Avatar: interaction aesthetics and the character-player
avatar, reader, character, representation, identification, aesthetics, interaction.
This dissertation will address the avatar in digital games, under the argument that it operates in a hybrid manner between player and character. Treating the player as reader and the game as text provides implications that lay the course for the avatar to be dissected in its formal attributes. The "reader-character" perspective foments a discussion that is supported by how these entities are treated by literary studies, especially regarding the possible outlines concerning concepts such as representation, identification, and aesthetics. From those considerations and subsequent analysis, there’s a tensioning of W.J.T. Mitchell's atomistic representational model and the formulation of defining attributes of the avatar follows, whose consequences serve as a tool to postulate a category of "aesthetics of interaction" that would facilitate the understanding of games as contemporary fictional instruments.