Quote from "Cybertext" by Aarseth

This quote from the introduction to "Cybertext" got me thinking about racing games. Aarseth says:

"A reader, however strongly engaged in the unfolding of a narrative, is powerless. Like a spectator at a soccer game, he may speculate, conjecture, extrapolate, even shout abuse, but he is not a player. Like a passenger on a train, he can study and interpret the shifting landscape, he may rest his eyes wherever he pleases, even release the emergency brake and step off, but he is not free to move the tracks in a different direction. He cannot have the player's pleasure of influence: "Let's see what happens when I do this." The reader's pleasure is the pleasure of the voyeur. Safe, but impotent" (Cybertext, 4).

When a player plays a racing game, he/she has a direct influence over a vehicle, and the plot is decided by the player as well; whether or not he/she wins the game is dependent on the actions the player takes during the race. Someone can be a spectator at a race track and enjoy watching the cars wizz past, but for the gamer, the experience is entirely different because he/she is now the one who is doing all the wizzing. :) A simmulated game, like racing games, are different from adventure games or puzzle games because there is no one final outcome. Every racer plays differently, some never make it to first place, but usually all adventure gamers make it to the final boss. The story may change in an adventure game, but the plot is always the same. However, in racing games, and other sims, there is no plot but what the gamer sets for himself, that is, whether or not he wants to finish first on every track, or just play with friends and not keep score. So, if as Aarseth says, that the reader's pleasure is safe but impotent, and adventure games and MUDs are the potent opposite of a text, then...sims should be the most potent of all? I'll try to make more sense out of this thought later.