In most cases, the mechanics of a video game take place entirely within the game itself. The player interacts with the console or computer on which they are playing, and that is the extent of the impact the game and real life have on one another. For many players, this suits well, as the appeal for video games is often that very separation between the game and reality, and the brief moment of escapism gaming grants.
Not all games are this way, however. Some introduce elements of the game into the real world, or elements of the real world into the game. From having the real world affect the game in some way, to requiring the player to do things in real life to proceed in the game, several games have interacted with the real world in unique ways.
10 Zombies, Run! Has You Survive The Apocalypse Through Actual Exercise
Zombies, Run! is an exercise app that helps people get into running by using their phone's GPS tracker to simulate their existence in a post-apocalyptic world, acting as a "runner" for a scavenger settlement via using real-world exercise to deliver supplies.
The player carries out missions in the game by running set distances, and can listen to a developing narrative through their headphones as they do so. When they finish missions, they are given supplies that they can use to upgrade their settlement, similar to games like SimCity.
9 Boktai's Main Gun Charged Using Actual Sunlight
Boktai: The Sun Is in Your Hand is a 2003 RPG where the player takes control of a vampire slayer named Django, who fights off vampires using a Solar Gun which fires concentrated sunlight. In-game charging points for it were rare, however, and the game made use of a unique photosensitive cartridge, requiring the player to play portions of the game in direct sunlight to recharge their weapon in the game.
The game would also use the player's real-world time zone to simulate day and night, making vampires weaker in the day. The Sun Is in Your Hand was followed by three sequels, but the last one removed the necessity of real sunlight, leaving it as a mere option.
8 Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes Requires Instructions Read From Actual Printed Paper
Cooperative puzzle game Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes puts its players in the role of bomb technicians, disabling explosive devices before a timer runs out. While the bomb and its interface are all presented on the screen on which the game is being played, the actual instructions for how to manage the various puzzles are contained on separate sheets of paper.
While it is possible to view them as PDFs, the recommended way to play the game is to print off the instructions from the puzzles and have players call them out from an assembled "handbook" (hence the title).
7 SingStar Is All About Your Real-World Singing
SingStar was a long-running series of games for the PlayStations 2, 3, and 4, where players could sing along to their favorite songs through the use of microphone peripherals. It was intended primarily as a party game, with no real gameplay besides singing solo, as a duet, or competitively with others.
Nonetheless, the main way for the player to interact with the game was by singing into the microphone and being scored according to their accuracy to the original song. With this, the gameplay interacted even more heavily with real-life than similar music games like Guitar Hero, though the entire genre of peripheral-based music games definitely apply to this topic.
6 Pokémon GO Brought Monster Catching Into The Real World
Released in 2016, Pokemon GO took the world by storm as the first mainstream augmented reality game (ARG). It brought Pokémon into people's actual towns and streets, using a player's GPS on their phone to have them hunt down and capture Pokémon around parks, landmarks, and other locations around them.
Pokémon GO continues to be the most widely-played AR game, and has a stated goal of encouraging people to explore their local area and interact as much as possible with the real world in order to play.
5 Alien: Isolation Used Your Microphone Against You
Alien: Isolation puts the player in the shoes of Amanda Ripley as, in a case of inherited bad luck, she is chased by an alien Xenomorph across the space station Sevastopol. The Xenomorph is powered by unique AI that learns from the player's behavior, and employs several ingenious tactics to locate them.
One of the biggest pieces of ingenuity is the Kinect compatibility of the Xbox version. It's possible to play with a Kinect plugged in, upon which the microphone will activate and pick up real-world sound, such as talking or the player's movement. The Xenomorph, when nearby, can react to these sounds much like ones made in-game, giving away a player's position.
4 I Love Bees Brought Halo Into The Real World
Although stretching the definition of video game, I Love Bees was the ARG used in the lead-up to Halo 2's release. It required players to use clues given in the marketing around Halo 2 to uncover the mystery of an in-universe Artificial Intelligence hacking real-world webpages.
In a more literal case of video games interacting with real life, progressing through I Love Bees saw players contacted through email, pay phone (remember those?), and even their own personal cell phones by the characters of the game.
3 The EyePet Tested Your Real-World Art Skills
The EyePet was one of a number of games that attempted to capitalize on the PlayStation Eye, a camera that pre-dated the Xbox's Kinect. In it, the player interacted with a virtual pet in an in-game reconstruction of their own room, with the camera picking up their movements and having the pet react to them.
The other major gameplay component was in unlocking and creating toys for the pet to play with. Once the template was unlocked, it was the player's job to actually physically draw the toy on paper and have the camera scan it, thus creating it in the game's world.
2 The Eye Of Judgment Blends A Real Card Game With A Video Game
The Eye of Judgment is an experimental card game that also made use of the PlayStation 3's PlayStation Eye peripheral. It was, without the peripheral, an entirely playable card game, with comprehensive rules and card collections that centered around taking control of a 3x3 grid with your creatures.
However, it was sold with the game and PlayStation Eye, which captured the real-world playing grid and cards and recreated them on the TV screen. Playing with the video game, the creatures on cards would be represented with 3D graphics, and shown actually fighting each other. Player vs Computer modes were also included, removing the need for two players.
1 Metal Gear Solid's Very Gameplay Breaks The Fourth Wall
Metal Gear Solid has a long reputation as an experimental game, with a B-movie plot intersecting with a story about genetics, destiny, and the nature of legacy. Some of its weirder moments come from the game's refusal to be constrained by the fourth wall. Unlike relegating this to the story, however, several parts of the game require or encourage the player to interact with the real world to progress.
When Snake is tortured, the player is required to mash a button rapidly to maintain his stamina, causing actual fatigue. To help Snake through, his handler tells the player— through him— to put the controller on their arm, and makes it vibrate to soothe muscle pain. Later, when fighting Psycho Mantis, the villain reads the player's memory cards as if to read their mind and tells them what games they've been playing, as well as forcing the player to actually transfer their controller to the player 2 slot to beat him so he can't read the player's mind anymore and anticipate all of their moves.