Believing makes it true

Are his emotions real? Image from Robbie Cooper's Immersion

I had a conversation yesterday with a friend who is researching the nature of physical pain as part of her PhD work, here is an excerpt:

katherine: we can trick ourselves into feeling pain if we imagine it and the brain looks exactly the same as long as we believe its real and basically how simulation or memory defines what we believe is our own reality

me: "as long as we believe its real" -- sorta begs the question what is real anyway...

katherine: what is real is our perception we can only study, understand perception and that's really what we talk about anyway so basically from a medical point of view technically one can physically-- and REALLY be in pain even if the only cause is that our brain believes we are

me: the pain is still 'real'

katherine: yes

The question of what is 'real' and what is 'true' are questions deep in the center of western philosophy. It can be said that truth is relative, and for the most part truth is really nothing more than what the majority of people agree on. Empirical science offers the allure documenting reproducible events. It is hard to argue that ice does not melt at 32°, assuming we agree on what 'ice' and 'melting' are. Kathrine's findings are particularly interesting because she has conducted brain scans of people experiencing imagined pain as well as actual physical pain. Empirically there is no difference in the scans. So if one takes predictable and reproducible physical phenomena as 'truth' then then imagined pain is just as true as physical pain. What does this conclusion mean regarding virtual experience?

It may come down to how strongly the player believes that what they experience is real. Realness, like truth, is hard to pin down. Obviously the wide majority of players regard their virtual worlds as less real than the real world. From a phenomenological perspective (how things feel internally) the experience of an event in a video game and in 'real life' are easily distinguished. Just imagine actually cowering in a Bavarian ditch in 1942 with machine gun fire wizzing over head. Even on today's best technology there is no comparison, but say we were to create a virtual experience closer to that portrayed in The Matrix. The difference would be harder, if not impossible to discern.

What is all boils down to is the suspension of disbelief. As soon as a player forgets that a game is not 'real' it instantly becomes 'real' at least to them, and the memories and repercussions of that experience will be no less important or formative than any other experience. For Neo, the matrix felt so real that this suspension of disbelief was not his problem. In fact, it was just opposite: accepting that no matter how real the matrix felt, it was a mediated simulation.

The fact is what we perceive as reality could be a massive computer simulation, the question is, would it make a difference in how you live? Probably less than you think. After all, one's whole life experience, real and virtual, all happens entirely between the ears.

If we can accept this possibility, then it follows that the only difference in what we consider virtual and real is in how strongly we believe the experience to be true. If we want to create meaningful virtual experiences, the question then for game designers is, how can players be led to believe that their games are valid 'real' experiences independent of how realistic or immersive the technology is...