GTA - Agency?

I remember being at high school and eargerly waiting for the holidays for two reasons. 1) Obviously no school, and without a part time job in those days it actually was a holiday. 2) Come holidays my broter and i would always either go the whole way and purchase a new game or simply take the less risky option and rent one for a week or so.

For me there was nothing more excitiing then getting home with that new game and opening the case to read through the manual and decide on which players, tactics i would take when playing the game. Being the younger out of myself and my brother, i often found myself watching him play the game. This is because quite simply my brother was better at gaming than me in general. I didn't mind however as i used to love watching him play the game as he would usually play quite well and therefoe it was a joy to watch. however i often found myself watching him play but at the same time thinking of what i would do at the same point in the game. This is where the frustration would kick in, i would adopt the backseat driver approach and call out what i thought were the right things to do. being the observer meant i wasn't fully immersed in the game like him, nonetheless, for me it meant i could relax, eat, drink and if he stuffed up i wouldn't feel bad as it couldn't possibly be my fault.

After a couple of years of watchig my brother play, i soon took over in the skill department and quickly became the one who would win the 2 player tournaments we would have. this is when i decided to buy Grand Theft Auto myself and finally try to play a lengthy role play game. the thing that attracted me to the game was the idea that you could simply scrap the narrative and go off and pretty much do whatever you wanted. Kevin touched on this in the lecturers, and refered to it as 'agency', basically meaning the extent to which a player can go freestyle with what they are doing and the question of whether the prodcers of the game had intended it for that use. With a game like GTA, its obvious that the porducers have made the game with the intention to give the player as much agency as possible. However whether or not the things you can do in that game are actipons that the porducers didn't intend is where i'm unsure. If they have produced this game with all its freedom (guns, bikes, cars, jumps etc) they obviously know the each player of the game will manipulate the equipment in the game to do whatever they want.

Finally in tutorials we spoke about 'consequence in game', which is the idea of what will happen to your character or whatever you are controlling when you die or are hurt etc. we spoke about how through the existence of consequence, a players immersion can be depleted, which i feel is very true. if you know that you can walk freely amongst a stage filled with 'badies' for example, your immersion is taken away as you know you can die and just restart the game from the last saved point. it got me thinking about about how we can increase consequence. Imagine if you purchased a game and had one life and if you died had to take the game back to the store you bought it from and had to have it reset, maybe not something as extreme as that but you get the idea. In this instance, you would definately become more immersed through increased concerntration and the fear that if you died, the consequences would be far more inconvieneint then simply loading your saved game and starting again. just a few thoughts, would love to see what 'consequence' increasing ideas anyone else can think of....

David Dunlop