-player epic fantasy

landscapes, to modern-day urban fantasy environments, the complex and varied virtual
geographies of video games present interactive spaces for consumption. These increas-
ingly sophisticated artificial environments are influenced only by human imagination
and technological limitation; the result is imaginary geographies that are embedded
with ideas and messages, spaces of imagination that can be explored and interacted with
by human beings. Video games are an increasingly popular form of entertainment; most
gamers are adults, and video games earn more annually than cinema (Entertainment
Software Association, 2005; Gray, 2005; Riley, 2005). However, this rapid growth has
resulted in a situation in which there has been increasing academic interest in the sub-
ject, and there are insightful works to build on, yet there remains much that is not
understood about interaction with and through artificial environments.
My goal with this research project is to examine the relationship of fantasy and real-
ism in terms of the representation of the familiar and the foreign in video games.
Through examining video games as culturally constructed spaces of entertainment and
communication, specific topics I explore include othering in foreign games, escapism

space and culture vol. 9 no. 3, august 2006 313-325

DOI: 10.1177/1206331206289019
©2006 Sage Publications
313

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and virtual tourism, cultural identity and the avatar, the engaging of realistic versus
fantastic environments, and violence in othering. For this research, I investigate the
interactive landscapes of four popular video games featuring both fantasy and realistic
environments. Using qualitative research methods and loosely applying discourse and
visual analysis, I use images, textual materials, and interviews for my analysis. More
specifically, I examine images and videos of the game environments, notes taken from
playing each game, online group interviews with fans of the games, and Web sites and
online communities. I used a USB device for my personal computer to create still images
and videos, and for analysis I used Atlas.ti for coding.
Each of the four games I selected is a high-quality game with a following of online
fan communities, which is essential for the online interviews. Two of these games fea-
ture imaginative fantasy landscapes, while the other two present more realistic, urban
environments. The variety in terms of genre, year of publication, gaming hardware,
and country of origin allows for a broader analysis of gaming rather than an exami-
nation of only one or two specific games. These games were chosen for their quality
and diversity of game environment. I selected Shenmue (Sega-AM2, 2000) for the Sega
Dreamcast, a pioneer of the hyperrealistic urban game environment; Grand Theft
Auto: San Andreas (Rockstar North, 2004) for the Sony PlayStation 2, which features a
remarkably polished urban landscape; Suikoden III (Konami, 2002) for the Sony
PlayStation 2, with its unusually complex and detailed fantasy cultures; and World
of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment, 2004) for the personal computer, featuring a
massive and very popular online game world.

Visiting Azeroth

As argued by Rob Shields, if “real” means that something exists independently, so

that other people can verify its existence, then virtual worlds, such as the Internet,
online games, and video games, are certainly real. Shields (2003) suggests that though
virtual spaces are real, they are not actual, physical space; they are ideal rather than
actual and real rather than possible. The virtual worlds of video games exist as infor-
mation. Game designers’ ideas are brought to life through the game environments,
and when they resemble material reality, it is because the game designers have chosen
to represent their ideas in terms of physical space (Adams, 2002; Dodge & Kitchin,
2001). Yet although many games do resemble physical environments, there is also an
element of abstraction, even in photorealistic games, that engages players’ minds while
providing an orderly world (Wolf, 2001, 2003). And though game environments are
not physical, like other media, they can still exist as geographic space by serving social
or communicative purposes (Adams, 1992).
Interviews with fans of these games showed that although the games were all, in
some way, fantasy, enthusiasts found each game to be “realistic.” For instance, fans of
Shenmue emphasized its detailed urban environments, while fans of Suikoden III
focused on realism in war, intolerance, and suffering. Fans discussed how certain ele-
ments of realism helped them experience the game spaces as reality. In this way, game
spaces become travel spaces of a sort. The following quotations from the online group
interviews, conducted via Internet Relay Chat, illustrate this:

I found the locations in Shenmue to “feel” very realistic. They had background sounds
such as, dogs barking, bird song and crowded areas sounded crowded. The looks were

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also amazing, many of the people actually went about their lives, for example, leaving
their homes, going to the shop, getting a bite to eat, then returning home. It felt like they
were all real people with real lives. (Tom)
Ambient sounds really add to the feel of the game. if it sounds like there are really other
people around rather than just you, the character, and a bunch of non-playable charac-
ters, then you don’t feel as though you are playing a game, you feel as if you’re in a real
town/city with other people. (Tom)
Well, I think that Shenmue is particularly daring in the fact that it is trying to represent
not only a specific geographical space, but also a time period. For those outside Japan
who play the game, it’s a little like having a virtual tour of a small town in Japan - right
down to the bathroom in Ryo’s house. (Paul)
I spent more time in certain areas, reading up on certain cities, talking to everyone there.
You inhabit a castle, watch areas grow. Towns, surfaces, etc . After several hours, the game
has a bit of a familiar feel to it. The landscape, that is. (Don)

As indicated by these fans, realism and detail allow gamers to accept game spaces as
“real” and visit them as tourists. Game designers seem to present their games in such
a way as well. This is indicated by the following excerpts from a virtual book found in
Suikoden III:

Every village and city has at least one specialty, and it’d be foolish not to try them all.
Here, for the first time in one book, is all you need to know about the finest sustenance
your potch can buy.
There’s no use going to Caleria if you’re not going to indulge in their FRIED RICE.

Thus, when a player visits Caleria, he or she does not only complete the game objectives
but also takes in the sights. Clearly, one aspect of engaging with game environments is
this virtual tourism; game designers present the spaces as such, and as shown from the
online interviews, players also spoke of the game environments in terms of visiting
exotic locations. John Urry (2002) suggested that tourists gaze on something that is out
of the ordinary for them, for the purpose of removing themselves from their ordinary
spheres of residence and employment. Virtually visiting an exotic location, such as
Caleria, Shenmue’s Yokosuka, or Azeroth in World of Warcraft, is certainly separate from
the ordinary lives of players. Players can interact with virtual characters and engage in
activities that exist only in the games, escaping from their material lives without having
to go to the trouble of traveling. Yet when players accept game spaces to experience them,
the abstracted and fantasy elements of the games become more real as well.

Fantasy and Realism

When a player interacts with a game environment, he or she encounters both real-
istic and fantastic game elements. The suspension of disbelief allows a moviegoer to
experience film space as reality, taking in the cultural meanings that are reproduced,
challenged, or elaborated on through cinema (Aitken & Zonn, 1993; Hopkins, 1994).
Similarly, the suspension of disbelief enables players to experience game spaces, caus-
ing them to take in not only the realistic and fantastic game elements but also the
meanings underlying the representation.

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Figure 1. Shenmue Features Detective and Kung-Fu Fantasy Mixed Into a Modern and Extremely
Realistic Yokosuka, Japan.
Source: Reproduced with permission, ©2000 Sega-AM2.

Shenmue offers a highly realistic and detailed urban setting, in this case a small
Japanese town in the 1980s (see Figure 1). Integrated into the game are also fighting
segments that are part of a heroic fantasy story. Although the fantasy and realistic ele-
ments might not mesh well, as discussed by one of the interviewees, the use of the real-
istic environments might help players accept the fantasy elements as well.

On the one hand, you have this attempt to be slavishly accurate to 1985 Japan, and then
on the other, you have all these martial-arts movie elements. I think perhaps the idea was
that the realism of the setting would make the martial-arts segments more believable.
(Paul)

Similarly, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas combines a gritty urban setting with a vio-
lent fantasy element that leads to escapism. Although Shenmue was an earlier pioneer
of this immersive urban fantasy environment, San Andreas polishes its presentation
for a stronger blend of urban fantasy. When asked about the urban setting, the inter-
viewees responded by emphasizing the fantasy elements of the game:

The level of destruction in SA [San Andreas] was unrealistic, but the fact is that the things
in the game do happen on a regular basis. (Jennifer)
Even though the violence in San Andreas was probably made excessive to boost sales, I
think they ended up painting a more realistic picture of modern culture and society than
they had intended. (Jennifer)
If GTA [Grand Theft Auto] were set in my hometown, I’d still be stealing cars, doing mis-
sions, engaging in criminal acts . . . totally removed from the mundane. (Paul)

Because of this combination of fantasy and realism, differentiating the two elements
becomes difficult. At what point do the carjackings and drive-by shootings become
fantasy? With the incorporation of both elements, players are able to accept the fan-
tasy as part of the game reality.
In Suikoden III, the setting is a fantasy world that strives for realism through a
detailed and layered portrayal of imaginary cultures (see Figure 2). The fantasy cul-
tures, at war in this game, are portrayed through clothing, food, architecture, music,
dialogue, and story events. This level of detail in the presentation seemed to impress
the fans of the game; during interviews, they emphasized this aspect of Suikoden III:

well the cultures can be realistic because they have their own ways of life and all that.
clothing etc. (Scott)

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Figure 2. Suikoden III Portrays Detailed Fantasy Cultures Through Game Play, Game Architecture, and
the Narrative.
Source: Reproduced with permission, ©1995, 2002 Konami.

The games try to present all the cultures equally. Each civilization has its own architec-
ture, its own belief system, its own politics. And like in the real world, there’s a lot of big-
otry and misunderstanding about what other cultures are like. (Edward)
but unlike the real world, there’s a lot of after-school-special style “let’s all understand
each other” (James)

In other words, a thorough and realistic presentation makes fantasy cultures more
believable.
Like Suikoden III, World of Warcraft presents a fantasy world that attempts its own
internal consistency, pitting players against other players in the epic battle of Horde
versus Alliance. World of Warcraft does not achieve the detail in cultural representation
evidenced by Suikoden III but offers something the other does not: a fantasy world
populated by real people. World of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online game in
which thousands of gamers play in the same world at the same time. This adds an
undeniable realness to the interaction of the game; although players do not actually
defeat hideous monsters, the fact that others share that experience with them adds to
the fantasy. Games such as this superimpose a fantasy adventure over simple online
chat, merging fantasy with real human interaction.
With each game, the fantasy and realistic aspects of the environment blend to
become a believable, fantastic place for players to visit, just as people imagine faraway
places when reading stories about foreign countries. This blending of fantasy and real-
ity is interesting in and of itself; combined with an element of control over the envi-
ronment, this allows for escapist entertainment:

Well, just that, if you mix a realistic setting with a fantastic story, that’s escapism right
there. That’s something you could never do in real life, in those real settings. (Paul)
If a game has nothing but unrealistic fantasy elements then it just flies away, you can’t get
into it as well. It’s the little things like having to eat or shop, the kind of things we all do
every day, that ties it down and allows you to feel like a part of it. (Jennifer)
Yeah, back to my example of the Girl making the blossom blow around her. Obviously
nobody could do that in real life. If the player can do magical things, or do something they
can’t do in real life then they feel as though they can do anything. The modern environments
help the player feel like its really happening because they can relate to that environment
because they live in a similar environment. (Tom)
The modern setting itself isn’t entirely necessary IMO [in my opinion], a fantasy envi-
ronment with a great level of detail that retains elements of real life will work just as well
for me. (Jennifer)

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Escapism all boils down to control, the more control you have over the game environ-
ment and your character the more you lose your self in it. Even if it’s only control over
your own character and not the npcs [nonplayer characters]. (Jennifer)
GTA makes you feel like you’re god. You can kill anyone and do pretty much anything
you want without any rules. In Shenmue you help people. For example, a character was
being beaten up for his money. You then come and help him and beat up the bullies. You
then help the bully later who gets bullied. Helping people is also a great feeling. Maybe in
real life you cant beat the bully. In the game you can do anything you want to. (Tom)

The gamers touch on an interesting aspect of the medium. In video games, not only
are game worlds rendered in a way unlike that of film or literature, but games also
offer players some degree of control over environments that can be explored at will
(Woods, 2004). Yet players interact with environments in forms foreseen and coded
by the game designers. Through this, through rescuing the helpless in Shenmue
or through killing in San Andreas, players not only take in but participate in the
geographical ideas that are embedded into the game spaces.
One type of representation of geographical ideas is through equating fantasy cul-
tures to real-life cultures, to real-life cultural traditions such as “Eastern” or “Western,”
or to mythologies (see Figure 3). This was observed by the gamers during interviews
as well, such as this interviewee’s comment about the geography of Suikoden III:

Many of the towns in Suikoden III were caricatures of towns from different periods in
the world. (Don)

But in video game spaces, these representations are scaled down, stylized, and simpli-
fied to the point at which, as Don’s word choice indicates, they become caricatures
rather than accurate representations. Just as the fantasy elements are a form of
abstraction, this reduction of complexity is an abstraction as well. By abstracting in
this way, even a realistic game becomes an involving yet comprehensible environment
for the player (Wolf, 2003).
With this more orderly world, players can accept and understand game cultures
and landscapes. The environment intrigues players and draws attention to the ideas
portrayed through the space. In Suikoden III, the more Western nation is portrayed as
corrupt yet advanced, whereas the indigenous nation similar to Japan’s Ainu is por-
trayed as innocent and unsophisticated. The Chinese villains of Shenmue make dan-
ger seem to come from abroad, reflecting a view of modern Japan as a destination for
foreign negativity. And in World of Warcraft, modern corporation The Venture
Company, with its blue-collar workers, mines, and clear-cutting operations, is the
enemy of players on both sides of the conflict. Although the negative portrayal of a
massive corporation is nothing new, the juxtaposition of the evil corporation with
blue-collar employees, all directly damaging the natural environment, makes an inter-
esting statement about modern corporate culture.
These cultural meanings are further complicated by the effect of identity through the
avatar, a player’s character in a game. Identity and space influence political and social
perceptions, while race and identity also shape a player’s perspective and role in a game
environment (Ow, 2000; Shome, 2003). Furthermore, if games offer players the oppor-
tunity to escape the mundane and gaze on the exotic, the provision of exotic identities
allows players to escape from their material identities as well as the physical world
(Nakamura, 2002; Urry, 2002). In the examples listed above, Suikoden III allows players

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Figure 3. The Interactive Environments of Video Games Range From the Imaginative Fantasy Cultures
of Suikoden III to the Highly Realistic Cityscapes of Shenmue.
Source: Reproduced with permission, ©1995, 2002 Konami, ©2000 Sega-AM2.

to not only explore the indigenous Grasslands culture or the sophisticated Zexen
Federation but also to experience these cultures from different social roles. The percep-
tion of the Zexen Federation is influenced as the player experiences the towns first as an
enemy, then as a leader, and finally as a neutral outsider. The feel of Shenmue could
change significantly if the hero were Chinese, exploring a Japanese town as a foreigner.
And although in World of Warcraft, the player’s identity opposes the evil Venture
Company, this role might either challenge or reinforce the player’s existing beliefs about
corporate culture and blue-collar workers.
With World of Warcraft, the real-time interaction of players makes it easy to see what
gamers make of these geographic ideas. To examine it further, in World of Warcraft, the
more Western, or possibly First World, Alliance fights the more non-Western, or Third
World, Horde. Although both cultures are presented more or less equally, with equal
resources and impressive capital cities, many players insist that the Alliance are the “good
guys,” and it’s easy to see why: One look at the Alliance’s bald eagle gryphon mounts is
enough to show that the Alliance are “us” in this war. With the fantasy trappings of this
game, designers mask a world infused with modern constructions and messages as a
fantastic world, influencing the way players take in these constructions and messages.
Perhaps the representation of the Alliance as owning a large library is a reflection of the
idea of Western learning, for instance.

Othering the Virtual

Additionally, othering plays a strong role in the representation of culture in each of

these games. Representations of foreign cultures reveal not only opinions and beliefs
about the cultures being depicted, but also quite a bit about the cultures of the authors
(Said, 1978). This has been explored not only with fiction and nonfiction but also
through travel writing, advertising, film, digital media, and other forms (Duncan &
Gregory, 1999; Konzett, 2004; Moeran, 1996; Shaheen, 2003; Sorenson, 1991).
Christopher Douglas’s (2002) exploration of orientalism in the Civilization game
series reveals the ways in which game designers reinforce cultural meanings while
appearing to challenge them. Each of the four games explored in this article attempts
to represent familiar and exotic cultures.
With a single-player game, the interaction is between the player and the game itself.
Shenmue, a Japanese game, features a Japanese protagonist who must fight Chinese
martial artists and Japanese gang members to avenge the death of his father. The player
takes on this role, investigating with a distinction between Japanese and foreign. The

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representation of ordinary Chinese immigrants, owners of Chinese food restaurants and

barber shops, as knowledgeable about the Chinese mafia isolates and draws attention to
foreigners in Japan. Although the Chinese residents are portrayed as exotic, the repre-
sentation is not overly negative, seeming more descriptive of the reality of the social roles
of foreigners in a small Japanese town in the mid-1980s. And yet the Chinese, be they
ordinary citizens, villains, or allies, are clearly different from the Japanese protagonist.
This othering is engaged by the player toward virtual inhabitants of the game world.
On the other hand, the more cynical and violent Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
does not identify foreigners as different or dangerous; instead, the player runs a gang
that is at war with every other element of the city. With a paranoid and somewhat
sociopathic viewpoint, the player takes on not two or three but hundreds of others
by engaging in virtual violence. These others include opposing inner-city gangs, cor-
rupt police officers, and ordinary citizens of varied economic and racial back-
grounds. Gonzalo Frasca (2003) argued that the environment of Grand Theft Auto 3
is entirely immoral and that the lack of virtue and humanity converts virtual char-
acters into potential victims. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, like Grand Theft Auto
3, also portrays an immoral city governed by greed, corruption, and violence, a city
populated by offensively caricaturized and dehumanized others who are thus
acceptable targets for violence. Both San Andreas and Shenmue feature urban envi-
ronments, and both use othering in varying degrees, together with fantasy elements,
to provide players with powerful roles in these large cities.
Rather than merely providing a role for players, in Suikoden III, game designers
used othering as a narrative theme. The more European nation, the mercantile Zexen
Federation, fights a war with the indigenous hunter-gatherer nation of Grasslands. In
a move somewhat unique among other such games, Suikoden III allows players to
experience both sides of the conflict. By using a chapter format, players experience
each segment of the war first from one side and then from the other. Although Zexen
is vilified during the Grasslands chapters, Grasslands is similarly dehumanized from
the Zexen point of view. Through this format, players identify first with one culture
and then the other, engaging and challenging their notions about war. While this is
happening, the game’s narrative events lead to Zexen and Grasslands learning to coex-
ist peacefully. Suikoden III uses known interactive and narrative methods to draw on
and challenge players’ own tendencies to other the unknown while telling a story about
overcoming cultural intolerance. With this portrayal, a keen awareness of othering
emphasizes the natural tendency to define and fear the unfamiliar.
Once again, the massively multiplayer status of World of Warcraft makes it a different
experience from these other games. Rather than merely accepting the fantasy and
regarding virtual beings as foreign, online players engage in othering toward one
another. The majority of the players on the North American servers are American or
Canadian, yet it is not along real-life boundaries that players divide themselves. Instead,
players are at war with players of the opposing faction. The game encourages animosity
by disabling communication between factions (through languages) and allowing play-
ers to attack only members of the other faction. What was surprising to me was the
enthusiasm with which many players took sides in this virtual conflict. I experienced the
game on a role-playing server and observed that some players would role-play hatred
and bigotry to make the game environment more real to them. This role-played intoler-
ance made it appear that players did not really care to escape from the social problems
of material life as much as, perhaps, the unfair, real-life dimensions of these problems.
Additionally, the players often took this dislike outside of a role-playing environment,

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complaining about the other faction on message boards or in game chat. “I hate the
Alliance,” said one player in Horde chat. “They should all just die and go to hell.”
Although the war, the Alliance, and the Horde are all fantasy, the feelings of triumph,
frustration, or anger experienced by players in virtual conflict are certainly real.

Conclusion

Examining games as culturally constructed spaces reveals how fantasy, realism, and
control are used to create virtual destinations for players to visit and escape from the
mundane. Realistic and fantastic environments alike communicate cultural meanings
that are experienced not only through game environments but also through avatars,
identities provided for players. When experiencing these virtual spaces and the ideas
embedded in the representation, game designers and players alike bring othering to the
experience. Is there no “us” if there is no “them”? Even many of those games that do not
involve war seem to establish foreigners as dangerous or, at the very least, different. Some
of these games are Japanese, and some are American, and yet both define the foreign in
opposition to themselves. For instance, the Japanese game Suikoden III portrays two fan-
tasy cultures, each distinct from Japan in different ways. Zexen is mercantile, sophisti-
cated, and corrupt, highlighting a belief of Japan as influenced by foreign infrastructure
and corruption in the post–World War II reconstruction. Similarly, to the hierarchical
Japanese, the tribal Grasslanders are egalitarian as well as animist. In the American
World of Warcraft, the more Western faction is learned, sophisticated, and religious,
whereas the other faction is tribal, spiritual, and struggles to overcome a dark cultural
history. These representations reflect the designers’ views of their own cultures, a view-
point that is taken on by gamers through interaction with the virtual environment.
When a game is translated and shipped overseas, these viewpoints become distorted.
Zexen and Grasslands are no longer defined in opposition to Japan but rather are com-
pared with players’ own cultures. Perhaps players will relate to the more Western Zexen
Federation or feel drawn to the exotic Grasslands. In World of Warcraft, the Western
imagery and the bald eagle gryphon mentioned earlier probably hold an entirely differ-
ent meaning on the Chinese servers.
Lisa Nakamura (2002) has argued that virtual identities in online spaces reinforce
racial stereotypes and offer stereotyped avatars for consumption. As asserted by
Nakamura, although online identities are “fluid,” they are also defined by cultural hege-
monies. Games such as those in the Civilization series reinforce imperialism while mask-
ing this ideology through providing exotic cultures for play (Douglas, 2002). Similarly,
the games explored in this article provide exotic avatars that allow players to experience
alternate identities while reinforcing a comfortable view of the other. A player of Grand
Theft Auto: San Andreas experiences the game as an African American gang member, a
sympathetic avatar that provides identity escapism without causing discomfort by chal-
lenging the player’s views of inner-city gangs. And although Suikoden III challenges
notions about war, the presentation of an innocent and unsophisticated tribal culture and
a sophisticated yet corrupt Western culture are likely to fall comfortably within players’
expectations. Shenmue, on the other hand, provides an exotic identity even to Japanese
players: Ryo, the protagonist, is a skilled martial artist who explores the Japanese under-
world, an opportunity not available to the typical high school student. To North
American gamers, there is an added dimension of identity tourism through exploring
Japan as a Japanese person.

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Like Suikoden III, World of Warcraft provides a variety of potential identities for
players. But because of its status as a massively multiplayer online game, anywhere that
World of Warcraft might challenge cultural hegemonies, players are free to assert their
own, more comfortable viewpoints. This contributes to the fan discourse insisting that
the Alliance are the heroes of the game, despite the obvious attempt by game design-
ers for equality between the factions. Thus, through collaborative effort between the
players and the designers, virtual spaces reproduce larger ideological patterns. Unlike
most other media, games portray domestic and foreign cultures in a space that can be
directly experienced by players. When players suspend disbelief to take in a game envi-
ronment, they participate in and perhaps reinforce these views of what is foreign and
what is familiar.
People bring perceptions and beliefs to these fictional, recreational spaces—
spaces that are entirely artificial, made of, in a way, ideas rather than physical space.
Although the realistic, urban environments gain authenticity in their resemblance to
real-life spaces, the fantasy landscapes might gain a more uncritical acceptance.
With San Andreas, players are concerned with how well the game mimics real life.
Where it and Shenmue succeed and fail in this area was a popular topic for discus-
sion in the group interviews. Elements of representation in urban games that might
be directly compared to real life include the callous disregard for players’ victims in
San Andreas, as well as the representation of race and economics. On the other hand,
Suikoden III fans seemed to enjoy analysis of the series, but they focused on the
abstract, such as the validity of the philosophy of complete cultural tolerance. It
is a subtle distinction, but whereas the cities of San Andreas might obviously fail to
accurately represent urban life in some way, fantasy environments such as that of
Suikoden III require examination in terms of the fantasy world’s own internal con-
sistency and mythological tradition. Thus, a distinction in the way players engage in
“realistic” and “unrealistic” fantasy emerges. Although all four games include realis-
tic and fantasy elements, the dominating environmental characteristics seemed to
encourage either connection to or distancing from real life.
An idealized representation of war further engages players through a blending of
fantasy and realism. From the urban street wars of San Andreas and Shenmue to the
epic fantasy wars of Suikoden III and World of Warcraft, a defining feature is that war
becomes fun. San Andreas is violent, but there is little suffering as a result of the vio-
lence. When the player kills a civilian, he or she will not hear weeping from nearby
passersby but rather exclamations of “Wow, I’m glad that isn’t me!” In Shenmue, the
victims of the player’s heroics are thugs and mobsters, justifying the violence. And in
Suikoden III and World of Warcraft both, war is represented as tragic but as less tragic
than real-life war.
All of these games justify violence just as they justify war: Typically, the justification
is that the players are not, after all, killing real people; and in World of Warcraft, in
which there is a real player behind each character, death is temporary. This allows
players to enjoy violence without experiencing any guilt. Combined with the dehuman-
ization the World of Warcraft players direct toward one another, war becomes a contest
of skill, a sport in which teams are evenly matched and either side could win. That
one team reveals a Western or First World influence whereas the other is more tribal or
Third World in style betrays a highly idealized view of the real world. When players
voluntarily role-play bigotry toward one another, it is done in an environment in
which no race holds undue power over another. Life may not be fair, but life in Azeroth
surely is.

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Video games centered on aggressive human conflict emphasize the role of dehu-
manization in justifying war and violence. But how does this reflect media represen-
tations of modern wars? In real life, war propaganda strives toward the same goal in
dehumanization: to allow soldiers to kill without guilt and to allow civilians to sup-
port war without guilt. Suikoden III can challenge players’ notions about war through
interactive and story elements. At the same time, San Andreas provides an identity and
environment in which even the most mild-mannered players can become merciless
criminals. These two examples are merely fantasy; what effect could be created by
game representations of actual, present-day wars?
Within a geographical context, these games speak to modern American gamers in
different ways. Shenmue, a foreign and pre-9/11 game, is somewhat lighthearted, with
Chinese mobsters who wield martial arts rather than guns and bombs. Suikoden III
features a compassionate and somewhat tragic representation of both sides of a war.
Although the selection is small, both of these Japanese games represent stronger anti-
war themes than the other games and feature sympathetic or stylized foreign villains.
On the other hand, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas represents urban war as brutal and
violent, with enemies residing around every corner; this might resonate with gamers
saturated with media images of danger. And the recent World of Warcraft features the
most idealized war of all of these four games. Both sides of the conflict are portrayed
as equally strong, and the tragedy of war is seen rarely. Suitably for its medium, war is
truly a game. The reasons for portrayal of war in such a way most likely reflects the
desire to represent a utopian environment meant to inspire gamers to continue to
pay a monthly fee. Yet this representation seems well in line with the representation of
America’s ideological wars on the evening news, in which the day’s deaths in Iraq are
mentioned but only in passing, along with discussion of the progress of Iraqi democ-
racy, and in which, like World of Warcraft, corpses and grieving families are shown
briefly – if at all. As foreign or domestic products, the ideological messages of these
games participate in the larger cultural pattern of media representations of war. This
is relevant not only because games participate in this but also because of their exis-
tence as virtual environments: People visit these sanitized war spaces and engage in
virtual violence for fun; this could reflect a fascination with our own far-off wars.
This research begins to explore what is potentially a very interesting and important
field. How people relate to others through virtual environments, as well as how they
relate to the virtual environments themselves is a question that has interesting implica-
tions in an age when people frequently communicate through technology, such as the
telephone and the Internet, sometimes without ever meeting face to face. Can the ways
that people interact with game environments be taken as a reflection of the ways they
interact with other virtual environments? This encourages future research overlapping
interaction with video games and interaction through the Internet. Examining these
four games leads to the question of why so many games reproduce war, hatred, and
racism. Some games feature nonviolent conflict, such as Animal Crossing, Tetris, and
Dance Dance Revolution. But many games seem to represent human hatred and violence
as the central conflict. Even the utopian games, such as World of Warcraft, feature war.
Does this reflect a lack of variety in the games industry, and if so, why is this the case? Is
it simply a feature of a young medium, or are people more universally drawn to these
human conflicts? What role do virtual environments play in the larger cultural situation
with media and entertainment? This research only begins to explore such questions, in
a broad field that could reveal fascinating insights into the representation of space in
media and human interaction with virtual environments.

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Leigh Schwartz recently graduated with a master of arts in geography from San Diego State
University. Her current research interests include the representation of and interaction with the
virtual spaces of video games, the Internet, and other visual media. She will begin doctoral
studies at the University of Texas at Austin in the fall of 2006.

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