Interactive Narrative Week 6 Blog Entry 5

For this week I played Grim Fandango. As the player of the game, I control a character named Manuel "Manny" Calavera as I interact with other characters which are non-playable. I wouldn't consider Manny as an avatar based on Laetitia Wilson's definitions of character and avatar. Laetitia Wilson (2003) suggests that avatars are virtual selves that stand in for our real-space selves, at the same time as they function “as a locus for our extended agency; a locus that is multifarious and polymorphous, displaced from the reality of our realspace selves.” Wilson asserts that video game characters are interpassive entities rather than truly “interactive” ones, soliciting “a mode of relating that involves the consensual transferral of activity or emotion onto another being or object—who consequently ‘acts’ in one’s place” - Jessica Aldred, Characters (2013).

Manny is already a premade persona imbued with certain personality and traits. In the game, I can't alter these traits but just merely physically control him. Even with his conversations with other characters of the game, I can only choose what he would say. He says his lines as the character he is. He is a character with an identity for himself; an icon for the game franchise he is in.

The game has a linear narrative. My involvement is what allows the story to progress and the character to develop. I direct the interpassive character to objects or people to interact with. The character is interpassive because I act in its place. Interaction only occurs when the character interacts with other characters, wherein I receive information (story and task info) from the game as it receives information from me to go talk to a certain character. Grim Fandango is an ergodic literary work, almost like a movie rather than a game. Ergodic literature is literature that is not needed to be read; in this case (video game) it can be experienced. Grim Fandango is a cybertext, like a hypertext fiction but without the trivial effort, wherein each object and NPC provide information for the story and what is needed in order to progress. Espen J. Aarseth states that non trivial effort is needed in order to traverse the text in ergodic literature (Cybertext- Perspectives of Ergodic Literature, 1997). There is no clear sequence for the story to be uncovered in the game and that's the reason why the traversal of the player, through the iconic character, into the game is needed. Non-trivial effort (point and click to control the character) is required for the character to follow the path needed to be taken in order to progress the story. The story can be experienced by controlling an interpassive character as the player physically moves this character within the game world to interact with NPCs.


References:

Aldred J. (Author). (2013). Characters from: The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies [Book]. Retrieved from: http://animation.onlearn.co.nz/pluginfile.php/2711/mod_resource/content/0/Characters.pdf


LucasArts (Developer). (1998). Grim Fandango [Video Game]. United Sates: LucasArts

Wilson, L. (Author). (2003). Interactivity or Interpassivity: a Question of Agency in Digital Play [Article]. Australia: University of Australia

Aarseth, E. (Author). (1997). Cybertext- Perspectives of Ergodic Literature [Article]. United States: John Hopkins University Press