The Theme of Agency in Interactive Media

The Theme of Agency in Interactive Media
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The Theme of Agency in Interactive Media

One of the profound markers of the fourth industrial revolution is the rise of interactive media (IM). Also called interactive multimedia, IM refers to any computer-based electronic system that allows users to control, combine, and manipulate different media types, including sound, text, video, graphics, and animation. Examples of the most common forms of interactive media include websites, interactive TV, gaming, mobile telephony, and interactive advertisement. In some ways, IM provides users with a sense of agency. According to Moore (2016), a sense of agency refers to controlling actions and their consequences. Thus, concerning interactive media, a sense of agency implies that users have a significant level of control over actions or outcomes that occur within the media due to media-user interaction. Or do they? According to Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter (2009), in interactive media like video gaming, pleasures of the agency are often co-opted to reinforce social inequities. In this view, while users may feel they have a sense of agency in the interactive media, it is only up to a certain extent after which users have no control over actions or their outcomes.

User Agency in Video Games

            The agency is how a player or user can invoke or cause a significant change in the gaming world when it comes to video games. In other words, player agency is the ability to impact the story through gameplay or game design. Without player agency, players or users become pawns used to tell another person's story. In this case, a user has no power to manipulate the narrative or the storyline. Since many people are frustrated by such objectification, user agency is vital for keeping users glued to the game and making them part of the story. There are two types of agency games: low and agency and high. In low-agency games, there is limited interactivity, busywork, or nudging. On the other hand, high-agency games allow players to significantly change the state or world of objects within the gaming world with every action.

            Thus, there are three criteria by which an agency can be defined. The first is that the player controls their own character's decisions. In essence, the user decides the actions or decisions their characters or avatars will take in the video game. The very nature of developing avatars to fit user or player needs is part of the agency. Secondly, the user decides to create an avatar with a specific impact level within the game environment. To this end, the third criterion is that the player is sufficiently informed of the consequences to anticipate before making decisions within the gaming environment. Based on this criterion, it is almost impossible to have a game that does not provide some form of user agency.

Video Games: Power or Agency?

            An inherent cliché in gaming is that narrative games are more about fantasies and less about the sense of control felt by users (Dyer-Witheford & de Peuter, 2009). Through this cliché, many people believe that video games are about power. Examples include cerebral simulations like Civilization and run ‘n’ gun blasters like Battlefield, Hitman, and Call of Duty. The successful player will rise in status in these gaming narratives, starting from a lowly grunt to an influential and celebrated hero. In the process, thousands of vanquished foes are left in the wake. Some authors have established that this basic structure is famous among game developers and remains a vital metanarrative that forms the basis of storytelling across generations. From this point of view, video games are really about power, reflecting on the historical character of human beings vis-à-vis conflict, triumphant, and the long-held belief of 'us versus them.'From this view, Dyer-Witheford & de Peuter (2009) argued that pleasures of the agency are increasingly being co-opted to reinforce social inequities. In essence, those who hold power, and have taken it through violent means, as depicted in the examples of video games given, create a society in which we have the powerful and the meek. The former is perceived as the oppressor and the latter as the oppressed in real life.

            However, this might not always be the case primarily when users focus on the subtle and instinctive nature of their interaction with the gaming environment. In this case, a sense of agency emerges for users because satisfaction comes from having a sense of control which is almost impossible to have in real life. For instance, games like Call of Duty and others in the category provide users with the power to use different types of weapons that could otherwise only be imagined in real-life. Most people do not want to kill other people in real life. However, the sense of satisfaction in killing through video games is about this point of view. In essence, while some people can perceive games as about power, agency implies that users are in a position to develop and enjoy this power in the virtual world. Thus, in themselves, such games are could either be about power or a sense of control that people desire in a world in which they are increasingly helpless under the control of family structure, culture, government institutions, and corporates. Video games provide an avenue in which users can make independent decisions and actions without the reach of these forces of control and without violating laws or regulations around violence issues.

Wider Implications of Sense of Agency

            The need for a sense of agency emerges from the human need or want to be autonomous and in control. Autonomy implies the right or condition of self-government or the right to make personal decisions and take personal action. For instance, people living in authoritarian states have little sense of agency because their personal decisions are limited. This is akin to low agency games in which users follow the narrative but ha...