Episode 21: Agents and Avatars in Final Fantasy XV

Unlocking Games

Many games put you in the role of someone else. It's right in the name of at least one genre: Role-Playing Game. We identify with each of these avatars to varying degrees. It's hard to feel much of a connection with Pac-Man, but Link and Chrono were much easier to map onto ourselves. What did we take away from that mapping? What does current research say about how we relate to our avatars? This week Brandon introduces theories about how we connect with games' avatars, then we look at Final Fantasy XV as an example. What opportunities does it take or miss to link us with Prince Noctis? And what does this all have to do with Clippy, anyway?

Show Notes & Links

• Monster Factory
• Clark, Ruth Colvin. Building Expertise: Cognitive Methods for Training and Performance Improvement. 3rd ed. San Francisco: Pfeiffer, 2007.
• Fox, Jesse, and Jeremy N. Bailenson. "Virtual self-modeling: The effects of vicarious reinforcement and identification on exercise behaviors." Media Psychology 12, no. 1 (2009): 1-25.
• Groom, Victoria, Jeremy N. Bailenson, and Clifford Nass. "The influence of racial embodiment on racial bias in immersive virtual environments." Social Influence 4, no. 3 (2009): 231-248.
• Ruggiero, Dana. "The effect of a persuasive social impact game on affective learning and attitude." Computers in Human Behavior 45 (2015): 213-221. Doi: 10.1016/j.chb.2014.11.062.
• Woolfolk, Anita. Educational Psychology. 8th ed. Needham Heights: Allyn and Bacon, 2001.
• Yee, Nick, and Jeremy N. Bailenson. "Walk a mile in digital shoes: The impact of embodied perspective-taking on the reduction of negative stereotyping in immersive virtual environments." Proceedings of PRESENCE 246 (2006): 147-156.
• Yee, Nick and Jeremy N. Bailenson. “The Proteus Effect: The Effect of Transformed Self-Representation on Behavior.â€� Human Communication Research 33 (2007): 271-290.
• Yee, Nick, Jeremy N. Bailenson, and Nicolas Ducheneaut. “The Proteus Effect: Implications of Transformed Digital Self-Representation on Online and Offline Behavior.â€� Communication Research 36 (2009): 285-312.

Games mentioned in this episode

• Chrono Trigger
• Secret of Mana
• Halo
• Legend of Zelda
• Spent
• Papers, Please
• Final Fantasy XV
• Final Fantasy VII
• Hearthstone
• Disgaea 4