Agency and Indentity in the Exploration Games

The article focuses on the connection between player’s agency and his identity in the exploration computer games. The aim of the article is to trace down the influence of various tools and interaction mechanics on ways in which players mark their presence in the game and convey their identities. The analysed titles include pure exploration games, like Proteus (Ed Key, David Kanaga, 2013) and MirrorMoon EP (Santa Ragione, 2013), as well as some titles which employ only selected mechanics of exploration games, such as The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Bethesda, 2011). Three main points of interest are examined in the article: 1) interfaces and mechanics in relation to player’s agency 2) tools that enable players to build their own narratives and shape the avatars 3) agency in the context of game goals and tasks assigned to a player by the game itself. The theoretical context of the article is linked to the Giorgio Agamben’s theory of dispositif.

 

The article focuses on the connection between player’s agency and his identity in the exploration computer games. The aim of the article is to trace down the influence of various tools and interaction mechanics on ways in which players mark their presence in the game and convey their identities. The analysed titles include pure exploration games, like Proteus (Ed Key, David Kanaga, 2013) and MirrorMoon EP (Santa Ragione, 2013), as well as some titles which employ only selected mechanics of exploration games, such as The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Bethesda, 2011). Three main points of interest are examined in the article: 1) interfaces and mechanics in relation to player’s agency 2) tools that enable players to build their own narratives and shape the avatars 3) agency in the context of game goals and tasks assigned to a player by the game itself. The theoretical context of the article is linked to the Giorgio Agamben’s theory of dispositif.