One of the characterisations of gaming that’s always irritated me, although thankfully it seems to be in decline, is that it’s akin to a virtual reality which — if effective enough — gives players access to experiences they want but could never achieve in the real world. Players of a golf game are thrilled by their ability to play like a pro without the years of practice, shooter fans relish the chance to exercise their violent desires in a context that offers no risk to them, and of course my dad used to stay up until all hours of the night playing River Raid because he’s an aerospace enthusiast with a latent desire to fuel planes, shoot down bridges and dodge air balloons.

You don't get this elsewhere, that's for sure.

“ Every individual person has their own interpretation of what’s ‘real’, and therefore no actual insight into reality at all.

It's a magical experience, but one grounded in clearly established rules.

“ The fact that every object inside a game world has been created with a specific purpose or function means that the ‘fact’ of reality can never escape you...

This view denies the existence of a non-aesthetic, indefinable ‘something’ that makes a game fun and separates video games from other entertainment forms and from virtual reality. This something that links the player’s input and the game world in a satisfying way, the reason that so many people pick games as their entertainment form of choice, is certainly more widely appreciated now than it ever has been before. Despite this, it can still be tricky to describe what it is and why we don’t get it elsewhere.For me the unique appeal of the video game is tied closely with our striving toward the postmodern ideal of authenticity. There are aspects of our digital society that cause angst or leave us feeling as though our personal selves aren’t quite connecting with the external world as well as they could be. Naturally, we gravitate towards experiences that restore a feeling that what we do matters and that what we think is representative of the real world. While at first it might seem contrary, I suggest that the video game as a form is ideally placed to manufacture this feeling.At its very core the video game is a set of rules, a structure of parameters that we accept for the purpose of play, and the tools and objects within that structure (including those over which we have agency) are bound by those rules. Despite everything that’s changed over the years (including the emphasis on filmic storytelling and realistic settings, which informs the somewhat misguided view of gaming described above), this has remained the same. It’s true of just about every piece of software we’ve ever referred to as ‘a game’, from Adventure to Earthbound, Arkanoid to Uncharted.That we can believe the world of the game could actually exist is of minor importance. What matters is that this structure of rules, once accepted, allows access to a unique kind of experience. It’s not a complete artificial reality that we believe is real or a detached narrative we skim over. Unlike other media, but quite like in life, we work at and spend time with games to achieve progress and reward. The experience gives us agency in a way other media does not, yet guarantees a consistency between our goals, actions and outcomes that real life in the postmodern world lacks.In XCOM: Enemy Within, you make a lot of difficult choices and work towards your chosen goals, yet the rules and value systems you accept while playing the game are custom built to allow you full understanding of the choices you make. Items you covet and work towards are shiny and exciting and cool, yet they also function exactly as advertised.Something that’s lost in a postmodern world, it’s been said, is function. A table becomes less a surface for holding things and more an aesthetic product. Every object is subject, in that your understanding and appreciation of it will differ depending on your own tastes and opinions and experiences, and interpretation is limitless.In The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, a pair of old iron boots you stumble across could be interpreted in any number of ways, but you need to understand their true and intended function (weighing you down so you can access a windy cave) before you can progress in the game at all. The fact that every object inside a game world has been created with a specific purpose or function means that the ‘fact’ of reality can never escape you when you’re planning or executing your decisions.Of course the satisfaction we derive from gameplay isn’t limited to being directed toward and completing specific goals. There’s also scope for us to create and make an impact on the game systems we’re engaged in. For example I know I’m not the only one who spent hundreds of hours creating my own wrestlers in WWE No Mercy, and this was in a time before file-sharing, achievements or YouTube, so my satisfaction was derived purely from using the toolset to manifest something of my own imagination (and just to call back that unfortunate mischaracterisation of gaming from before, can you think of a real-world analogue to creating a wrestler? Do I like playing the mode because I secretly crave the rush of being some DNA-manipulating gene wizard?).The postmodern condition presents a constant struggle and conflict between our own desires and a world that seems fully available to experience but devoid of concrete or objective meaning. Video games, by virtue of their most basic structure, allow easy access to the feeling that your chosen actions and goals are both informed and legitimised by the overarching rules surrounding them. This is the very definition of authenticity.None of this is to say that games are better or preferable experience to real life or other media, but it is to suggest they’re uniquely placed at this point in time to provide satisfying experiences. Indeed, matching the appeal of video games with the search for authenticity goes a ways to explaining the particular trajectory of gaming’s prevalence, from largely rejected as a toy in the production-focused late eighties and early nineties, to an explosion of mainstream acceptance as the global media and advertising machine makes up more and more of our everyday lives.

Tim is a games writer based in Sydney. You can catch up with him on Twitter or here on IGN