Crysis

"I'm Overburdened!": An Empirical Study of the Player, the Avatar, and the Gameworld

Jørgensen's study investigates how players understand their relationship to controllable figures within video games, challenging the adequacy of existing terminology such as "avatar" and "character" to describe that relationship.

• The study is based on interviews with 22 respondents (17 individual interviews and one five-person group interview) across four games: Crysis, Diablo 2, Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars, and The Sims 2.
• The central distinction it draws is between a direct, one-to-one relationship between player and figure and an indirect, mediated one, which it argues existing terms like 'avatar' and 'character' fail to capture.
• Only Crysis's first-person perspective consistently led players to merge with their figure, experiencing player and character viewpoints as unified and identifying most strongly with the avatar.