RECONSTITUTING THE SENSE OF THE REAL: A SCHUTZIAN PERSPECTIVE ON ONLINE GAMING

Abstract

The ongoing virtualization of daily life represents one of the most significant shifts of the 21st century. The actual boundaries between physical and digital are increasingly negotiated, challenging common conceptions of what is “real”. Using a conceptual framework grounded in Alfred Schutz’s phenomenological sociology, the paper explores the intersubjective experience of online gaming as participation in a very specific "finite province of meaning" within an expanding social multiverse. As millions of individuals chose to regulary migrate from the paramount reality of the "world of work" to the immersive alternative worlds of massive multiplayer games, social life undergoes unpredictable transformations. The study analyzes how the very sense of reality is reconstituted within these digital environments, where sensory immersion and the suspension of everyday physical limitations alter the subject's cognitive style and temporal experience. By contrasting the everyday "world of work", characterized by wade awakeness and vivid pragmatic interest, with the world of play, the research investigates the shifts in the "tension of consciousness" that define virtual sociality.