Lately I've been in the mood for a computer game. Despite the towering stack of console games sitting, waiting for review, and in spite of the inordinate amount of time I already spend sitting at my desk, I just feel like playing on the computer.

In one sense, there might be some psychological reason behind this urge to play on the PC rather than the TV—the desire to turn my workspace into a play space. Maybe. But what I'm wondering is if it is something else. I've begun to speculate about whether there is an issue with the physical proximity of the player to the screen and the relative size of objects in your field of vision. That is to say, I am beginning to think that the computer is simply a more intimate game medium.

Players sit at varying distances from a television when playing a console game. I’d guess 6-8 feet is typical, with distances of over 8 feet common. When playing a computer game, we usually sit a couple of feet away. While kids seem to gravitate toward the television, sitting as close as they can to box, most adults I know sit on the couch in front of the television, which is invariably placed six feet away, or much further.

Certainly, there are ergonomic considerations around the ideal viewing distances from a monitor to prevent eyestrain while playing or watching something on a screen (See: http://www.office-ergo.com/viewing.htm for an interesting discussion on the topic). What I would note is that while the television and the computer monitor are not that different in terms of their physical medium, we use them quite differently. This would seem to indicate that there is something going on beyond the obviously ergonomic considerations of eyestrain. Why then, do we sit further from one than the other and how does this affect our experience of what is onscreen?

Typically, two features differentiate computers and consoles as game platforms First there is the control set up (keyboards and mice on the computer versus joystick controllers on the console). Second there is the issue of display resolution (sharp, square, high-density pixels on the computer monitor versus fuzzy, round, low-density pixels on the standard television). As a result, graphics and text are much more legible on a computer monitor and, therefore, make it more practical for a user to sit up close in order scrutinize the detail. On the television, getting close just makes the image dissolve into a mess that one commentator described as “a seething nest of ants”. The controls of a keyboard and mouse on a computer simply support better interaction with the level of display detail that a computer monitor supports—a mouse for rapid spatial target acquisition and the keyboard for creating and editing the text. On a console, the joystick provides a grosser control that reflects the lower amount of information on the screen with which to interact.

And while these distinctions of control and resolution do create some obvious differences in the types of games on each platform, I wonder if the intimacy of the closeness of the player to the screen creates a difference that makes any difference. Again, does the closeness to the medium affect the experience?

What I am looking for is a correlation between physical closeness of a medium and a sense of intimacy. This idea springs directly from our notion of intimacy in part as a “sense of physical closeness”.

Reading books is a naturally intimate thing to do. We hold books close to our faces, probably no more than about a foot in most cases. Likewise, with portable gaming systems, we hold them close to the face. Movie theaters often put the audience anywhere from 15 feet or further from the cinema screen, depending on the size of room and the size of the screen. Is reading a book more intimate than seeing a movie? Is playing a Game Boy more intimate than watching a movie? Maybe so, then again, maybe not.

The missing piece might have to do with how much of the field of vision is taken up by the medium. Books are held close in the visual field and normally fill up a large part of the visual field.. A Game Boy is held close, but normally less of the visual field is filled than with a book. A big screen movie seen from the back row of the theater might feel about as intimate as a smaller screen seen close up using this measure.

If this “media-to-field-of-vision” ratio holds up, then it is easy to say that computer games are more intimate than console games for most players. The computer monitor simply fills up more of the visual space and becomes more intimate as a result.

Perhaps, then, massively multiplayer online games have found their natural home on the computer not so much due to the keyboard, but because their social spaces are much alive in the intimate medium of the computer. If so, the efforts to bring MMORPG play to the console may stall or fail, or at least attract a player less interested in the social aspects and much more attuned to the eye-hand types of play and puzzles.

For me the explanation makes sense. The idea of sitting on the couch with a controller right now seems cold and remote. Leaning over my keyboard, staring into my monitor is much more attractive. I’m not even particularly interested in one genre or another. So that’s not motivating my desire to stay with the computer. If anything, the specific games I am most interested in playing are on the console. Still, I feel a desire to stay at my desk and play. For me, there is a feeling on intimacy with the medium.

I am interesting in finding out if anyone knows of any research in the area. If I can find anything, I’ll follow up here.