“What is a Character?” – Emma Raey
What is a Character?
- An agent
- Has goals
- On-screen surrogate/prosthesis for a player
- Point of access
- Rhetorical device
- Portable in the context of transmedia storytelling
There is a difference between a stock character and a stereotype. Stock characters have certain rules to them for players to quickly pick up mechanics/story, stereotypes are caricatures
What is the difference between a player character and an avatar?
- Avatar in Sanskrit means God Made Flesh.
- Avatars will be an everyman/mary sue, a blank slate.
- Player characters are still a tool/entry point, but will have their own personality and desires. Sometimes these desires will align with yours, sometimes they won’t. There will be a push and pull.
- But also nice dichotomy idiot. What lies outside it?
Ian Bogost makes the argument that videogames are better without characters. What we should prioritise is political and structural problems to conceptualise in big picture ways how we exist as a product of those supercisims.
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