A Structural Model for Player-Characters as Semiotic Constructs

The question this paper sets out to answer is a simple, and, perhaps, rather obvious one, but one that, to some extent, game studies has shirked from confronting directly. It is this: what constitutes a player- character? It might seem strange to suggest that the player-character is an under- examined theme in game studies. Even if consensus on the central questions is elusive, the discourse of the player-character is more
or less clearly defined, with established dialogues, arguments and counter-arguments drawing upon a broadly stabilized set of concepts. On the one hand, we find the argument that player agency can be made to cohere to the nature of a predetermined character through the shaping of “dramatic agency” (Murray 1997). Conversely, we can also identify the reaction stating that the nature of the figure as a vehicle for player agency renders notions of character irrelevant: it “just becomes a “cursor” for the player’s actions” (Frasca 2001), being understood purely in instrumental terms as a set of tools to be deployed by the player (Newman 2002). To this, in turn, is opposed the objection that “the steerable thing being discussed is a character, with an anthropomorphic nature and a character’s place within the interactive fiction world” (Montfort 2007). Emma Westecott (2009) suggests an application of puppet theory to the player-character. More recently, the discussion has taken new inflections in Kristine Jørgensen’s outlining of the conflict between player agency and the constraints of a fixed, predetermined character (2010), or Clara Fernández-Vara’s signaling of a radical split between player and character (2011).