Uncanny Avatars

In ‘What Is An Avatar?’(http://ftvms212-328-2010.blogspot.com/2010/01/what-is-avatar.html), the writer cites the discrepancies between the academic and popular usage of the word avatar. This I feel is an important definition to consolidate if videogames are to be a legitimate site of academic study.

She states that in our tutorial...
‘people remarked that the term avatar is commonly used in videogames to refer to an in-game embodiment of the human player.’

While academically, avatars...
‘refer to ‘pre-made’ characters or objects representing the player in the game space.’

I would posit that the consolidation of such a discrepancy can be found in Carr’s reading, though it needs to be unpacked. Freud’s theory of the uncanny, which she cites, applies more directly to videogames than the reading suggests.

Freuds theory posts that recognition and strangeness cause a viewer (in this case player) to vacillate in understanding between the unfamiliar and themselves. He applies the affect of uncanniness to doubts whether an apparently animate being is really alive; or conversely, whether a lifeless object might not be in fact animate. The uncanny therefore applies to videogame avatars in their ‘uncanny’ lack of distinction between being the embodiment of the player onscreen, or whether their characters exist on their own without player input. Freud states…
‘the essential factor in the production of the feeling of uncanniness to intellectual uncertainty.’
(http://people.emich.edu/acoykenda/uncanny1.htm)

I would therefore posit that the academic definition of avatars must include the avatar’s capacity to both exist independently as part of a machine and also as part of the player. It is this lack of certainty which defines the avatar. Thus one’s understanding of the avatar directly correlates to a player’s agency within the game.

Jentsch writes…
‘In telling a story one of the most successful devices for easily creating uncanny effects is to leave the reader in uncertainty whether a particular figure in the story is a human being or an automaton and to do it in such a way that his attention is not focused directly upon his uncertainty.’
(http://people.emich.edu/acoykenda/uncanny1.htm)

Intriguingly, this parallels Poole’s concept of agency in games. That a good game will suggest that you have agency, when really it is the mechanisms of the game that dictate how you can behave and what your options are. Thus perhaps even, the contextual definition of the avatar is reliant on the agency provided by the game.