Games are representations too
Frank posted a nice little post on toilets in game environments some time ago, which I want to remember, he links to a Russian site which contains pictures from toilets in a number of games.

I'm very interested in thinking more about how gamespaces actually use forms of ellipsis of time and ellipsis of architectural and physical space functions in order to make the "simulated" environment more interesting and appealing (ellipsis can be interpreted as "contraction", a term borrowed from Genette who talked of it in relation to literature). For instance, a full day in EverQuest lasts only 90 minutes in Earthtime and there are no toilets anywhere (in fact, most rooms are very big and very empty).

Gonzalo argues that it is an essential characteristics of games that they are simulations, I think I am ready to argue that games are a form of representation too, and that this form just happens to be a simulation. However these simulations are as mediated, biassed and "economised" as the other forms of representations we know from the entertainment and art genres: film, comics, literature, television etc (except perhaps for professional simulations of environments which do implement everything fully). Looking at the use of elliptic time and space in games can help explain how this particular form of representation works.
# posted by Lisbeth at: 11:59