27Percent, Poster (preclass)

Virtual reality is a very common technology in our postmodern world today. I would like to say I’ve experienced the road this technology has taken beginning in my fourth grade computer class playing The Oregon Trail, where my family and I were traveling the trail in our covered wagon where we would buy and sell items to live off of. This game was a staple in my elementary school and I had my own character within the family and contribute to my family’s income and survival. My next obsession with virtual reality was the Sims online game series and eventually the Wii sports games. When the original Wii came out, I was amazed that you could wirelessly play games that would somehow connect the movements that your hands and body makes and put them on the screen in front of you. Poster states, “Virtual reality is a computer-generated ‘place’ which is ‘viewed’ by the participant through ‘goggles’ but which responds stimuli from the participant or participants” (Poster 447). What differs from real reality in virtual reality is that virtual reality “evoke play and discovery, instituting a new level of imagination” (Poster 447). In these Wii games, you can literally create your own character that looks somewhat like yourself and name it as a human being. You put yourself in the game and immerse yourself in this fantasy world where you play different sports games. I’m way better at Wii tennis than I am at playing actual tennis, and still the emotions occur exactly like playing real tennis. I still grunt when I swing my hand through the air to hit this computer generated tennis ball, and I still shuffle around my living room just as I would out on the court, and sometimes if I play long enough I’ll sweat a little too. Virtual reality creates a world or a scene of somewhere I can place myself and let my imagination take control. I first handedly know how people can become obsessed with this sense of reality.