In another study, Banks and Bowman (2016) introduce a metric including ludic and social measures of the player-avatar relationship, which in its refined version ( Banks et al., 2019) exhibits the dimensions of relational closeness, anthropomorphic autonomy, critical concern, and sense of control.
This model has also been applied to specific game cases ( Loyer, 2015). The sociality is measured along the dimensions of self-differentiation, emotional intimacy and perceived agency. This spectrum includes four types of player-avatar relationships, namely, seeing the avatar as an object, me, symbiote or social other. In one study ( Banks, 2015), she introduces a spectrum of sociality on which the player-avatar relationship can be placed. In particular, Jaime Banks has studied the player-avatar relationship in several works ( Banks and Bowman, 2013, 2016 Banks, 2015 Banks et al., 2019). This is possibly due to the more obvious involvement of the player in the creation, customization and development of an avatar compared with the mainly predefined PCs.
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The majority of research investigating the player experience concerning the PC has been conducted in the context of the MMORPG genre and avatars ( Blinka, 2008 Banks, 2015 Banks et al., 2019). We understand the main difference therefore as the avatar is to at least some degree customizable, as seen, for example in Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) genres, whereas in the narrative genre, the story and features of the PC are to a high degree predefined by the developers.
While those terms have been defined inconsistently, an avatar broadly refers to a digital representation of a user ( Nowak and Fox, 2018). It is useful to distinguish in this study a PC from an avatar. The player character (PC) is the in-game character which is controlled by the player and through which the player can act in the game world ( Vella, 2016).
One of the most important game elements when engaging the player in the game is the player character or avatar ( Mallon, 2008 Tychsen et al., 2008 Lankoski, 2011). As the effects of games on players have been mixed ( Ferguson, 2007 Prot et al., 2012), it is necessary to gain a deeper understanding of how players engage with games. Video games are continuously gaining popularity not only as an entertainment medium, but also in fields such as art ( Folkerts, 2010 Devine, 2017 Chew and Mitchell, 2020), education ( Klopfer et al., 2009), and health ( Baranowski et al., 2008 Colder Carras et al., 2018). We discuss how those findings should be taken into consideration when designing diverse and meaningful gaming experiences. The themes are “Tolerance of forced character switch”, “Malleability of character image” and “Flexibility of character attachment”. Through thematic analysis, three themes were found, illustrating the connection between aspects of the player-character relationship and the overall game satisfaction. We performed semi-structured in-depth interviews with 12 players of The Last of Us Part II, a game that has elicited highly polarized reactions in relation to how players responded to a switch of the PC in the game. We, therefore, investigated in this study how the player-character relationship influences satisfaction of the player with the game. The diversity of players and the importance of the PC in the game suggests meaningful connections between how players relate to their PC and the resulting satisfaction with the game. While player characters (PCs) are the key element in engaging players in narrative games, the experience and relationship of the player with the PC have received scarce attention from the perspective of the subjective player experience.