Analysis Reading 04
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PAMELA LIVINGSTONE (2015). WHY MY AVATAR LOOKS LIKE ME: A STUDY ON IDENTITY IN DUNGEONS & DRAGONS. B.Comm, Ryerson University, 2014
This paper focuses on the player's and avatar's identity in the game "Dungeons & Dragons" and includes a study that was carried out on four players that gamed with each other once every week for a full month. The study looks at the impact of the avatar's character and its visual design on the player's and what consequence it has on the player-avatar connection throughout the gameplay. The author's study is on how the avatar design acts on how the player and the avatar link together and affect one another. The paper goes deeply into discussing areas like the importance of identity in games, the link between identity and the avatar, how the visuals play an important role along with narration. All of the above are examined in the relation to the player-avatar interconnection. In addition, a lot of information can be found on the importance of character customizing which is considered to have a big impact on the player-avatar connection. The author talks about how the game was more than just a game of start and finish and explains how the character customizing allows the player to reflect their own individuality and how a PAR can be both long and short-term. It notes that taking into account a study by Adrienne Shaw it was shown that the ability to character customizing allows the player to develop a stronger bond and connects with the avatar more and a lot faster as to a premade avatar. It says that the PAR starts the minute a player decides to play the game and it is then to the motivation of the storyline and the avatar that draws the player in and the connection builds stronger with every task completed. The paper concludes that the avatar's character and its visual design play a major role in the player-avatar connection and influences its strength greatly.
Narnia Worth (June 2015). Players and Avatars: The Connections between Player Personality, Avatar Personality, and Behavior in Video Games. Department of Psychology BROCK UNIVERSITY St. Catharines, Ontario
Characteristics, avatars, games and psychopathy are the main keywords in this paper as its focus is on examining the characteristics of the player and avatar in the virtual world of the game. The authors seek to find out how they could be linked. It strongly looks at the player's personality and the avatar's and investigates the connection that is between the two. Four studies were carried out to gather the information and to test the topic which found out that there were many different elements of behavior such as player vs player, social player-vs environment or assisting were connected to the point personality characteristics. The next study looks at the personality of the player and how it changes in the game, being creative, aggressive and victorious were the strongest components that were found. The third study explored the avatar's and player's different personal characteristics in the game called World of Warcraft. This research was carried out to examine how the player connects with their own avatar and how relevant is the personality of the avatar to the player's personality. The study looks at the level of attachment or feelings that the player develops for their avatar and marks out that the two personalities have a lot of similarities. The paper provides a table that shows the scales that were recorded of the player and the avatar along with scales of behaviors that occur in the gameplay. Overall the paper provides very detailed and informational pieces of research and analyses. Despite much information is from 2011 and in some of the studies the number of participants was dropped, it is still useful information with surveys and study carried out to back up and prove a certain aspect or point. The paper provides tables and evidence of its study which are organized and recording in order throughout the paper.
Banks, J. and Bowman, N.D. (2016) 'Avatars are (Sometimes) People Too: Linguistic Indicators of Parasocial and Social Ties in Player–avatar Relationships'. New Media & Society, Vol. 18 (7) 1257-1276.
This paper discusses the avatar in a more humanistic form as it looks at the social and parasocial measures that link in with the avatar's and player's relationship. The author speaks about how when playing a game there is this sense of equality as both the player and the avatar contribute to complete the tasks and finish the game. According to the author as both sides require action regardless that they are different they are equally important. The paper talks about how humans can grow attachment or feelings towards digital avatars or technology devices as nowadays we can interact with them more as they have or show human behaviors. This for some people might mean that they can develop a more meaningful connection with the device or the avatar in a digital game. The player gets the ability in many games to design their avatar and its characteristics and then fully interacts with them to get to know their story. It is examined how people feel about technology and how it gives them the power to have control. This draws many of us in just like giving the player control over the avatar makes the player-avatar relationship more facilities as sociality is applied to computers and other technology devices. There are a lot of discussions in this paper where the author analyses the PAR being both social and parasocial as the avatar and player can have an effect on each other but at the same time the avatar is only reacting to its scripted code to act on the player's decision. It is hard to say if the PAR can really be identified as "you and me", "us" or "we" unlike any other human relationship which requires the same actions from both sides rather than one controlling the other with a controller or a mouse to perform a function.
Katrine Kavli (2012) The Player’s Parasocial Interaction with Digital Entities. IT University in Copenhagen
In this piece of reading, we get information about what type of connection the player has during playing the game but also it looks at how social can the relationship that the player develops to towards their avatar be. It has been discovered by Horton D. and Wohl R. that a parasocial PAR can evolve from a player controlling their avatar in a digital world of the game. The paper provides the results and the official definition for the above discovery about the parasocial PAR. There are discussions made that playing the avatar in the game which gives the player control and learning skills throughout the game with the avatar allows the player to get to know the avatar's character and together can bond throughout the game until the big finish. The connection between the player and the avatar can grow so much to the point when the person can forget or ignore the borderline that is there between the digital game world and the real world. The more personality that the avatar has in the game the more likely the player will form a stronger connection and a bond with them especially if the avatar reflects them in any way. The author examines the different connection and relationship that the player might possibly develop with their avatar and how much more does the self-created avatar impact the player rather than a premade avatar. Later in the reading, the author discusses the avatar's and player's characteristics and how they influence one another in the game. The paper concludes that despite the theory that an audience develops a parasocial relationship with a character in a movie or a tv series it might not work the same in the world of games. In movies the audience does not create their own characters nor do they control them by a controller which therefore it is difficult to apply such a theory.
Gazzard, A. (March 2009) 'The Avatar and the Player: Understanding the Relationship Beyond the Screen', , pp. 190.
The purpose of this paper is to look at the relationship between a gamer's normality world and the avatar from a scripted game world. The author looks at the two in detail behind the scenes of the game in order to get a bigger insight of what kind of a relationship it is and what is involved in it to understand the complete PAR's bond and connection. It discusses how and why this sort of bond or relationship can be formed and how as a human being in the real world is affected by the avatar and how the person reacts to their avatar. Overall the paper involves a lot of research into the basics of this topic like discussing and analyzing who and what is the avatar in the game, it records down what functions the avatar can perform with the player's commands such as talking to others avatars and sleeping like a real human. It is very important to keep in mind that as stated by the author that the point of view that the player sees the entire gameplay through plays a very important factor in how the player will respond and feel towards their character. This piece of writing goes quite deep into this aspect and relates back to this point made a few times during the whole paper which mark's its value as a player will experience different feelings and reactions depending on what and how they will see and play the entire game. The author makes it clear from the start that despite how strong a person might feel about their PAR we shouldn't forget that at the end of the day it's not a "we" as the avatar and I but rather as an "I" who is controlling the avatar with a few clicks and buttons.
Peter Bayliss (2007) 'Beings in the Game-world: Characters, Avatars, and Players', Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology
The author looks in big detail at the game and what really makes the game to be so successful, what are the avatars, players and characters? How important are they all together and how do they connect to one another. It discusses what the player experiences and goes through in the game and how both the avatar's and player's characteristics have a big impact on the player's point of view in the game and the overall gameplay. This paper however looks more deeply in terms of the connection the player has with the video game rather than just the avatar. Despite that, I think I will still find this information useful and beneficial as how the player responds and gets drawn into the overall game is how well the player gets introduce to the avatar and its characteristics. Therefore this is important how good the game pulls in the player which depends on the bond and the strength of the PAR. The author states the having a different point of view for the player in the game affects what the player's focus and aim will be. The paper concludes that having an intention of an avatar would aim towards achieving goals or collecting trophies whereas a game that will focus on prioritizing the character and the storyline will have a rather more emotional effect on the player who will then aim towards achieving the happy ending of the character. This then means that the PAR is a lot more clear and there are more similarities between the player and character in the game and becomes more meaningful. The game design that is done up for the player is shown to have a big influence on how the player will see the avatar or the character which defines between the normal PAR of controlling a scripted unit and a PAR of a human connecting with the avatar and its characteristics.
I find the reading very time-consuming and the annotated bibliography difficult to do right. This week I have fixed and corrected my four readings from last week which took a long time and then I have done four extra ones. I am glad that I can find a lot of resources on my topic which makes it one bit easier and allows me to examine my topic from a lot of different points of view. This semester's readings are hard for me to stay focussed and I am constantly uncertain about whether or not they are done in the right way. It is also extremely hard not to plagiarise them, I constantly check them after I write them to make sure they are not plagiarised and I put everything in my own words. Overall I can't wait to finish with them.
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