reality but rather in virtuality. There, the process of dematerializing dislocation that began with the movies comes to completion: where on stage human beings of flesh and blood stand, the cinema projects images of light. Online, spectators and actors alike are now also shedding their corporeality in favor of mediated presences by turning into virtual co-players. In this way games profit from the changing nature of work in digital culture. The readiness to be passively entertained over long periods of time is on the decline, while inversely, the readiness for interactive participation is on the rise. Players see the need for making your own decisions that analog and digital games require not as a burden but rather as a pleasure.
Today we must, therefore, differentiate between games of primary, secondary, tertiary, and quaternary mediality. Games of primary mediality are based on real simulations of reality, those of secondary mediality on symbolic representations of reality, and those of tertiary mediality on tele-auditive or tele-audiovisual participation at real simulations of reality as well as symbolic representations of reality. In contrast, digital games now enable interactive participation not only at virtual, real-time simulations of symbolic representations of reality, but also, most importantly, at virtual, real-time, and hyperrealistic simulations of the imaginary.
Because of these singular medial characteristics, digital games seem to correspond to the experiences of cultural digitalization more fully than other forms of representation and storytelling: digital games relate to the changing ways of perceiving time and space and to new conceptions of how, under the requirements of digital production and communication, humans have to be and act.
The three successive developmental pushes in which the new digital medium gained its current characteristics, between the mid-20th and the start of the 21st century, will be presented in the next three chapters.
1 The German noun ‘Spiel’ can mean both game and play (which includes both connotations of ‘play’ as they are found in English usage, i.e., leisure activity and theater); the verb ‘spielen’ can express both the acts of playing as well as acting or performing. So already the German language itself reveals the shared origins and ongoing aesthetic proximity of ‘Spiel’ to the most important variations of audiovisual representation in modern times: from the stage play (Bühnenspiel) with its subcategories of comedy (Lustspiel), tragic drama (Trauerspiel), music play/drama (Singspiel) or festival (Festspiel) a clear line connects to the moving picture (Lichtspiel), which appeared around 1900 in both of its variations—the fiction film (Spielfilm) and the documentary film, which gave way to the television show (Fernsehspiel) and the video and computer game (Videospiel and Computerspiel). Moritz Lazarus remarked already in 1883, “that the etymology of the German word ‘Spiel’ indicates a light, aimlessly floating, self-returning movement, a movement that is not caught in a narrowly focused action and is not directed toward an approaching goal, but rather is concerned with the here and there, and the back and forth between polar positions.” (Cited from Krämer, Sybille: “Ist Schillers Spielkonzept unzeitgemäß? Zum Zusammenhang von Spiel und Differenz in den Briefen ‘Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen’,” in: Bürger, Jan (ed.), Friedrich Schiller: Dichter, Denker, Vor- und Gegenbild, Göttingen: Wallstein-Verl. 2007, pp. 158-171.) Until this day, a widespread connotation of the German word ‘Spiel,’ which has this aimless ‘here and there’ at its core, has to do with a mostly unintentional freedom of movement within and among machine parts: ‘The steering has too much play (“Spiel”).’ This is just how Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman define human play: “Play is free movement within a more rigid structure.” (Salen/Zimmerman: Rules of Play, loc. 4730) The fact that the most important audiovisual modern media have the same German language ‘last name’ of ‘Spiel’, which has its roots in free motion, points to what binds these media together irrespective of their great variety: the principle of aesthetic play. According to Friedrich Schlegel, aesthetic play also possesses narratological and mimetic features, within which the “appearance of acts” (“Schein von Handlungen”) is generated through artistic means (Athäneums Fragments, in: Schlegel, Friedrich von/Behler, Ernst/Anstett, Jean Jacques/Eichner, Hans: Kritische Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe: Erste Abteilung: Kritische Neuausgabe, vol. 2, Munich; Paderborn; Wien: F. Schöningh 1967, p. 180).—This definition has bestowed validity upon many later attempts—from Johan Huizinga up until contemporary game theorists like Jesse Schell—through the advantage of an openness which transcends the boundaries of the arts (and media). While this definition generally covers the similarities of the stage play (Bühnenspiel) and the digital game (digitales Spiel), it inevitably avoids their differences. For the close relationships among audiovisual media say little about the quality of those actual relationships. Cain slew Abel and everyone would like to find their own familial example of the dialectic of attraction and repulsion, of alternating states of cooperation, coexistence, and constant strife. In particular, the various—aesthetic, artistic, practical, technological, economic—aspects of the cultural relationships between game and film demand a more precise, historical clarification. See Intermezzo: Game//Film, p. hereff.
2 Alberti, Leon Battista: On Painting. Translated with Introduction and Notes by John R. Spencer, New Haven: Yale University Press 1970, *1956, Chapter 19; http://www.noteaccess.com/Texts/Alberti/
3 Crawford, Chris: “The Phylogeny of Play,” (2010); http://www.erasmatazz.com/library/science/the-phylogeny-of-play.html
4 Herodotus/Macaulay, G. C.: The History of Herodotus, 2 vols., London; New York: Macmillan and Co. 1890, here Book 1, Clio, 94; http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/hh/index.htm
5 McGonigal: Reality Is Broken, loc. 242.
6 Mäyrä: An Introduction to Game Studies, loc. 621.
7 Juul: Half-Real, loc. 272.
8 Pross, Harry: Medienforschung: Film, Funk, Presse, Fernsehen, Darmstadt: Habel 1972.
9 Pross: Medienforschung, p. 119.
10 Ibid., p. 68.
11 Ibid., p. 78.
12 Ibid.
13 Huizinga, Johan: Homo Ludens, loc. 129.
14 Pross: Medienforschung, p. 69.
15 Goldblatt, David: The Ball is Round: A Global History of Football, New York: Riverhead Books (Kindle edition) 2008, loc. 217. The subsequent outline of the history of soccer follows Goldblatt’s narrative.
