Game Play Log 5

3/4/2016

Game Play Log 5

As the player, do you interact with a character or an avatar and how does this affect your involvement in the narrative?

Grim Fandango

For my chosen game I played Grim Fandango. I found the gameplay was slow and difficult to figure out what needed to be done in order to proceed the narrative. As the player I feel I interacted more with a character than an avatar. According to Jessica Aldreds chapter on character, people’s definition of an avatar can vary itself from it being

“the locus of the player’s actions within game space,” or a “stand-in for the player within game space.”

Much like a ‘digital persona’ of the player, to which allows them to move around the game space, whereas a character is a fixed entity within the game world.

Going with that understanding of what ‘avatar’ and ‘character’ are, in Grim Fandango, Manuel ‘Manny’ Calavero is a character the player plays as instead of an avatar. He is a character in the game rather than an avatar because he is a fixed entity in that game world. As the player you can not do much in terms of modifications or creating things because he is already created for you. The player’s only option is to go through the motions of the game. 

In the game the use of character limits the amount of ‘you’ you’re projecting in-game. If you were to create your own avatar instead, as the player you are projecting a part of yourself into the game.

“Waggoner proposes it as the central criteria for distinguishing between those video game characters that function as true”avatars”, and those which only serve as controllable “agents” for theirs user.”

For the game Grim Fandango, the character of Manuel ‘Manny’ Calavero is an ‘agent’ with whom the player controls throughout the game.

Reference:

LucasArts. (Developer). (1998) Grim Fandango [videogame]. United States: LucasArts

Aldred, J. (Author). (2013) Characters from: The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies Routledge [Book]. Retrieved from: http://animation.onlearn.co.nz/pluginfile.php/2711/mod_resource/content/0/Characters.pdf