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[Qset]

Maria Caliban wrote...

For those of you who are interested in the relationship of a player to their avatar in a game, you might want to know about the concept of embodiment.

Human beings have a flexible mental construct of themselves. classic example: If someone is rear ended while driving, they'll say "He hit me" not "His car hit my car." We've very good at taking up tools and seeing them as extensions of ourselves. This is tied up with proficiency and passiveness in the tool. When I'm driving my car and everything is going well, the car functions as an extension of myself. If the car is having mechanical problems or if I'm someone who doesn't have much experience driving, there's a perceptual gap where I'm much more aware of the car as something other than myself that I'm working with.

It's the same with a keyboard. If someone doesn't use one often, you'll notice they constantly look down, hesitate, and are very slow to type. Someone who's experienced with a keyboard will almost never look at it and while they're typing are almost unaware of the movement of their fingers. Their mind as simply integrated the keyboard into their current concept of self and is now focusing on the larger task.

We see this games as well – not simply RPGs. When the in-game avatar is responsive and it's clear that its actions reflect our control, we see it as an extension of ourselves.

That's embodiment. The next step is symbiosis. Symbiosis is when that avatar does something without our input, but we integrate it into our concept of self anyway. The player perceives something the avatar did on its own as being their action.

Symbiosis is based on embodiment. The human brain is excellent at filtering things from the consciousness. For example, while you're reading this post and others on the BSN, your feet, legs, and body will probably frequently shift position without your conscious desire or even knowledge. While I'm at home, reading a book, I'll sometimes look down to find my cat as curled up on my lap without my realizing it. Someone reaches into a bag of pretzels and realizes there are none left because they ate the last one without being aware of it. Someone tries to remember what they ate for breakfast, but they don't. And they don't remember the drive into work either. You can control your breathing but the majority of the time, it happens automatically.

When I'm playing Dragon Age, click the mouse, and Hawke walks over to a spot, I think "I did that." When Hawke then twirls her swordstaff while standing, I don't think, "Wait, what happened? Why did I just lose control of the character?" It's neatly integrated the experience of being Hawke.

Does this apply to character dialogue? Yes. Some perceive it as a loss of control while others integrate it into the larger experience of playing the character. Some can experience embodiment but can't make the perceptual leap to symbiosis when it comes time to talking.

Cite: Symbiosis - Masquerading Avatar Autonomy as Player Actions by JD Stout.

Thanks for posting this, very informative, I enjoyed reading this and it certainly made me think a bit more about it., My only issue is the possibly implied judgement call that you made at the end that I have bolded that seems to imply folks who have an issue with a VO PC are somehow deficient in the ability to make perceptual leaps to the symbiotic state? Apologies if I am mispresenting you here.

Exile made the same judgement it seems:

In Exile wrote...

No one chooses to do that, any more that people ''choose'' to learn to drive by reflex. It's just how a mental connection forms, and some people are better or more capable at it than others. People see many things as extensions of themselves.

It is certainly not the case that people who would prefer not to have a single VO for the PC (Bioware have confirmed that there is only one male and female VO strand for the PC) are in some way less capable that others at embodiment and forming mental connections. I think it cheapens the debate to suggest it might be so. If only people and life were that simple  

Again, if that is not what Exile and yourself meant, then fine, humble apologies for misunderstanding what you have written.
 
I can only speak for me personally of course, but I have no issues with a non VO PC as done in DAO - my PC did not feel wooden, I didn't feel they were static during conversations, at times and maybe I am a bit odd here but I could hear the words being typed on the screen echo in my head. Having no VO also allowed me to play different roles and hence the the role I played and "unspoken"  voice  used could vary.

I don't actually mind the VO PC idea either if its done well.

The possible issue and restriction I see with the VO PC is that it limits role variation because it naturally removes one element there and potentially forces a VO on the player that does not fit with the role they want.

I played and enjoyed ME2 but the VO PC male was particularly limiting and there was only really 2 play throughs there, 1 male and 1 female. The female was a bit more flexible in my opinion, anyway, thats off topic a bit.

Now, I have accepted that the this might also be very likely with DA2 since there is only 1 VO for male and 1 for female. I am basically going to be playing male or female hawke with some minor variation depending on the plot choices made. Hopefully the VO will be a bit more flexible depending on those choices. If thats the case and the VO does not grate audibly, then I am sure I will have no issues getting in role and making that mental connection.

However, there is no denying that a single VO strand per gender for the PC is more limiting than not. Of course, its far too expensive to do multiple VO strands but thats is what you would need if you want to get back to the flexibility of non VO provides.

[In Exile]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
Except then he begins to equate avatars with in-game characters, and I think those are very different things.  In an RPG, the player controls a character.  That character is not an avatar of the player, but a character in his own right existing independently in his world (the game's setting).  Nothing Stout said about avatars applies to characters, so his paper has no relevance here.

I think that's part of the core disagreement that undercuts the entire debate on silent PC versus VO'ed PC.

To what extent is the character independent of the player (or not)?  To what degree does a player need an emotional connection with the charactera as an extension of the self to relate to that character?

I brought up the paper in a PM because I think this category error by Stout actually explains a great deal of what exactly the source of conflict is in the VO threads.

When I talk to myself, for example, which I do a lot (or I'll speak to others even though I'm well aware they can't hear me - perhaps because they're in another car and they're 20 metres away), what's important to me is that I've done it.  The world doesn't react to it at all.

The world does react. At the very least, there is an empirically measurable physical consequence of your action, in terms of displaced air and pressure waves.

My initial post does not account well with your experience because it is simply impossible for me to remember this sort of non-intentioned action. 

That being said, you still cause a physical change in the world.

And when I do speak to people, the predictable consequences are pretty minimal, I find.  When I expect to be audible, people sometimes hear me.  And when I don't expect to be audible they hear me less often.  What specific conclusions they'll draw or what they'll do in response to what I say (or how I say it) is something I cannot begin to predict with anything like the accuracy you claim.

Sure you can. You just refuse to. You want an error rate of 0%. That isn't going to happen. But you can predict their behaviour with great accuracy with a reasonable error rate.

So for me, the voiced PC is solving a problem that I don't think exists.

For me, silent PC creates a problem I don't think exists.

So we have an dilemma.

And since I think people are unpredictable, this strikes me as a fool's errand.

Yes, but you're just wrong on that. People are no more or less predictable than any kind of empirical phemonenon. To a 13th century alchemist, oxidation was an incomprehensible miracle. To a 21st century biochemist, the process is self-evident. 

It comes down to the standard of evidence and theoretical framework, and you just happen to be using one that prevents you from predicting behaviour.

But more to the point, you don't even want prediction. You want certainity. You want to have some foolproof method to know in advance what people do, and if you can't have that, you conclude you can never know what people do. That's just a false dilemma.

I would count this as a rare, nay, freak occurence.

We had this talk via PM. What you ask them to do is impossible. It is, again, like speaking in German to a non-German speaking person and then stating that it is impossible for them to understand you. In a sense,, you're right, but it's only impossible for them to understand you because you choose to express yourself in a way that makes it so.

I can't, because I can't be sure they've actually misunderstood me, rather than reacted to what I said in combination with something else of which I am unaware, in which case their reaction makes perfect sense (but sense I can't perceive).

You can't be sure you aren't being devoured by wolves right now and halucinating this conversation, so I'm curious as to why you are debating with me on the internet instead of fighting the wolves.

I mean this seriously, by the way. Why do you take certain kinds of uncertain information as true and not others?

I don't think the accuracy rate is knowable, so there's no reason to prefer one over the other.

It certainly is, within some margin of error.

I think Varric's narration can add back in the ambiguity the voice-over takes away, so I'm really quite excited about it.

Not really. You would have to go back to pretending that the on-screen content is lying to you, which brings us back to Bethany surviving and to lead an army of demons in secret to overrun Ferelden with her sibling Hawke just fooling the world until the right time. Varric is just an insane lyrium addicted dwarf and cooked up the entire story.

Any kind of inference of this sort just breaks the game.

[In Exile]

Qset wrote...

It is certainly not the case that people who would prefer not to have a single VO for the PC (Bioware have confirmed that there is only one male and female VO strand for the PC) are in some way less capable that others at embodiment and forming mental connections. I think it cheapens the debate to suggest it might be so. If only people and life were that simple 

It isn't about a lack of capacity to form mental connections. Rather, it's an issue of neurodiversity. The kinds of mental connections some people have are different in kind.

For example, I'm wholly incapable of relating to a non-assertive protagonist. I can understand such a protagonist. I can enjoy the story. I can analyse the story. I can appreaciate and understand the motives.

But I cannot actually care nor ever feel attached in any meaningful emotional sense to this sort of character.

When I said that there seems to be an individual difference here (and I would wager Stout believes the same) it is not an issue of defficiency but rather difference.

I think that with silent VO, it is the addition of voice that creates the disconnect between player and character because such people are so adept at generating an internal voice that it brings the character to life for them (or maybe it's something else at play - I'm only throwing out a plausible sounding potential explanation for the sake of argument). Whereas, this is just not something I can do in the context of an interactive medium. I frequently imagine content and characters, but I do so only when I can have full creative control. To have a partial blank slate in a predetermined world and have to fill it - I can't, so I can't connect to the character.

Again, if that is not what Exile and yourself meant, then fine, humble apologies for misunderstanding what you have written.

There isn't a need to apologize. My post wasn't clear enough to avoid the potential implication that I was speaking of defficiency and not difference.

I can only speak for me personally of course, but I have no issues with a non VO PC as done in DAO - my PC did not feel wooden, I didn't feel they were static during conversations, at times and maybe I am a bit odd here but I could hear the words being typed on the screen echo in my head. Having no VO also allowed me to play different roles and hence the the role I played and "unspoken"  voice  used could vary.

And I think, personally, this is part of it.

I don't understand how this works. For me, it doesn't work that way. I can't read tone. Ever. I have one reading voice, and that's just my own. Everyone speaks with my voice when I read. There's a sort of cognitive awareness of whose voice is which character, and who says what in what way, but there isn't any difference in what it sounds like internally, so to speak. And there's never any tone or pitch. For whatever reason, my internal reading voice is the most monotonous thing in the world.

The possible issue and restriction I see with the VO PC is that it limits role variation because it naturally removes one element there and potentially forces a VO on the player that does not fit with the role they want.

I don't think the player has that freedom ever. An RPG, without VO, has to disconnect the player more from the world. Take RPGs prior without an origin-like story - think of New Vegas, say. There, the character has no background or connection to the world. Yes, on the one hand the courrier could be everything. But at the same time, the game acts as if the currier is nothing. You have to fill the blank slate. And I think that very act removes any and all significance from RP.

[Sylvius the Mad]

In Exile wrote...

I think that's part of the core disagreement that undercuts the entire debate on silent PC versus VO'ed PC.

To what extent is the character independent of the player (or not)?  To what degree does a player need an emotional connection with the charactera as an extension of the self to relate to that character?

I brought up the paper in a PM because I think this category error by Stout actually explains a great deal of what exactly the source of conflict is in the VO threads.

I agree entirely.

My initial post does not account well with your experience because it is simply impossible for me to remember this sort of non-intentioned action. 

It's this action that I think best represents who I am, so I consider it first in these discussions.

Yes, but you're just wrong on that. People are no more or less predictable than any kind of empirical phemonenon. To a 13th century alchemist, oxidation was an incomprehensible miracle. To a 21st century biochemist, the process is self-evident. 

It comes down to the standard of evidence and theoretical framework, and you just happen to be using one that prevents you from predicting behaviour.

But more to the point, you don't even want prediction. You want certainity. You want to have some foolproof method to know in advance what people do, and if you can't have that, you conclude you can never know what people do. That's just a false dilemma.

If I had an enumerable data set, I could do that.  I could refer to it directly and say, "Based on these data, I can support this conclusion."

The biochemist has such a data set.  But I don't.  As such, I cannot justify those conclusions and any such conclusions would not be defensible.

I won't correct people unless I'm confident they've actually made an error, because I'm not willing to be wrong about that.  Making that mistake is extremely unpleasant, and I'm simply not willing to risk it.

We had this talk via PM. What you ask them to do is impossible. It is, again, like speaking in German to a non-German speaking person and then stating that it is impossible for them to understand you. In a sense,, you're right, but it's only impossible for them to understand you because you choose to express yourself in a way that makes it so.

It's the only way I know.

You can't be sure you aren't being devoured by wolves right now and halucinating this conversation, so I'm curious as to why you are debating with me on the internet instead of fighting the wolves.

I mean this seriously, by the way. Why do you take certain kinds of uncertain information as true and not others?

Preference, perhaps?

I seem to give much greater weight to immediate sensory inputs (things I can see or hear or touch right now are taken as true).

It certainly is, within some margin of error.

Again, with an enumerable data set we can do this.  Without, I don't really see how.

Not really. You would have to go back to pretending that the on-screen content is lying to you, which brings us back to Bethany surviving and to lead an army of demons in secret to overrun Ferelden with her sibling Hawke just fooling the world until the right time. Varric is just an insane lyrium addicted dwarf and cooked up the entire story.

Any kind of inference of this sort just breaks the game.

I'd rather break the game than break my character.

But again, I don't want to contradict the on-screen action unless the game gives me cause.  In our Trask example, I never allowed for the possibility that Trask wasn't actually saying the things we heard him say.  But I also wasn't willing to draw any conclusions beyond that; Trask (like everyone else) was an unrelaiable narrator.

So in a game like Mass Effect, the actions we see Shepard perform are things that are actually happening in the world.  There's no filter through which we're viewing those events, so the in-screen portrayal is accurate.

But in DA2, there is a filter.  Varric is our filter, and for all we know he is an insane lyrium addicted dwarf.  We don't know.

[What is this]

I'm going to respond to all of sylvius post as "you mad"



You mad.

[Ziggeh]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

But in DA2, there is a filter.  Varric is our filter, and for all we know he is an insane lyrium addicted dwarf.  We don't know.

I love this dynamic, I really do. It places the thoughts I attribute to my character inside of the story that Varric is telling, and then questions their reliability. The thoughts I'm having may not have happened!

Wonderful use of the media.