Chapter 6: The computer game avatar

Player-Avatar Link: Interdisciplinary Embodiment Perspectives

“…The consequences include identifying with the manifestation and more generally allowing the player to experience the game's narrative elements, and as a result evoking emotional responses and the experience of presence. Klevjer states that there is a paradoxical prosthetic relationship between player and avatar (Klevjer 2006(Klevjer , 2012. By applying Merleau-Ponty's philosophy on the body's duality (Merleau-Ponty 1945), it is argued that video games allow the player to relocate their intention for actions (as a subject) into screen space, while at the same time a proxy (as an object) exists in the game.…”

Single-player Religion

“…By contrast to his own study on the represented Arabian-Muslim Other, Šisler suggests elsewhere that playing as the Arab or Muslim Other -specifically when encoded as "self-representation" by Middle Eastern developers -offers players profound insights into marginalized and contested identities, such as those of Palestinians in the case of the Syrian-made game Under Siege ‫الحصار(‬ ‫)تحت‬ (Šisler, 2006). Indeed, when (but only if ) certain identities are included as roles to play -next to or in spite of white, male, hegemonic avatars -some researchers have stressed the relevant possibilities of identification with these avatars (Hammar, 2017), especially in the case of avatars that function as semi-autonomous characters with their own speech, backgrounds and actions (de Wildt, 2014b;Klevjer, 2007).…”

Playing with Character: A Framework of Characterization in Video Games

“…In game studies, scholars initially doubted whether VGCs were capable of having emotions. Early research often considered PCs as mere cursors for the player's actions-a view called "cursor theory" by Klevjer (2006). Oft-cited is Aarseth's (2004) quote "when I play, I don't even see [Lara Croft's] body, but see through and past it" (p. 48), which strips Lara from her character dimension and relegates her exclusively to avatar functionality.…”

“…Video game characters (VGCs), used here as an umbrella term for both playable characters (PCs) and nonplayable characters (NPCs), have been the object of much academic study. They are usually considered as the combination of a (functional) avatar and a (fictional) character pole (e.g., Aldred, 2014Aldred, /2016Caracciolo, 2015;Klevjer, 2006;Schröter, 2013;Tronstad, 2008;Vella, 2015;Willumsen, 2018): the avatar refers to the player's in-game embodiment, while the character pole describes the VGC's mimetic dimension as a fictional entity in a ludonarrative storyworld. This paper is primarily concerned with the character pole, although it is recognized in the Discussion that players may choose to ignore the VGC's existence as a fictional character in favor of purely avatarial engagement (Bayliss, 2007;Tronstad, 2008).…”