[Philip Lelyveld comment: What Nonny seems to have discovered is that, in VR, it isn’t whether the uncanny valley has been crossed (whether everything is photorealistic) that matters, it is whether the experience ‘feels’ real and authentic, regardless of the quality of the visual rendering.]
A similar game allowed players to determine whether or not John Kerry deserved his military medal, by playing him during the Vietnam war. The idea appealed to de la Peña because, she says, as journalists "we're always trying to capture that moment in time".
Speaking at The Conference in Malmo, de la Peña explains how the first time the question of how people could feel like they were really in a virtual world, how they felt like they could be in two places at once, was raised by publication of the article A Rape in Cyberspace in The Village Voice.
The article concerned an online gaming community, members of whom described suffering real-life trauma after one of the players had used his avatar to rape another player's avatar in the virtual environment. Further research into the subject has revealed that we're hardwired as humans to adopt these virtual representations of ourselves and that traumatic events can cause us to respond as if real.
See the full story here: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-08/20/oculus-rift-journalism?curator=MediaREDEF