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This text compares the special characteristics of the game space in computer-generated environments with that in non-computerized playing-situations. Herewith, the concept of the magic circle as a deliberately delineated playing sphere with specific rules to be upheld by the players, is challenged. Yet, computer games also provide a virtual playing environment containing the rules of the game as well as the various action possibilities. But both the hardware and software facilitate the player’s actions rather than constraining them. This makes computer games fundamentally different: in contrast to traditional game spaces or limits, the computer-generated environment does not rely on the awareness of the player in upholding these rules. – Thus, there is no magic circle.
This first volume of the DIGAREC Series holds the proceedings of the conference “The Philosophy of Computer Games”, held at the University of Potsdam from May 8-10, 2008. The contributions of the conference address three fields of computer game research that are philosophically relevant and, likewise, to which philosophical reflection is crucial. These are: ethics and politics, the action-space of games, and the magic circle. All three topics are interlinked and constitute the paradigmatic object of computer games: Whereas the first describes computer games on the outside, looking at the cultural effects of games as well as on moral practices acted out with them, the second describes computer games on the inside, i.e. how they are constituted as a medium. The latter finally discusses the way in which a border between these two realms, games and non-games, persists or is already transgressed in respect to a general performativity.