Agency in and around videogames

This thesis conceptualises player agency in avatar-based videogames as an affordance of game design (Gibson 1979). By examining how agency is discussed in different discourses surrounding videogames, such as those of game studies and game design, it puts forward a multidimensional heuristic framework for conceptualising agency in avatar-based games. Game studios with a particular design focus that draw on ‘game design lineages’ (Bateman and Zagal 2018) feature as case studies to demonstrate the analytical power of this framework, examining how agency is designed, and how developers discuss how it is designed. The combined methods of textual and paratextual analysis provides insight not only into how game designers think about agency but also into how design intentions can translate into features of the released game. Such an approach facilitates a way of looking at agency as designed, which is informed by the vocabularies of academic discussions concerning videogames, as well as the language used to refer to these phenomena by industry practitioners, thereby grounding abstract theory in production practices and discourses

Agency in and around videogames

This thesis conceptualises player agency in avatar-based videogames as an affordance of game design (Gibson 1979). By examining how agency is discussed in different discourses surrounding videogames, such as those of game studies and game design, it puts forward a multidimensional heuristic framework for conceptualising agency in avatar-based games. Game studios with a particular design focus that draw on ‘game design lineages’ (Bateman and Zagal 2018) feature as case studies to demonstrate the analytical power of this framework, examining how agency is designed, and how developers discuss how it is designed. The combined methods of textual and paratextual analysis provides insight not only into how game designers think about agency but also into how design intentions can translate into features of the released game. Such an approach facilitates a way of looking at agency as designed, which is informed by the vocabularies of academic discussions concerning videogames, as well as the language used to refer to these phenomena by industry practitioners, thereby grounding abstract theory in production practices and discourses

Playing stories? Narrative-dramatic agency in Disco Elysium (2019) and Astroneer (2019)

Drawing on Janet Murray (1997), Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman (2004), and other previous proposals, this article conceptualizes player agency as the possibility space for “meaningful” choice expressed via player action that translates into avatar action, afforded and constrained by a videogame’s design. It further distinguishes between four core dimensions of agency thus conceptualized: First, spatial-explorative agency is afforded by those elements of a videogame’s design that determine the player’s ability to navigate and traverse the game spaces via their avatar. Second, temporal-ergodic agency is afforded by those elements of a videogame’s design that determine the player’s options for interacting with the videogame as a temporal system. Third, configurative-constructive agency is afforded by those elements of a videogame’s design that allow the player to configure their avatar and/or (re)construct the game spaces. Fourth, narrative-dramatic agency is afforded by those elements of a videogame’s design that determine the player’s “meaningful” impact on the unfolding story. The article then moves on to analyze two case studies of independently developed videogames: ZA/UM’s role-playing game Disco Elysium (2019), whose complex nonlinear narrative structure primarily affords configurative and narrative agency, and System Era Softworks’s sandbox adventure game Astroneer (2019), whose procedurally generated game spaces and “open” game mechanics primarily afford explorative, constructive, and dramatic agency