Simulation and impersonation

A good majority of videogames have the player impersonate a virtual character, which is either shown on screen or is just described with a name and/or a role (king of some country, president of a sports club and so on). This is a way to make the player feel 'immersed' in the virtual reality of the game.

Other games instead provide the player with control over certain elements of the virtual world, from a deck of playing cards to a party of heroes off to save the world; the role of the player in the virtual world is never explicitly stated, or there is no consideration of the virtual world itself.

A small number of games (recently there have been more) play on the concept of the 'player', breaking the 'fourth wall': such games may have a consistent virtual world, but then there would be instances in which some kind of (fictitious) awareness of it being a mere videogame, or there being a player on the other side of the screen.

But in the end, the attitude of the player towards the game is what counts the most: all of the above considerations, in fact, could apply to passive entertainment media, while playing a game makes one more proactive in the fruition of the contents the game provides.