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Haruhi gets really intense about gaming. are playing a videogame, or the gang get together to play a roleplaying game. Instead of showing what goes on by showing us the screen or the characters themselves, the scene cuts "into" the game, where the gamers themselves have taken the roles of the characters they are playing.
Any discussion the players have will be seen taking place between the characters. The characters will nearly always facially resemble the players, although they will often be altered to take on aspects of the character. This can be done with the intention of looking silly, such as the scrawny guy with Nerd Glasses having his head transplanted on a 7 foot tall barbarian or a male player's head on his female character's body. A different art style may be used to show the gameworld; video game worlds may have something of a pixellated appearance.
This is similar to a Dream Sequence, some display of how "immersed" the characters are in the game; it's their imaginative perception of what's going on. This allows us to see events in-game, and is a lot more interesting than watching two guys tapping on their controllers.
(Not to be confused with "immersion gaming," a form of live-action roleplay that a) lasts for more than 24 hours, b) takes place in and interacts with the real world, or c) both.)
See also: Two Gamers On A Couch, RPG Episode. Compare: Role Playing Game Verse.
Examples:
Anime
- While the game itself is a tactical wargame, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya gave us (really awesome) scenes of the SOS Brigade as star fleet commanders (pictured above) when they played the computer club. Haruhi gets really
serious megalomaniacal here. There was also the nice touch of having their command ships' crews reflect their commanders (Haruhi's crew had varied aliens, Mikuru's wore cute animal masks, and Yuki's and Kyon's were just copies of themselves). The anime makes clear contrasts to highlight the What Do You Mean Its Not Awesome by cutting smoothly between ridiculously epic orchestral scores and dramatic speeches within the game and the tinny, 8-bit MIDI version in the 'real world'.
- .hack. The anime and the games are predicated on the idea of a MMORPG which is the literal embodiment of this trope.
- Note, however, that the appearances of the game characters do not correlate with those of the "real world" versions - characters of the same class and in-game gender look very similar. (E.g. Bear and Orca, Elk and Tsukasa, Black Rose and Mimiru, Suburu and a nothe Heavy-Axe User, etc.)
- Konata from Lucky Star claims to be good at athletics by visualizing herself playing Track And Field. Cut to actual NES Track And Field graphics starring Konata's sprite, and a closeup of Konata's hand on the controller performing the famous coin and ruler tricks to win the game.
- In the OVA, a whole gang of people engaged in that in a MMORPG.
- Another episode of the anime features Konata and Nanako having an argument that soon cuts to a Full Metal Panic-in-Super Robot Wars battle, with them piloting the Arbalest and Codarl respectively and arguing in the dialog boxes.
- In the Detective Conan Non Serial Movie Phantom of the Baker Street most of the story happened in the world of a deep immersion gaming system called Cocoon, which supplied all senses to the player through nerve stimulation. Not to say we even have an artificial intelligence that no one deny is its dead creator.
- The RPG Episode in Welcome To The NHK has satou deeply immersed in an MMORPG. He also meets a Cat Girl healer, who he falls in love with, who turns out to be his friend and next door neighbour, out to teach him a lesson.
- To Love Ru's trouble quest arc actually has the characters getting sucked into an RPG.
- Chobits has an episode with the heroes trying to play a fantasy MMORPG with Chi. We never exactly see how the game works for the characters, but the viewers see it from a deep immersion point of view, with the regular characters all transformed into their fantasy counterparts.
- Serial Experiments Lain at first seems to function on this level, as characters who immerse themselves in the Wired seem to do so via high-speed web browsing rather than virtual reality, leaving their actual bodies gazing at a screen and pointing and clicking links while they're mentally exploring the Wired's virtual world. But then the deep immersion starts to get deeper... much deeper.
Film
- This may very well have been started by Tron, where Programs were played by the same actor as their users.
- The amateur production The Gamers portrays a Tabletop RPG session this way, to hilarious effect. Done again in the sequel.
- Spy Kids 3D: Game Over featured this, though it was "justified" as the game in question was a virtual reality game. However, each character's in game avatar was an idealized version of their real world equivalent. The strong character is weak, the cool character is a nerd, and the wheelchair bound grandfather could walk. The movie didn't make much sense...
Literature
- Games in Iain M Banks' Culture novels actually work this way. You can have them in your dreams, too.
- As does the Better Than Life game in Red Dwarf.
Live Action TV
- Happened once on How I Met Your Mother, showing Ted meeting "Blahblah" (by the time of the retelling he has forgotten her name) in World Of Warcraft. They use actual game animation, though, so it gets funny for the non-gamers out there when you find out that Ted is playing the female human and Blahblah is the huge male draenei. Because that never happens in real life.
- Used in an episode of The Big Bang Theory where Penny got addicted to "Age of Conan". Partly subverts the trope in using realistic game footage, but also plays it straight in having no visible interface and blatantly obvious user handles. (Queen Penelope? With no numbers or guild tag?)
- Done in an episode of Spaced, where an argument between Tim and Daisy is choreographed to a game of Tekken. Every verbal smackdown corresponds to a blow landed in the game and Daisy mimics the victory pose of her game character. "Nina Williams Wins! Daisy Steiner Wins!"
Music
- The video for Operation Ground and Pound
 by DragonForce shows guitarists Herman Li and Sam Totman playing a fighting game on a TurboGrafix 16, with their own bodies inserted over those of the in-game characters.
- The Last Journey Home might be an example of this as well.
- Red Hot Chili Peppers' video for Californication makes great use of this.
- The video for Architecture in Helsinki's song 'Do The Whirlwind' turns the band into 16 bit style sprite characters and ends with them in a version of Pac-Man — all thanks to the art of Paul Robertson
Webcomics
- This is a staple for any Webcomic about videogaming (and it's not like there are many of those), so:
- Happens in 98% of VG Cats strips.
- Has happened at least once with the characters of Ctrl Alt Del, when they were trying to cure Ethan of his addiction to MMORPGs.
- Happens occasionally in Penny Arcade.
- Frequent story arcs from the no-longer-updated Angst Technology (shame Barry T. Davis stopped making it. This troper would have loved to have seen what he'd have made of Team Fortress 2.)
- After the end of Mac Hall, notable for its rich and colorful illustrated style, Mac Hall's creators started up another comic called 3-Panel Soul. TPS' art uses a much simpler black & white sketch style, except for strips set inside computer games, which are drawn much like Mac Hall.
- Happened in a few Megatokyo strips, some Real Life strips too.
- Happens a lot in PvP.
- The IM program in El Goonish Shive. The author actually Lampshaded this trope the second time it was used.
- Happened in one panel in The Wotch, and it used magic.
- In Something Positive, all game characters qualify.
- Chainmail Bikini neatly fits this description, as the scene shifts back and forth between chararacters-in-gameworld and players-at-table views. Recently, a newcomer took over one of the characters in the RPG, and that character's face changed to represent the new player.
- DM Of The Rings and Darths And Droids are based entirely around this concept with the images taken from Lord Of The Rings and Star Wars respectively, but with all the speech being comments made by the players of a tabletop RPG following that story.
- The Fantasy and Space themes of Irregular Webcomic are this. Space tends to go a lot deeper, to the point where it's a major surprise when Paris drops out of character after being so disgusted by A Wizard Did It. And it's even more of a surprise when she gets no response, possibly because Me had been killed some strips earlier. There's been no follow-up in the Space theme about this. (Though it had once been declared that DMM from the Me theme isn't the same as DMM as the GM, the fact remains that neither GM has been seen since.)
- Several strips of Loserz, starting with this one.
- Weregeek uses this throughout.
- It has fun with it in an early storyline — it's set up so that initially, you don't know for certain whether what you're seeing is a real-world flash-forward sequence, or the game of Shadowrun that was briefly mentioned earlier.
- Dork Tower does this with RPGs
- This happens in the Years of Yarncraft story arc of Sluggy Freelance.
- Most of Nerf NOW!! centers around a group of characters playing TF2. They're never shown outside the game, but on the occasions they change classes (or games), they maintain their individual faces and accessories.
Western Animation
- In The Simpsons episode Marge Gamer, all characters in an MMORPG Bart and Marge played were clearly fantasy versions of other Springfield residents. Apparently, everyone in town plays on the same server, by some Contrived Coincidence. They all managed to create characters who look exactly like themselves, except for minor details (Marge's character is basically her with elf ears, for example.)
- The most ridiculous example by far would be Everlot in the Kim Possible episode "Virt-u-ron". Ron recognizes the villain in-game (it's an MMORPG, and the villain's been capturing all the other players) from his voice and mannerisms in the real world. The villain then reveals himself by removing the helmet of his in-game avatar. And the Tunnellord actually has Rufus' face under his helmet.
- South Park did this with the actual game of World Of Warcraft. As they used machinma footage from the real game, they couldn't put the character's heads on the in-game characters, but the characters still looked similar: Stan and Kyle wore clothing the same color as their hats, Cartman was a short, fat Dwarf in red, and Kenny wore orange.
- In "Good Times With Weapons," the boys pretend to be ninjas, and the show flips back and forth between what is really going on and what is happening in their game. Their game is presented in an anime style, and each boy appears as a musclebound, adult ninja, with vague resemblances to his actual appearance and clothing.
- Happened in an episode of Danny Phantom; played straight with Danny and Tucker, but subverted with Sam, whose online Avatar looked nothing like her real-world appearance.
- Until she disabled a holographic mask to reveal her real face. Her size and build was still completely different though. Plus, you could see her ponytail...thing...even before the big reveal.
- So...does Re Boot just not count? This troper can't fathom why else it's not on the page already.
- To wit, in ReBoot, the User is never seen except through their avatar in whichever game they are presently playing, as the entire story takes place within a computer.
- Still, I'd say it follows or inverts this, as the sprites are always recognizable- the sole exception being Matrix rebooting into Megabyte in the dream episode.
- Jimmy Neutron literally invents a machine to go inside any video game.
Real Life
- It is for this reason that this troper and his cousin believe that the Create-A-Skater in the Tony Hawk line of video games has gone so far downhill. We theorized that basically it comes down to the developers not realizing some people (namely us) would want to make actual characters (from other games and shows and stuff). They figure that everyone is just going to make themselves, an average-looking guy in a T-Shirt and jeans, so they have that make up most of the CAS options.
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