Agency and Indentity in the Exploration Games Cover Image

Sprawczość i tożsamość w grach eksploracyjnych
Agency and Indentity in the Exploration Games

Author(s): Mateusz Felczak
Subject(s): Language studies, Language and Literature Studies
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego
Keywords: exploration games; player’s agency; subjectivity

Summary/Abstract: 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

  • Issue Year: 2015
  • Issue No: 25
  • Page Range: 41-51
  • Page Count: 11
  • Language: Polish