Player and Avatar : The Affective Potential of Videogames

Do you make small leaps in your chair while attempting challenging jumps in Tomb Raider? Do you say Ouch! when a giant hits you with a club in Skyrim? Have you had dreams of being inside the underwater city of Rapture? Videogames cast the player as the protagonist in an unfolding narrative. Like actors in front of a camera, gamers’ proprioception, or body awareness, can extend to onscreen characters, thus placing them physically within the virtual world. Players may even identify with characters’ ideological motivations. The author explores concepts central to the design and enjoyment of video games–affect, immersion, liveness, presence, agency, narrative, ideology, and the player’s virtual surrogate: the avatar. Gamer and avatar are analyzed as a cybernetic coupling that suggests the fulfillment of Atonin Artaud’s vision of the body without organs.’

Jefferson, UNITED STATES : McFarland. 2017