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



In terms of the modality of the “explore” mode, then, it looks as though Ben reads the
game as demand: as puzzles demanding to be solved; while Rachel plays it as a weak
demand: a rhizomic world to be explored, the strong demand act being kept for key
moments of progression or battle. This ambiguity of
Final Fantasy 7 contrasts with
the spatial organisation described by Diane Carr (2003) in relation to
Planescape
Torment
, where the rhizomic organisation of the gameworld is associated with the
structures determined by the classic D&D-derived RPG.

The most direct responses to the demand structures of the game, then - to the battle
scenes, or the nodes of the puzzle maze - are those when the player is most likely to
report their experience in the second person, when the pronoun slippage is most
likely. And these are the aspects of the game driven by the system, where the avatar is
most empty, most like a vehicle for the dynamic action of gameplay, most simple in
their characterisation, reduced to a sword, or to the sliding economies of health and
experience points. But this kind of involvement, most similar to the agonistic patterns
Ong reports of the oral tradition, is overlaid with other kinds of engagement, provided
by the offer structures of the game’s guise, marked by the third person in the player’s
account. Though the times when the text is least open to player action would seem to
offer least in terms of engagement, it is these times when the character is filled out -
when the declarative mood of the cut scene or interpolated dialogue fills out part of
Cloud’s history, his murky past, the uncertainty about his mercenary motives, his
obscure love affairs, his ambivalent relationship with Sephiroth.



More intriguing information

1. Voluntary Teaming and Effort
2. THE WELFARE EFFECTS OF CONSUMING A CANCER PREVENTION DIET
3. Towards a Mirror System for the Development of Socially-Mediated Skills
4. Draft of paper published in:
5. Place of Work and Place of Residence: Informal Hiring Networks and Labor Market Outcomes
6. Understanding the (relative) fall and rise of construction wages
7. The name is absent
8. Outsourcing, Complementary Innovations and Growth
9. Orientation discrimination in WS 2
10. Foreword: Special Issue on Invasive Species
11. EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITIES IN TENNESSEE ON WATER USE AND CONTROL - AGRICULTURAL PHASES
12. ROBUST CLASSIFICATION WITH CONTEXT-SENSITIVE FEATURES
13. Large-N and Large-T Properties of Panel Data Estimators and the Hausman Test
14. IMMIGRATION POLICY AND THE AGRICULTURAL LABOR MARKET: THE EFFECT ON JOB DURATION
15. Manufacturing Earnings and Cycles: New Evidence
16. Mergers and the changing landscape of commercial banking (Part II)
17. The economic doctrines in the wine trade and wine production sectors: the case of Bastiat and the Port wine sector: 1850-1908
18. On s-additive robust representation of convex risk measures for unbounded financial positions in the presence of uncertainty about the market model
19. Cultural Diversity and Human Rights: a propos of a minority educational reform
20. The name is absent