Avatarhood and Selfhood (original) (raw)
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What is the Avatar? Fiction and Embodiment in Avatar-Based Singleplayer Computer Games. Revised and Commented Edition, 2022
What are the characteristic features of avatar-based singleplayer videogames, from Super Mario Bros. to Grand Theft Auto? Rune Klevjer examines this question with a particular focus on issues of fictionality and realism, and their relation to cinema and Virtual Reality. Through close-up analysis and philosophical discussion, Klevjer argues that avatar-based gaming is a distinctive and dominant form of virtual self-embodiment in digital culture. This book is a revised edition of Rune Klevjer's pioneering work from 2007, featuring a new introduction by the author and afterword by Stephan Günzel, Jörg Sternagel, and Dieter Mersch.
This paper reviews literature in virtual environments, virtual reality and game studies that discuss ‘virtual embodiment’. What embodiment signifies is not often made explicit. A phenomenological analysis was employed to examine themes of virtual embodiment and describe its essence. Technology allows us to use our bodies to access virtual environments. At the same time, software connects us with another body, an avatar. We use virtual embodiment to interact in various virtual environments, present ourselves, and have real experiences that affect our identity, view of the world and real-world skills. Indications of these findings are explored for research and development.
What is it like to be an Avatar? The Phenomenology of Immersion in Computer Games
Immersion is a type of experience characterizing the gameplay of computer games. I propose a phenomenological model that defines the essential features of such experience. I start from the notion of immersion as a graded experience composed by three phases: engagement, engrossment, and total immersion or presence. Then, I put in relation these three grades with a phenomenological framework in which I explain how the immersion is experienced by the player. In the first phase of gameplay (engagement), players discover and learn how the game works, as well as its commands. When she has assimilated sensorimotor skills demanded by game mechanics in her body schema, the computer game as interactive medium becomes experientially transparent. The player is not longer aware of the computer game as an interactive medium, but she is experiencing a virtual environment that appears rich of affordances and obstacles for goal-directed actions. In the second phase (engrossment), the avatar turns into a prosthetic extension whose function is to extend the physical body of the player in the virtual world so to realize her intentions and plans. The experience of computer games is rooted in the prosthetic extension: through the magic of real-time control, it is like if the player is reaching directly the world of the game by means of a prosthesis, an extended arm. In the third phase (total immersion), the player feels like an embodied presence who is “there”, in the game world. I suggest that presence arises only when the player can interact with 3-D game space, and when the avatar is a navigable point of view provided by camera device. Also, the presence occurs when the player represents the game environment as an egocentric space whose point of origin is her own body, and this is possible because of body schema's plasticity. I conclude arguing the our embodied experience can be modified, reshaped, by interacting with interactive media. More specifically, the body is a nest of potentialities that can be discovered and actualized by media, whereas the physical body is only one of its shapes.
I, avatar: Towards an extended theory of selfhood in immersive VR
Információs Társadalom
In this paper, I argue that virtual manifestations of selfhood in VR environments have a transformative effect on the users, which in turn has spillover effects in the physical world. I will argue in favor of extending our notion of personal identity as to include VR avatars as negotiable bodies that constitute a genuine part of who we are. Recent research in VR shows that users can experience the Proteus Effect and other lasting psychological changes after being immersed in VR. An extended theory of the self, modeled after the extended mind thesis advanced by Clark and Chalmers (1998), can offer a deeper understanding of how and why immersive virtual experiences have such a transformative effect on users. The early VR scholars had a similar intuitionthat "VR is a medium for the extension of body and mind" (Biocca and Delaney 1995), acting like a genuine "reality engine" (Biocca and Levy 1995).
The Unconscious Self in Role Playing Video Game’s Avatar
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.
Beings in the game-world: characters, avatars and players
2007
Immersive and engaging are words often used interchangeably to describe the player's experience of gameplay without clear distinction between what these terms refer to, and without investigation of the underlying basis of each experience. This paper aims to build upon previous work by other authors on the nature of the player's experience of gameplay by focusing on how these experiences are mediated by the player's point of control within the game-world. The relationship between the player and their point of control in the game-world is discussed in terms of embodiment to articulate differences between the terms avatar and character, distinctions that are in turn used as a basis for understanding how different attitudes towards the activity of gameplay arise from the interplay of different relationships between the player and their point of control. Finally there is a consideration of how the relationship between the player and their point of control and resultantly their attitudes towards the activity of gameplay may influence different types of an experience of being-in-the-game-world, namely immersion, engagement, presence, and telepresence.
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.
Virtual Avatars: Trans Experiences of Ideal Selves Through Gaming
Markets, Globalization & Development Review, 2018
This article aims to explore the experiences transgender gamers have with avatars. Building on a foundation of identity construction theories from both media studies and queer studies, this study theorizes that these gamers will use their virtual world avatars to experiment with gender performance and ideal selves. These theories of identity construction are explored and examined through digital ethnography, by using the participant observation method, in which trans gamers are interviewed about their experiences with avatar creation and use. Based on the evidence gathered from those interviews, this study concludes that trans gamers in general tend to create avatars who reflect their ideal selves, especially early in their transitions. Thus, the game worlds function as contested spaces where gamers experiment with the performance of alternative, fluid identities. Those identities can then cross the border from virtual to physical, affecting people's lives and corporeal bodies.
Image Avatars: self-other encounters in a mediated world,
This research project investigates the rapidly evolving contemporary phenomenon of the avatar, a virtual image-body that represents individuals in computer-generated terrains. In online chat spaces and websites as well as in computer games and virtual worlds, it has become increasingly common to interact with others through these visual identity stand-ins. Often in the form of cute, animated cartoon characters (both human and non-human) individuals choose how they want to represent themselves, frequently choosing visual identities that are very different from those of their offline selves. While the digital avatar represents some unique new opportunities for individuals to choose and control their prosthetic visual identities, this thesis demonstrates that the idea of the physical self being represented by a virtual image-body is not as new or as revolutionary as the hype surrounding avatars in digital environments might suggest. In fact, the idea of a virtual image-body has been around for a long time, manifested in the technological mediations or ‘body-images’ seen in mirrors, paintings, film and video. These mediated images of the self act as our proxies and stand-ins extending and reactivating the self in a variety of different environments and situations. With cumulative advances in imaging and media technologies, our mediated images have become increasingly malleable, responsive and interactive. More and more, as we interact with each other through images and screens, the mediated face-to-face encounter is coming to extend and augment—and even to replace—the physical face-to-face encounter. The aim of this thesis is to explore the unique affordances of the digital avatar as well as to situate it within a broader media ecology of earlier technologically mediated ‘image avatars’ of the self including mirror images, photographs, film and video. Through this investigation of our different image avatars, this thesis argues that the self is becoming a mixed and multiple reality, both physical and virtual. Through our image avatars, we experience ourselves as both self and other, physical and virtual, singular and multiple, dispersed through our various avatar identities as they migrate from the physical world to photographs, video, the internet, games consoles, personal computers and mobile phones.