Heavy Hero or Digital Dummy: multimodal player-avatar relations in FINAL FANTASY 7

Heavy Hero or Digital Dummy:
multimodal player-avatar relations in
FINAL FANTASY 7

Andrew Burn

Gareth Schott

University of London Institute of Education

Abstract

This article analyses the player-avatar relation in Final Fantasy 7, drawing on
multimodality theory to analyse textual structures both in the game and in the
discourse of player-interviews and fan writing. It argues that the avatar is a two-part
structure, partly designed in conventional narrative terms as a protagonist of popular
narrative, and partly as a vehicle for interactive game-play. The former structure is
replete with the traditions and designs of Japanese popular narrative, oral formulaic
narrative and contemporary superhero narratives; and is presented to the player as an
offer act - a declarative narrative statement. The latter is a construct of evolving
attributes and economies characteristic of roleplaying games; and is presented to the
player as a demand act - a rule-based command. Though these two functions separate
out in the grammar of player and fan discourse, it is their integration which provides
the pleasure of gameplay and narrative engagement.

Squaresoft’s Final Fantasy 7 is a hugely-successful Japanese role-playing game,
which sold to virtually all Japan’s Playstation owners within the first 48 hours of its
release, and was no less popular in the US on its release there later in 1997 (UK
Playstation Magazine, November 1997). Cloud Strife is the protagonist-avatar - a
mysterious mercenary, in leather and big boots, wielding a sword as big as himself;
but an oddly childish face, whimsically delineated in the ‘deformed aesthetic’ of
manga, with enormous, glowing blue eyes, framed in cyberpunk blond spikes (Fig. 1).
We will explore the player’s engagement with the avatar through a social semiotic
analysis of the design of the character, of two interviews with players, and of fan
writings.

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