Player Engagement with Games: Formal Reliefs and Representation Checks

Abstract Alongside the direct parallels and contrasts between traditional narrative fiction games, there lie certain partial analogies that provide their own insights. This article begins by examining a parallel games—the role of fictional reliefs reality checks in shaping aesthetic engagement—before arguing from this analogy can be developed stemming feature distinguishes most games fictions: presence rules. The relation rules has heretofore been acknowledged but not examined detail, giving an impression tension is constant. However, paired concepts formal representation checks, once introduced, allow us to explain how interact alter ways which players engage with dynamic limited way.