Abstract:

The first contemporary media theorist, McLuhan (1964) wrote 'Understanding Media' to consider the effects of various forms of electronic media on human senses. McLuhan offers insights into the relationship between human beings and the machines mediating our communication networks. As we moved into the digital era scholars such as Bolter and Grusin (2000) and instructional theorists Kozma and Clark (1994) consider more specifically the effects of media on the information and how it is remediated in different forms creating new possibilities for the effects of communication and digital representation.

McLuhan ‘The Medium is the Message’ and ‘The Global Village’
In 1964, before the advent of video games a media theorist Marshall McLuhan wrote that learning and representation occur in music, film, and television, that all media are cultural environments and as such an extension of the people who create them. Moreover form and content are deeply intertwined to promote use within media environments. The medium itself is important because if the meaning of the content is related to the form in which it resides (television, film, and now video games) there are different representations and different social outcomes. Therefore video games require close examination to understand how their interactive and inherent nature offer strengths and weaknesses as information providers.

Bolter and Grusin’s Theory of Remediation
The concept of remediation suggests that all media is recycled from older media in an attempt to increase the sense of immediacy and authenticity the medium provides. The goal of all media is to have an effect on society and to contribute to a cultural redefinition of self (Bolter & Grusin, 2000). The authors argue that knowledge is a matter of sense perception and experiencing media is an act of remediation itself. Digital technology aims to augment the experience and therefore the reality of the user’s senses in relation to media. Although new technologies may have a greater impact on people because moving images and interactivity create immersive content and environments allowing the medium to become more transparent. The act of presenting existing information or cultural content through various interfaces inevitably leads to opacity of the medium. This double logic of remediation (Bolter & Grusin, 2000) involves both immediacy and hypermediacy.

Information that used to be print news, for example, can now be mediated through an online video game, particularly when the video game uses hyperlinks to further support the information available through play. These forms of mediation may affect the outcome of what is represented because the player is acquiring information from different sources in different formats simultaneously. Persuasive games incorporate multimodal forms of media from sound to still imagery, animation to procedural gameplay, online hyperlinks to text, as well as the interactive and immersive process of play- all online. Persuasive games are designed to influence players and so the effects of the relationship between immediate and hypermediated information.

Keywords:

Gaming.