The Player Character as Performing Object

This paper argues that the player's relationship to her player character can be productively understood through the lens of puppetry, with the player cast as a puppeteer manipulating a digital figure that ranges from the abstract to the superhuman. Its central claim is that the doubling inherent in play, where the player acts through a controller and watches the results on screen, mirrors the dual address of the puppet: the figure is simultaneously a perceived object and an imagined life. Drawing on performance analysis and theatre semiotics, particularly the Prague School and Tillis's aesthetics of the puppet, the author positions game characters within a long tradition of performing objects while emphasising that games are artificial constructions rather than realistic ones.

The paper's key analytical focus is movement as a primary signifying system. Player character movement tends toward exaggeration, through techniques such as amplification, interruptible animation loops, and an ever-present sense of responsiveness, all of which help the player suspend disbelief and identify with the figure. The author contends that the figureness of the player character, rather than any claim to realism, is what enables players to bind with the game interface, and that movement design either extends play practice or disrupts it when poorly judged.

The work situates itself against psychoanalytic, sociological, and metaphysical approaches to player characters, arguing that puppet theory offers a more specific framework for the player-character relationship. It is a conceptual and theoretical essay rather than an empirical study, and it draws no survey or sample data. Its scope is primarily the third-person player character in games, with the camera and first-person perspectives treated as adjacent concerns to be addressed elsewhere. The paper concludes that the theatricality and artificiality of game form, rather than its pursuit of realism, underpin much of its expressive and affective power.