"Real Artists Ship"

Colin Johnson’s blog


Simulacra and Simulation (1)

The EA Sports Grand Slam Tennis game for the Wii offers you the chance to play either as a famous tennis player or using an avatar that you create to represent yourself (or, I suppose, someone else). I usually play as “myself” but the other evening decided to play as John McEnroe. I selected a random opponent, and despite the odds, with most avatars in the game being famous players, it selected an avatar that someone else had created.

This was a weird experience – I was playing as not-myself, whilst my opponent was an avatar of someone I know but being controlled by the computer. This gets very confusing. It could have been moreso—the randomly chosen avatar could have been myself.

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