Video games are big. Really, really big. It’s an industry that generates over $138 billion in revenue (Ell, 2018) and includes an estimated 2.2 billion active players across the planet (McDonald, 2017). We’re seeing more people spending more time and money on video games, and it’s not all just on Fortnight either. In these games, players typically control avatars—the interactive, social, graphic representations of the player to interact in, and with, the game world (Meadows, 2008). Though sometimes created by the player (like in Skyrim), avatars can also be purposefully designated to the player (like Link from the Legend of Zelda series). Players engage with game content and perform in the digital space through this avatar (Galanxhi & Han, 2007), in effect accessing the game. Avatars may seem like a ubiquitous, obvious part of gaming—of course, you need some way of playing the darn thing, right?—but there are some interesting things happening under the hood of this oft-overlooked part of video games: what’s going on between these avatars and the players controlling them?
Game avatars are not necessarily just the mechanism through which players engage with the game world. Like how audience members connect to their favorite characters on TV (Gardner & Knowles, 2008) or in books (Ingram & Luckett, 2017), avatar-player relationships have parasocial qualities. A ‘parasocial relationship’ is the fancy psychology term that describes one-sided relationships—where you have a relationship with something (say, Harry Potter or Beyoncé) that does not have a similar relationship with you. However, while traditional parasocial theory from movies and books would suggest that these audience-to-character relationships are one-directional, non-dialectical, and exist only in the mind of the audience (Horton & Wohl, 1956), player-avatar relationships in video games are different. Unlike when reading Harry Potter, listening to Lemonade, or watching all of Jeff Goldblum’s movies, the audiences of video games actually have some interaction with the characters. Players interact with characters and, in some capacity, those characters respond. Player-avatar relationships (PARs) are inherently interactive for the purposes of participating in the virtual world (Steuer, 1992; Lewis, Weber, & Bowman, 2008), creating a wide variation in the ways players connect to their avatar.
Historically there have been two main theories that have dominated how we think about this player-avatar interaction: avatars as a merged psyche of player and avatar into a single ‘thing’ (Lewis et al. 2008), versus a two-way social relationship in which both parties retain and exhibit varying degrees of agency (Banks, 2013). Banks and Bowman (2013) have since suggested a smooth merging of these two ideas. Rather than one or the other, we instead are looking at a spectrum of player-avatar interaction conceptualized around four major types of relationships: avatar-as-object, avatar-as-me, avatar-as-symbiote, and avatar-as-other. Each type of relationship has varying factors that contribute to the kind and depth of the relationship such as suspension of disbelief, care/responsibility, agency, and differentiation (to name a few fancy sounding terms). So, terminology aside, what main relationships are there?
Avatar-as-object relationships are non-social, where the player relates to the avatar simply as a tool to access the game. This is basically, ‘I just want to get into the game, I couldn’t care less how I get to do that.’
Alternatively, players in avatar-as-other relationships relate to their avatars as separate and as having their own agency, frequently using third-person pronouns (he, she) to describe them (Banks & Bowman, 2016).
In avatar-as-me relationships, players merge identities with the avatar, in effect placing him or herself in the game world as that avatar. Here you’ll more frequently hear people using “I” or “me” when describing their in-game experiences.
Avatar-as-symbiote relationships are a sort of blend of avatar-as-other and avatar-as-me. Here, the player views the avatar as a part of them; not fully ‘other,’ not fully ‘me,’ but able to slip back and forth (Banks & Bowman, 2013). For example, the avatar might not be ‘me’ but could be an idealized version of ‘me’ that I strive to be in real life (i.e. sometimes I live to that bar and sometimes I don’t).
These aren’t necessarily cordoned off into specific genres or ‘type’ of character in question—it’s all about how you relate to those avatars. For example, while you might not see Kratos as anything more than just a way to play God of War and just get to that sweet sweet gameplay (avatar-as-object), some other players might really connect with him as a character in and of himself (avatar-as-other).
We have yet to see how these PARs map onto different game types, different personalities, and how they develop over time—for example, does your relationship with Arthur Morgan change from the beginning of Red Dead Redemption 2 to the end? How different are relationships with your player-made Guardian in the first-person shooter Destiny compared to relationships with Madeline from the platformer Celeste? What about relationships in single-player games, where avatars tend to be more front and central, compared to multiplayer games where avatars may take a backseat to player-to-player sociality? While the industry may have been a bit quick to declare the death of single-player games (look to Marvel’s Spider-Man, God of War, & Celeste), characters will continue to remain vital to video games, no matter how central your avatar is within the game—literally and figuratively. If anything these avatars, as characters themselves, are increasingly important to get players connected to, and mentally invested in, video game worlds. Remember, it’s not about the 0s and 1s behind the scenes, its what you make of them that counts.
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If you’re interested in learning more about this player-avatar area, take a look at research from Jaime Banks and Nick Bowman, both currently at the University of West Virginia. They do fantastic work and have made some major contributions in this space.
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References
Banks, J. (2013). Human-technology and self-network organization: Players and avatars in world of warcraft (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (Order No. 3608115)
Banks, J., & Bowman, N. D. (2013). Close intimate playthings? Understanding player-avatar relationships as a function of attachment, agency, and intimacy. Association of Internet Research Selected Papers of Internet Research, 3. Retrieved from https://spir.aoir.org/index.php/spir/article/view/689
Banks, J., & Bowman, N. D. (2016). Avatars are (sometimes) people too: Linguistic indicators of parasocial and social ties in player–avatar relationships. New Media & Society, 18(7), 1257-1276. Retrieved from https://doi-org.ezproxy.is.ed.ac.uk/10.1177/1461444814554898
Ell, K. (2018). Video game industry is booming with continued revenue. Retreived from https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/18/video-game-industry-is-booming-with-continued-revenue.html
Galanxhi, H., & Nah, F. F. H. (2007). Deception in cyberspace: A comparison of text-only vs. avatar-supported medium. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 65(9), 770-783. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2007.04.005
Gardner, W. L., & Knowles, M.L. (2008). Love makes you real: Favorite television characters are perceived as “real” in a social facilitation paradigm. Social Cognition, 26(2), 156-168. Retrieved from https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.is.ed.ac.uk/docview/229570867?accountid=10673
Horton, D., & Wohl, R.R. (1956). Mass communication and para-social interaction. Observations on Intimacy at a Distance, 19(3), 215-229. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1080/00332747.1956.11023049
Ingram, J., & Luckett, Z. (2017). My Friend Harry’s a Wizard: Predicting Parasocial Interaction With Characters From Fiction. Psychology of Popular Media Culture. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1037/ppm0000169
Lewis, M.L., Weber, R., & Bowman, N. D. (2008). “They May Be Pixels, But They’re MY Pixels:” Developing a Metric of Character Attachment in Role-Playing Video Games. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 11(4), 515-518. https://doi-org.ezproxy.is.ed.ac.uk/10.1089/cpb.2007.0137
McDonald, E. (2017). Newzoo’s 2017 Report: Insights into the $108.9 Billion Global Games Market. Retrieved from https://newzoo.com/insights/articles/newzoo-2017-report-insights-into-the-108-9-billion-global-games-market/
Meadows, M. (2008). I, avatar : The culture and consequences of having a second life. Berkeley, CA: New Riders.
Steuer, J. (1992). Defining virtual reality: dimensions determining telepresence. Journal of Communication, 42(4), 73-93. Retrieved from https://doi-org.ezproxy.is.ed.ac.uk/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1992.tb00812.x
