Worlds in and of motion: Agency and animation at the margins of video game aesthetics

摘要

What is the relationship between player-controlled movement and animation in game media? How do game worlds respond to the movement of characters through different types of space? This article will draw on concepts such as animation, figuration and vitality to analyse some of the waysthat in-game animations and graphical rendering activity are activated by player-controlled movement through three-dimensional game environments. The sudden ‘blinking in’ of environmental features in the distant horizon as the player approaches and more gradual ‘filling in’of graphical detail in objects such as plants, rocks and shadows close to the player character/camera in games such as Red Dead Redemption and Shadow of the Colossus provide materials for considering how animation might be developed as a concept for describing the connectionbetween player agency and game-world visual activity in the said media. Graphical rendering properties such as draw distance and texture pop-in that are tied to the spatial relationship between a player character/camera and game-world objects will be some of the primary ways this dynamic ofmovement and animation will be analysed.