The Evolution of Fantasy Role-Playing Games - Michael J. Tresca [3]
This is not to say that a high level of media richness is always desired. Some level of anonymity helps facilitate certain levels of game play. Ambiguity may positively reinforce role-play for a particular gaming medium. Text-based games like MUDs and IF can reveal the mental states of characters and connect to literary traditions and the rhythms, sounds, and shapes of language (Montfort 2010). MMORPGs, which replicate some of the media richness of a LARP through avatars, are successful precisely because of their media richness; the ability to express oneself in a three-dimensional space (Castronova 2005:69) in a way similar to a LARP without any of the physical constraints.
Anonymity of Self and Other
When determining how fantasy games represent a group of gamers, there is another issue to consider: anonymity of self vs. anonymity of other.
Anonymity of self is tightly tied to agency. Players’ ability to control their character, to represent themselves as they wish to be represented, creates a sense of control and engagement. By creating agency, players temporarily forget they’re playing a game and simply play. Characters that are a blank slate may appear anonymous but due to a clunky interface, complex rules, or a lack of believability on the part of the player, fail to provide agency. When agency is achieved, players might be surprised to find that the characters they play take on a life of their own (Sinha 1993:120).
Agency happens on two levels, local and global. On a local level, the player is engaged in a satisfying and believable way by what he does and how the environment responds to him. Global agency happens on a higher level in how the story plays out so that there are logical consequences to the character’s actions as well as the other characters that inhabit the world (Mateas & Stern 2007:206).
Anonymity of other is how much the player knows about the game universe he engages in, including his understanding of the world. This is known as diegesis (Montola 2010). Diegesis is the sum total of knowledge about a universe, including knowledge of the past, present, and future. In a novel this frame of reference is perceived from a single point of origin, the narrator. In role-playing every player interprets the game experience uniquely—the importance of the character’s experience is defined as much as by what is shared about the universe as what isn’t shared. It’s entirely possible for different players to have different or even contrary knowledge within a game universe (Hindmarch 2007:51).
The lack of anonymity in certain types of fantasy gaming, like tabletop and LARPs, alters interpersonal negotiations. The additional layer of sensory knowledge changes the face-to-face interaction (Fine 2009). It is entirely possible for an unattractive male gamer to believe he is playing an attractive female gamer effectively even though his media-richness cues conflict with the character he is attempting to present. Although the hairy gamer might believe he is effectively inhabiting his role, other players interacting with him in the game may disagree. When others express their disagreement, it in turn influences how the gamer sees himself, a feature missing from single-player games. Single-player games that do not involve interactivity with other players are concerned only with making the role believable to the player. Multiplayer games must make the role habitable for the player and also allow the player to inhabit the role for others.
Frame of Reference
The term “role-playing” has come to represent a variety of game forms. A colleague once explained to me when I mentioned that