Essay work: AN INTRODUCTION TO AGENCY

 Introduction into agency

Creating meaningful play through the use of empathy and agency:

The relationship between player and space

What is agency?

Agency is the feeling that the user has an effect on the virtual environment through the choices they make. Agency in sociology terms refers to the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make free choices. In sociology terms there are 3 different types of agency:

Individual; is when a person acts upon his/her own behalf.

Proxy; when one acts on the behalf of someone else

Collective; when people act together towards a shared goal.

When we talk about agency we also have to look at investment in games, particularly the conditions of investment when the game makes you do something uncomfortable, games such as 'The walking dead' is a great example of this. In games we need a strong sense of contingency and to know our interactions with a character actually matter and make a difference. The role of narrative in games has been the subject of much debate. One of the central points of this debate positions game narrative as being inherently in conflict with the player’s desire to act within the game world. This so-called tension between narrative and interaction has given rise to a vast array of design techniques, intended to either control the actions of the player via various guidance strategies or to shape the evolution of the story. For example if it is made clear that no matter what you do ' X' is going to happen, then that destroys the players sense of illusion of choice. Through this essay I want to explore how agency and empathy can work in tangent to be used in creating a better feeling of immersion and the need for contingency through the illusion of choice.

However we need to look at the parameters surrounding agency when used in games.

A lot of people use the definition of agency as freedom from restrictions. Perhaps an extreme variation on this comes from Gonzalo Frasca, who completely disassociates agency from 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.”

Mateas and Stern (co-creators of the artificial intelligence based art experiment in electronic narrative game 'Façade' and 'the party' ) provide a more contributory approach to agency, proposing a more restricted definition. “A player in an interactive media becomes a kind of author, and contributes both materially to the plot and formally to elements at the level of character on down. But these contributions are constrained by the material and formal causes (viewed as 'affordances' by the author of the interactive media). Hopefully, if these constraints are balanced, the constrained freedom of the player will be productive of agency”

Mateas and Stern's idea that in an interactive media the player becomes a kind of 'author' of the environment and narrative reminds me similarly of Roland Barthes ideas in his a 'death of the author' essay in which he attacks the tradition of “classic criticism”; which he describes as being centred on commentary on the author, presenting the argument that there is no such thing as the 'author' of a text ( here he includes text as meaning anything up to interpretation that has a 'creator' whether that be literature or art) the author is merely a 'scriptor' who’s ideas are not entirely original, it is not the author, but language that speaks, therefore the text requires analysis of language. Barthes emphasises that once the author is removed, it is within the reader of the text that any meaning is derived as the text is open to multiple interpretations by the reader, deeming the

reader as the more creative force.

Can we make the players the 'authors' of their own creation in game?

Research sources:

• Commitment to Meaning: A Reframing of Agency in Games:

by Karen Tanenbaum and Joshua Tanenbaum

• Designing Games to Foster Empathy

by Jonathan Belman and Mary Flanagan

• Player Agency in Interactive Narrative: Audience, Actor & Author

by Sean Hammond1 and Helen Pain and Tim J. Smith

• Immersion vs. Interactivity: Virtual Reality and Literary Theory

by Marie - Laure Ryan

Anatomy Lecture: The foot

In today's lecture we looked primarily into the movements of the foot, what muscles works to move the feet, and the bones, tendons and muscles that make up the foot.

Below are a series of sketches and  notes i took during the lecture.

Anatomy model

Update

Here is an update on my anatomy wax model. Started to work on the ribs and onto the sternum later in the week. I still need to finish my femur bones and add the Fovea Capitis (ball joint head of the femur bone) and work on the pelvic bone a bit more in a Friday session this week. 

Side Project Galore

Survival Weapon

Brief:

An epidemic has broken out in Chicago leaving a section of the city cordoned off, under quarantine, and those stuck on the inside fighting for their lives. With limited supplies and an increase in crime, you are left to forge your own weaponry from everyday items to protect yourself.

Aim for 2D concept artists:
Design a weapon sheet that can be used by 3D artists

My idea for this mini project is to create a 'poison pen'. My main inspiration for this was based on the little knowledge of Chicago i know is that Ernest Hemingway was originally from Chicago and that gave me the idea to create something in which a writer might use as a weapon. I was also looking into poisons from plants such as Hemlock, lily-of-the-valley, and Nightshade. Poison, throughout history and literature has always been seen as a women's option of choice; I rather like the idea of some Chicago writer housewife, who grows various plant-pots of Hemlock and Nightshade in her Windy City apartment. 

Some quick doodles of poison pen ideas which i will further iterate upon

Sketchbook curiosities

Random digital doodles

scanned pages of my sketchbook.

During a visit to the Norwich Castle i took my sketch book along like a good little art student and done some sketching. 

hello Mr Skeleton

Anatomy Model

Throughout this year i will be working on an anatomically correct clay model, this is a follow on activity from the anatomy lectures throughout the year. I will record my progress with photo's of my progress with my model and with my notes and sketches from the lectures. Knowing anatomy is essential for any artists and is an area in which i want to improve upon. 

"I woke up in my bed today, a hundred years ago ---- Who am I?"

During the summer i played the game SOMA, a survival horror developed by frictional games. In the game you play as the character Simon, who wakes up 100 years in the future in an underwater laboratory with only the company of a woman called Catherine who communicates with you throughout the game through a handy tech controller called the Omnitool. The game explores the ideas surrounding identity, consciousness, and what it means to be human. One aspect i loved about this game was that throughout the story you encounter these robots who have assimilated a humans consciousness and so think themselves as 'living beings'. The game gives you the option to 'kill' them, as the WAU is keeping them 'alive' by preserving what it thinks to be a version of humanity. The choice of whether or not you kill these characters does not effect the story in any way but works to create a deeper sense of empathy between the player and the characters creating a better feeling of investment and hence forth creating immersion. 

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times

During the summer period between 2nd and 3rd year i spent my time covering the research part of my upcoming word for my 3rd year. This includes, but not limited to, research into the topics i wish to approach in my dissertation, and ideas and inspiration for my year 3 studio project. Over this period i looked a lot into the topics i will go on to discuss about in my dissertation. A lot of the topics i'm interested in and get excited about within games is the relationship between the player, avatar and the space, especially with how we, as game designers, can evoke certain feelings from the player and generate situations which tackle moral questions. Games such as 'Undertale' and the short flash game 'Loved' each have interesting takes on how games interact with the player. Loved plays on attacking the player directly through the actions the player makes within the game and whether or not they comply with the demands of the 'narrator', i see it as very much a satirised view on modern day games and how people obey and comply to the orders and rules of the game too easily. But what would a game be without its set goals and obstacles? Gameplay should be about more than just achieving goals and completing tasks; it should focus on player immersion and the conditions of investment when the game makes the player do something uncomfortable and how this effects the overall player immersion. How much control can we really give the player without it being just an illusion of control. 

One such game which tackles these questions of obedience within games is Brenda Romero's board game 'Train' (see image above) Train explores complicity within systems. It also asks two questions. "Will people blindly follow the rules?" and "Will people stand by and watch?" With 'Train' there are 2 groups of people; those who 'win' and those who go out of there way to 'lose'. This game is deliberately ambiguous and aims to put the control entirely within the players hands.

This blog is going to follow my explorations with both my dissertation research and my studio practice art project work.