We don't see things directly.

Light strikes an object, reflects, enters our eyes, and our brain interprets it. Even the moment we say we "see," interpretation is already involved. Sense is not a transparent window, but a translation process.

Vision: From photon to perception

I believed I was experiencing the world directly, but in fact, I was always perceiving it in a mediated way. Even the reality we perceive as certain is the result of physical processes and cognitive interpretation. When I first realized this, I felt a sense of distance between the world and myself.

So, what is a game?

Games are another form of mediation. They restructure an already interpreted world into rules and systems. They select, simplify, exaggerate, and omit parts of reality. And within this, players feel they are experiencing the world. However, this experience is not direct. It is another interpretation that occurs within designed conditions.

We create a reflected world on top of the reflected world. This point keeps me thinking. What do players feel they're "experiencing directly"? How free are their choices within a system? And how many layers of mediation do we forget, accepting it as reality?

In game design, the word "immersion" is often used. Immersion is a state of forgetting mediation. A moment when we feel as if we're in the world, oblivious to the interface or calculating the rules. But in reality, that world is endlessly structured: code, numbers, conditionals, collision detection, probability calculations. It's just invisible. Interestingly, the less we know about this structure, the more intensely we experience it. The more mediation is erased, the more real it becomes.

Then the question becomes: What should designers hide and what should they reveal?

Do we want players to feel like they're experiencing the world "directly," or do we want them to be aware of its mediating structure? 

This question is similar to photography. When we take a photograph, we think we're deciding what to "include." We consider what to place within the frame, what angle to shoot from, and how to capture the light. But more precisely, we are deciding what to exclude rather than what to include.

The moment we pick up the camera and frame the scene, countless things are already cut out: the people outside the frame, the background noise, the smell of the air, the photographer's emotions, the time before and after the scene unfolds. Photography is an act of capturing a scene, but it also erases countless contexts. (Susan Sontag also said "to photograph is to frame, and to frame is to exclude")

Ironically, we call photography a "record," as if it captures the truth of that moment.

Games are no different.

When we say we're representing a world, we're actually reducing it. We simplify the laws of physics, reduce social structures to a few variables, convert emotions into numbers, and reconstruct complex relationships into conditionals. Players experience the world within it, but that experience is built on a selectively cut-out reality. 

Design is not an act of addition, but rather of subtraction. When we say we're representing a war, what do we show? Is it a scene of an explosion, a statistical figure, or the movements of an animal left behind? The moment you select something, everything else disappears. And that erasure becomes a perspective.

In photography, the frame is not simply a technical boundary, but a declaration of interpretation. In games, the same holds true for systems. The contours of the world change depending on what is interactive and what remains as the background.

Ultimately, even "direct experience" is possible only within the frame. We are rarely conscious of what lies outside the frame. The more effectively the mediating structure is hidden, the more we accept it as reality.

So, I increasingly find myself thinking:

Isn't good design not simply about creating immersion, but about questioning the very existence of the frame?

If photography can say, "This scene isn't everything," then can games also say, "This system isn't everything in the world?"

We don't include the world, but rather cut it out. And we believe we understand the world through those cut-out pieces. Perhaps the ethics of design begin here: Recognizing what we are erasing, rather than what we are showing.

This question isn't simply a technical one. Constructing a world is a matter of choosing a perspective. What is centered, and what is pushed to the background? What is made the object of interaction, and what is rendered invisible?

Ultimately, games are not replicas of reality. They are an interpretation of reality, a device that allows us to experience that interpretation. We see the reflection of light. And then we redesign that reflection. And on top of that, someone else interprets it in their own way. Games don't offer a more direct experience than reality. There may be another layer that reveals how mediated reality is. 

Perhaps the key isn't "directness," but rather the ability to question the very structure within which we see, choose, and feel.

We always see a reflected world. And games are a medium that reflects that reflection.