Article 01
A Computational Model of Perceived Agency in Video Games
Agency, being one’s ability to perform an action and have some influence over the world,-First line in abstract - describes agency (Very good abstract)
Many games exploit the fact that the player will see a particular sequence only once, and create an illusion of agency through carefully crafted exposition.- Interesting remark - falls under the false pretense of "non-linear" games that have the same ending no matter what.
providing agency is wasteful if player desires can be controlled.- Interesting remark
Article 02
Commitment to Meaning: A Reframing of Agency in Games
Without an understanding of the pleasures of play and story and the assumptions surrounding player preferences, it will be impossible to engineer a way to a solution.- Discussing the problem with agency
proposes a shift from the notion of agency as representing choice or freedom to one of agency as representing commitment.- This paper is taking a different approach when looking at agency
better understand game experiences where a player has limited or restricted actions, but remains fully engaged with the game.- Due to scale of my project, this will be very helpful to me
we are suggesting that when play and story intersect, agency is better understood as a commitment to meaning, instead of a desire to act freely.- I am really liking this idea and approach. Much more interesting way of looking at agency
Janet Murray, who describes it as “the satisfying power to take meaningful action and see the results of our decisions and choices” [24].
is careful to qualify her definition, reminding the reader that “interactors can only act within the possibilities that have been established by the writing and programming."[24]- Worth taking a closer look at Janet Murray - 'most well known definition of agency' comes from her
Today, not only is it possible for unanticipated and emergent player actions to occur, in many games it is expected. These expectations have given rise to a shift in the notion of agency, away from choice and toward freedom.- Moving on from agency being about choice to agency being about freedom
Gonzalo Frasca, who completely disassociates agency from narrative meaning. He writes: “the more freedom the player is given, the less personality the character will have. It just becomes a ‘cursor’ for the player’s actions.” [15]- an interesting counter-argument for the subject
However, we need constraints in order to make interactive experiences meaningful and pleasurable.- There does need to be some form of boundary in games
Noah Wardrip Fruin writes that this “makes conversation feel a bit less first person — sometimes more as though we’re influencing Shepard (the player character) than playing as Shepard.”[38]- A more negative approach to Mass Effect's gameplay compared to the usual praise it gets
It is more important to provide the player with the ability to take a single, meaningful action than a dozen trivial ones.- Important techniques when creating perhaps story elements in a game
This definition, that agency is the process by which participants in an interaction commit to meaning, is particularly well suited to interactions with narrative and story-based games.- Suits my project perfectly
Article 03
Rethinking Agency and Immersion: videogames as a means of consciousness-raising
https://www.siggraph.org/artdesign/gallery/S01/essays/0378.pdf
- 'The more freedom the player is given, the less personality the character will have. It just becomes a "cursor" for the player's actions. - interesting argument
When you play a game 10,000 times, the graphics become invisible. It's all impulses. It's not the part of your brain that processes plot, character, story. If you watch a movie, you become the hero - Gilgamesh, Indiana Jones, James Bond, whomever. The kid says, I want to be that. In a game, Mario isn't a hero. I don't want to be him; he's me. Mario is a cursor.î [Fullop, 1993]
Article 04 - (Impact Case Study)
New Understandings of player agency used to improve digital games
*downloadable file - find via Google search: New Understandings of player agency used to improve digital games
Parsler has applied a theoretical approach to game design to better understand how the formal structures of a game create an experience that seems to the player to be ‘free’ but which – as in inherent in the medium – has significantly to be constrained.- Here is another definition of agency - supports previous statements
Personal Notes
For something as big as player agency, I struggled to find some useful articles however there were a few. Namely article 2 of this post - very good read and I can see myself using it when preparing for my dissertation. As for the rest of the articles, they had some bits of interesting information but no where near as much as no.2
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