Rune is visiting the Center for Games Research today, and I got the impression he would almost feel

neglected if someone didnt liveblog his talk in the good style of all the blogging Scandinavians ;).

So, as the wireless in Auditorium 2 works, here goes:

Rune Klevjer on The Role of the Avatar.
Rune is presenting some of his ph.d. work. A framework for analysis.
He is doing research on single-player games, containing the avatarial camera (the navigable camera representing the avatar's pov). What is the speciality of this kind of game interface?
- compared to other comp games
- compared to mimetic games with avatar relations (lego) and board games (monopoly)
- compared to films
- VR industrial and art

Also related to a more general poetics of fiction and simulation, and embodiment from a phenomenological perspective

The principle of the avatar
Avatar is a principle of mimetic play...
Note on the environment of play:
computer-simulated environments integrate the rules of play, the computer takes us from the rules of the realm of instructions to the realm of regularities, the emphasis on the objects we play with is strengthened, we think of them as specific things, not just tokens, and we interact with them as such
cybernetic realism: the set-up of the mediated computer environment as if we could "really" interact with the world and the objects in it, in an unmediated way (in boardgames, "we" are the simulators, whereas in games, the machine simulates for us, we dont have to relate to the instructions as all).

Virtual embodiment
Mediates agency in real time (and the camera can only go where the body goes, follows its movements)
Mediates subjectivity (who is acting here, mediates your acting self, you cannot break the rules, but have to follow the system's requirements for, for instance, "realistic" movement in space)
avatar both inhabits the enviroment and exposed to the environment (i.e. threat of also being ejected from the enviroment, as is in avatar death), it matters what happens to it (compared to what happens to an instrumental tool)
He shows clips from an experimental game where avatar movement is a bit "fucked up" (they "skate" around on the floors), we immediately focus on this "shrewd" form of movement rather than the "message" of the game, because avatar embodiment means so much to us.

The avatarial camera
A historical development from frame to motion simulator
Camera basic mediator of perception and action (more than traditional camera experience)
Loosing the miniature/microworld - towards a new imperative of realism?

(writers on this perspective: Erkki Huhtamo, Martti Lahti, David Bordwell, CHaim Gingold, David Sudnow)

The imperative of believable embodiment
the imperative of concretisation (not a physical realism, but solidity f.i.)
the integrity of the gameworld (player needs to feel that the world is in charge)
Cinematic realism is about increasing the realism of the matemathical principle of the avatars movement (a very well-behaved ragdoll!)

The nunchacu setup
Avatarial camera (subjective avatar)
Avatarial object (objective avatar)

Avatarial humanoid (link to the storyworld)
Avatarial camera: cinematic embodiment (plane projection, fictional screen, machinic embodiment)

Avatarial integrity is relative
full control of camera = full control of body

If you want dramatic approach to experience, you cant have disembodied camera (no release), cutscenes disallows a space of negotiation (also of bodily movement??)

Now he is talking more specifically about the FPS, but laptop low on battery so will post now.
Lots of interesting food for thought here, it is nice to see how much he also works with the concept of world. Im wondering whether he has thought more about the type of embodiment in relation to our identification with the avatar?
# posted by Lisbeth at: 17:20