Being everything, being nothing

Subjectivity in videogames beyond avatars

Abstract

The identification between player and avatar is at the center of numerous academic reflections, especially the function of the latter as an embodiment of the former (Klevjer, 2006). Among others, Alfonso Cuadrado (2008) has analysed the subjects of The Sims series (Maxis, The Sims Studio, 2000-2018) as virtual toys, Daniel Vella ( 2015) has theorised about the difference between "ludic subject" and "playful self" and Fernández-Vara (2008) studies the game as a performance based on the restoration of behaviors. This article problematises this relationship following these analytical approaches, adding the theory of avatarness (Navarro-Remesal, 2016) and of the existence of an implied player in the design of every game (Aarseth, 2007). Through this, it focuses on borderline cases that blur the traditional conception of avatar.

A first approach to commercial productions shows that borderlines avatars are not exceptional. We can find games in which the player controls ghosts without bodies, such as Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective (Capcom, 2010), others in which each life is associated with an individual within a collective, such as Aliens: Infestation (WayForward, 2011), Reigns: Her Majesty (Nerial, 2017) or ZombiU (Ubisoft Montpellier, 2012), or in which the avatar loses its identity, such as Inside (Playdead, 2016). Recently, two examples have taken this expanded avatarness to its extreme: in Everything (David O'Reilly, 2017), the player can take control of all the components of the world and access their thoughts, and in Super Mario Odyssey (Nintendo EPD, 2017), Mario can use a new ability of his protagonist to possess different subjects.

The breach of the equation of player and character, either through subtraction or addition, creates alternative models of incarnation that make us question the limits of the avatar. In them, we can find an avatarness that encompasses more elements of the world and the system. There are strategies of one in many (one player controls multiple characters), one in nothing (the player controls disembodied beings or plain absences) and one in everything (the player takes control of elements of the world beyond a specific avatar), and even even more complex conceptual turns like many in one or the nothing in everything of zero-player games. Avatarness is diffused and distributed throughout the gameworld, making the player identify themselves (as operator, spectator, actor, and accomplice) with elements that are beyond the avatar, and hence realise that it is not a single object but a series of connected processes.

This articles lists a total of 20 types of expanded avatarness strategies. It does not pretend to be a closed typology of abstract and normative categories, but a review of actual uses in specific examples, taking into account their contribution to the implicit meaning-making process of the design of the game.