John Paul Bichard works on the relationship between game space and the 'real' as he says there.
I explore evidence spaces where generic game style scenes are recreated as real crime scenes; an in-game photoshoot of crime scenes in max Payne 2 and now in my research in a project with the Interactive Institute that sets out to develop games in the everyday environment
The project is described here What if you could play a videogame that was 'within' the real world - if the objects surrounding you had hidden meanings, stories and relationships that went beyond their own history and purpose, beyond their everyday existence. What if you could play with everything, leave in-game objects wherever you wanted, enter game spaces through 'real' doorways, search your surroundings for the traces of someone else's gaming adventures.
I like this example he takes:
...you have been driving the same way for the past 4 days so you know all about the mean old guy at the petrol station who won't talk to you. Come to think of it, every gas station attendant seems to be hiding something - what if they are all in league with each other... what are they trying to hide? How do you get any of them to talk? Do they know anything about how Mrs Lundberg disappeared? You know that someone was seen near the railway bridge. What if you searched the bottom of the riverbed beneath the bridge, using the aqualung you picked up from the last village... Not today, as the car turns before the bridge, you're going a different way into town. You see a phone box coming up on the right... the phone rings!!! ... pointing your device at the phone, you answer it. A woman's voice tells you quietly and deliberately that the person sitting in the back seat of the car in front is the detective searching for you... time to put on the sunglasses you found last week at the bus stop and what about changing into in the clothes that are sitting in a pile on the floor of the phone box...