“But when we turn on our computer and start up our Web browser, all the world’s resources seem to be accessible, retrievable, immediate” (Murray 84).

Accessible, retrievable, immediate. It is the mantra of our new technology, and it is becoming more and more realized every day. In the chapter “From Additive to Expressive Form,” Janet Murray traces briefly the progression of the computer gaming-phenomena. One of the major developments of gaming was the ability of the programmer to create a digital environment in which the gamer is participating in a created world. The better the technology, the more interactive and navigable the worlds became. The “range of possible interactions” allowed for a more successful experience. These were (and are) virtual worlds that are “responsive” (79). What strikes me as fascinating about these worlds is the accessibility, the immediacy, and I would argue retrievability of something which is a result of the interaction between the gamer/game.

When the games first began as text prompts, the gamer had to visualize the space they were navigating in their own minds, using the verbal descriptions and leaving something to their own imaginations. Just like a novel where the reader uses a certain capacity to create a scene, as the narrative progresses, the world of the author’s making grows and expands in the reader’s mind. At another point, Murray discusses the advent of moving pictures and how the audience viewed the first films, supposedly having a difficult time separating their reality from the created reality on the screen. Even in that posture the viewer has a degree of separation between themselves and the action on the screen. Albeit, they are in a passive mode, allowing the film to create mood, build character, and provide information.

What I find somewhat disconcerting as I read Murray’s article, is the concept that as these games become better and better in creating realities, the gamer or the person interacting with the game will be less passive but actually more of an active participant in an unreal world. What happens when the accessible and immediate reality of a game begins to “overwrite” the true sensory reality of a gamer? What is the gamer able to “retrieve” from the game? (And I am not using that in the sense that Murray used it re retrieving information; I am looking at the idea that there is definitely an exchange happening when a person participates in the virtual digital and spatial environment.) What are they getting and how is it affecting the wiring of their own brains? What is the exchange?