Here’s a quick breakdown from what I’ve gathered about the Deleuzian approach to the virtual and the actual. It seems that the realm of the virtual exists in the area that is outside our perception. The virtual is that which has not occurred, which has yet to occur, or that which we simply have not seen to occur. It is a realm of potential, in which everything that is yet to be perceived has the capacity to affect and be affected.

The actual, on the other hand, is the perception that results from the virtual. It is the virtualities that which has been organised into some form of semantics. For every actual element in an artefact, there exists a plethora of virtual images that have not become, remaining as potential affects. To perceive an object is to actualise the virtual, and to create a snapshot of its current state and position in time and space. Actualising an object unleashes its affective potentials into intensities which continue to impact the perceiver. It is a limited process however, and it is in this subtraction of intensities that an excess of virtualities exist. Everything else that remains outside of that current perception remains virtual, in that it exists in infinite potentialities, of the past and future, simultaneously. When we cannot structure these multiplicities of virtuality into some kind of social organisation, we remain unable to actualise it, and thus we cannot be affected by that which we cannot perceive (Ellis & Tucker 2015). Hence affect can be seen as ‘synaesthetic, embodied perception’ (Shinkle, 2005, p. 3) – the result of the virtual becoming actualised.

In the context of the video game, the virtual behaves within each actualised frame of the game. For each frame that occurs, the arrangement of pixels on the screen produce an image, while the speakers emit aural sounds and cues. The player is transmitting manual input and commands into through the game through a controller. From this single frame, there is already a range of potential outcomes and actions that can occur, as well as potentialities of what it could have been at that point in time. It is the ‘simultaneous participation of the virtual in the actual and the actual in the virtual’ (Massumi, 2002, p. 35), where each actual state of the game has its own range of virtual properties. This infinite range of potential has the ability to further influence the actualisation of the experience (Bertelsen & Murphie, 2010).

The concept of the relation between virtual and actual can definitely be tricky, yet coming to understand them is crucial in exploring the affective relationship that exists between them and games. I hope I did the subject matter some justice!

References:

• Bertelsen, L., & Murphie, A. (2010). Félix Guattari on Affect and the Refrain. The affect theory reader, 138.
• Ellis, D., & Tucker, I. (2015). Social Psychology of Emotion. Sage.
• Massumi, B. (2002). The autonomy of affect. Cultural Critique, (31), 83-109.
• Shinkle, E. (2005). Feel it, don’t think: The significance of affect in the study of digital games.