“We experience not the raw sensory data but a simulation of them. The simulation of our sensory experience is a hypothesis about reality. This simulation is what we experience. We do not experience things themselves. We sense them. We do not experience the sensation. We experience the simulation of the sensation.”

The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size, Tor Norretranders (p.289)

Does this quote really relate to video games? It would be simple to take a quote like this out of context and glue it into video game studies by using the common keyword “simulation.” But in this case, Norretranders is describing something very precise, and something that I think does relate directly to video games.

This sublimely fascinating book is an exploration of human consciousness that starts in the murky depths of Maxwell’s Demon and the law of thermodynamics, climbs up through computation and information theory into brain science and up into the lofty areas of human consciousness.

Along the way, Norrentranders offers a compelling argument that what we think of as conscious thought is actually an abstracted after-effect of sensing. When he says that consciousness is a simulation of the senses, he means that as literally as that a SimCity is a simulation of a city.

It doesn’t take much effort from this vantage point to see the connection. If what we think of as consciousness is a reconstructed simulation of reality based on a subset of sense data, then the appeal of video games must lie, in some dimension, in their mirroring role of simulation. Video games are a unique form of entertainment because of their unique ability to simulate. Perhaps video games are not so much a mirror of the mind, but rather a mirror of consciousness.

The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size, Tor Norretranders ISBN 0-670-87579-1