2017

In this paper, we address the need for a posthuman account in the relationship between the avatar and player. We draw on a particular line of thought in posthumanist theory that suggests a constantly permeable, fluid and extended subjectivity, which blurs the boundaries between human and non-human. In doing so, we propose a posthuman concept of empathy in gameplay, and we apply this concept to data from the first author’s 18-month ethnographic fieldnotes of gameplay in the MMORPG World of Warcraft. Exploring this data through our analytic of posthuman empathy, we demonstrate the interdependence of the avatar-player relationship. We show how empathy allows us to understand this relationship as constantly negotiated, producing visceral reactions in the interconnected avatar-player subject, as well as moments of co-produced in-game action that require ‘affective matching’ between subjective and embodied experiences. We argue that this account of the avatar-player relationship extends r...

2016

How is that we come to know another person within the confines of a gamic interaction – to acknowledge a responsibility towards them as just that: another person? In having become accustomed to forming and carrying out relationships by means of verbal computer-mediated communication (Walther 1992: 72), a certain measured form of intimacy has arguably come to inform many of our day-to-day interactions, as we purposefully and selectively reduce our communicative faculties for the reach, speed and convenience of new media. But even as we continue to ponder how the paradigmatic efficiency of the media we use to interact shapes the ways in which we relate to one another, little has been made about the philosophical perspectives of online multiplayer games’ oftentimes entirely unique remediations of human communication: How games, as a medium for accommodating that first desire to, in existential phenomenologist Emmanuel Levinas’ words, give and receive “beyond the capacity of the I” (Lev...

The Play Versus Story Divide in Game Studies: Critical Essays , 2015

In this chapter we discuss key gameplay elements of one of the most important and influential videogame series of recent years, Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed series. We propose that an essential part of the success of this game is due to its making a significant and innovative intervention in the meta-reflexive thematization of the avatar-form: the imaginative staging of the experience of the user and consequently the user’s necessary relationship to the game software and hardware is the underlying theme of the narrative itself. Within this staging, the concerns of narrative and the ludic parameters of the game world are extraordinarily strongly aligned. This alignment further offers a strong interpretation of the “real world” in which the game is played: that is, what Michel Foucault called “biopolitics”.

Massively multiplayer online roleplaying games, or MMOs, present an increasingly popular digital media experience whereby identity emerges as players contribute materially to play but contributions are governed by affordances and constraints of the game. Unique to such digital worlds is the player’s ability to create and control a digital body – an avatar – to represent the Self in the immersive gameworld. Although notions of identity and the Self in digital games have been examined through a number of approaches, it is still unclear how the way one sees the avatar in the uncanny situation of having two bodies – one digital, one physical – contributes to a sense of Self in and around these games. Further, it is unclear how non-human objects contribute to human senses of Self. In that vein, this study examines two research questions: How do players have relationships with their avatars in a digital game? And how does the Self emerge in relation to those relationships? Toward understanding how nonhumans play a role in the emergence of the Self, this study approaches these questions from an actor-network perspective, examining how human, nonhuman, material, and semiotic objects exist in complex webs of relations and how those relations give rise to particular senses of Self in relation to particular gameplay situations. Tracing the history of the construct of “Self” from romantic and singular to postmodern and pluralistic, I argue for an approach to Self that accommodates postmodern perspectives that embodiment is only one way that the Self is signified across spaces. Actor-Network Theory principles are integrated with postmodern notions of identity to propose a Network Model of Self. In this model, the Self is a network of personas that are, themselves, complex networks of objects. Following, I present a research approach called “object-relation mapping” that integrates phenomenology, Actor-Network Theory, social network analysis, and Grounded Theory to accommodate network structures and multiplicities of the Self as it is signified across spaces. To address the questions of how the Self emerges in relation to different player-avatar relationships, I conducted in-depth interviews with 29 players of the online digital game World of Warcraft. Transcripts of those interviews were analyzed via thematic analysis for patterns in player-avatar relationships and via object-relation mapping for semantic and structural patterns in how object-relations give rise to persona- and Self-networks. Through this analysis, a four-point typology of player-avatar relationships emerged, characterized by variations in emotional intimacy, self-differentiation, perceived agency, and primary gameplay focus. It is interpreted that the different relationships are the result of sense-making processes in response to the uncanny situation of having two bodies – one digital and one physical. Analysis revealed that players of different relationship types “activated” different types of personas, resulting in a Self that was more or less complex and consistent across game and non-game spaces. Further, players of each relationship type differently approached particular objects in crafting those personas. Ultimately a model of active Self-organization is presented, where players work with the affordances and against the constraints of objects in sense-making practices in order to maintain and protect preferred senses of agency and to achieve personal gameplay goals. These findings suggest that players see avatars as objects that are, to different degrees, both human and technological, and as resources in the purposeful organization of a Self that serves individual psychological, social, and functional purposes. Different phenomenal accounts of the player-avatar relationship emerge as players work to make sense of human-technology interactions and to maintain agency and Selfhood in the face of technological constraints. Implications for human-technology relationships, more broadly, are discussed.

Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 2022

For many commentators autobiographical videogames represent a step towards a more human vision of digital play, promising to transform a medium still widely associated with mindless and dehumanising virtual violence into a vector for self-expression, empathy and understanding. Viewed through the lens of life-writing theory, however, the situation looks somewhat different. As scholars in this field have shown, works of auto/biography and life-writing have been instrumental in propagating ideas about agency, politics and the human that remain both pervasive and pernicious. Their work suggests that if we are to talk about ‘humanising’ videogames we must first address how understandings of the human are constituted and who they have historically excluded. Here developments in life-writing theory align with recent scholarship on how videogames undercut the liberal humanist conception of the autonomous agential subject by implicating players in complex assemblages of human and non-human act...

MedieKultur: Journal of media and communication research

There are two ways to understand play: one is to observe it, the other is to participate in it. Since 2001, game studies has promoted participation as one of the main requirements to understand play. Some play is so performative that while it can be observed, it also must be played. Game worlds, the worlds of online, multi-user games, are delicate constructs of make-believe and technology, which act as support and arenas for immersive, theatrical and/or competitive play. This is a discussion of how far virtual ethnography can take the researcher in understanding game worlds. To explore this, this article will address play, game worlds and transmediality, as well as discuss methods. I will look to Lisbeth Klastrup and Susana Tosca to discuss story worlds, as well as to discussions led by Celia Pearce, Tom Boellstorff and T. L. Taylor (among others) to discuss ethnography in games and virtual ethnographies.

2018

The posthuman approach is gaining more and more attention in the field of game studies. As it is a wide category, the research itself also contains a wide spread of topics, from non-human play (Wirman 2014, Gualeni & Westerlaken 2016) and research methods based on Latourian actornetwork theory (Giddings 2008, Jessen & Jessen 2014), to the ontology of the game object (Bogost 2010, Fizek 2017). However, there is still a need for works that would focus on the creation of meaning inside the player-game relation and the play process itself, which, at the same time, would emphasize the ethical foundation of a posthuman approach focused on the human relation with technology. With that in mind, I will follow the premises of critical posthumanism, especially in the work of Karen Barad (2007). As a means of theorizing the player-game relation in dialogue with these premises, I shall introduce the idea of bio-object (Kantor 2004), which simultaneously emphasises both the equality and the uniqu...

Journal of Social Studies Education Research, 2019

This study attempts to revisit the ethnography of communication in video games with avatars as the axis of communication connecting the games and the gamers. Employing Aarseth's textonomy Rehak's avatar's life cycle Lury's prosthetic culture avatar's theory and Hymes' ethnography of communication as the basis of analysis on purposively selected fifty games, the research reveals that ethnography of communication for avatars requires an additional formula from that of Hymes' SPEAKING (Settings and Scenes, Participants, Ends, Act Sequences, Keys, Instrumentalities, Norms, and Genres) due to the prosthetic nature of games; we propose ACTION (Avatars, Communicators, Transmissions, Instruments, Orientations, and Navigations). Avatars, borrowing Aarseth's terms, are textonomically classifiable into interpretive, explorative, configurative, and textonic with four systems and sub classifications for each type. Communicators, referring to the participants invol...

2019

This paper discusses the contemporary relevance of video games within the larger context of an increasingly technologyoriented societies. The argument proposed is that an optimistic view of the future as imagined by transhumanism could lead to an anticipation of radical goals like prolonged lifespan and immortality which, at present, remain unattainable, thereby creating a disconnect between expectations and outcomes. This paper argues that video games act as platforms for subconscious attempts at subverting this disconnect by providing players with the opportunity to create and/or inhabit game avatars. The existence of players within virtual game worlds as avatars is compared to the act of creating horcruxes in the fictional world of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series where horcrux is a contraption that helps overcome death. By comparing the notion of horcrux to the habitation of game avatars, this paper argues that a video game is a potential site for the manifestation of figurat...

2019

In the world of digital video games, human players are present through surrogates. Surrogates in the video game is a character which also called by the term avatar which is a self-representation of real players. The presence of avatars in role playing games are formed through a process of creation by the gamer. The production of avatars cannot be separated from the unconscious mind of the players, the unconscious desire, ego and ideology. This avatar creation process continues ongoing, following the progress of the video game story. The decision, the path, and the act that the player take in completing the story are gradually reshaping the avatar. In the end, the avatar eventually became a manifestation and reflection of the unconscious minds of the video game players. This research conducted using ethnography and Jacques Lacan psychoanalysis theory.