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"But They're My Avatar": Examining Character Attachment to Android Avatars in Quantic Dream's Detroit: Become Human

Published: 01 April 2020 Publication History

Abstract

This study examines how players describe their rationale behind decisions made during gameplay of Detroit: Become Human and how responses may coincide with character attachment (CA). Semi-structured interviews were conducted to examine the presence of character attachment and how it may lead to the player's understanding of their gameplay choices. Both the emotions (or lack of) of the avatar and strategizing about gameplay emerged as two central themes. Results are discussed in light of human-robot interaction based on popular media.

References

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Jaime Banks and Nicholas David Bowman. 2016. Avatars are (sometimes) people too: Linguistic indicators of parasocial and social ties in player--avatar relationships. New Media & Society 18, 7 (2016), 1257--1276. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444814554898
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Jaime Banks and Nicholas David Bowman. 2016. Emotion, anthropomorphism, realism, control: Validation of a merged metric for player--avatar interaction (PAX). Computers in Human Behavior 54 (2016), 215--223. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2015.07.030
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Autumn Edwards, Chad Edwards, David Westerman, and Patric R Spence. 2019. Initial expectations, interactions, and beyond with social robots. Computers in Human Behavior 90 (2019), 308--314. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2018.08.042
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Donald Horton and R Richard Wohl. 1956. Mass communication and para-social interaction: Observations on intimacy at a distance. Psychiatry 19, 3 (1956), 215--229. https://doi.org/10.1080/00332747.1956.11023049
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Melissa L Lewis, René Weber, and Nicholas David Bowman. 2008. "They may be pixels, but they're MY pixels:" Developing a metric of character attachment in role-playing video games. CyberPsychology & Behavior 11, 4 (2008), 515--518. https://doi.org/10.1089/cpb.2007.0137
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Gregory Little. 1999. An avatar manifesto. Intertexts 3, 2 (1999).
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Mark Stephen Meadows. 2007. I, avatar: The culture and consequences of having a second life. New Riders.
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Johnny Saldaña. 2009. The coding manual for qualitative researchers. Sage Publications Ltd, Thousand Oaks, CA, Chapter 3, 45--145.
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Sarah J Tracy. 2012. Qualitative research methods: Collecting evidence, crafting analysis, communicating impact. John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, NJ.

Cited By

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  • (2022)Diseño emocional e inmersión en videojuegos narrativos. El caso de Detroit: Become HumanPalabra Clave10.5294/pacla.2022.25.4.325:4(1-27)Online publication date: 23-Dec-2022
  • (2022)Moral Minds in GamingJournal of Media Psychology10.1027/1864-1105/a00032334:5(287-298)Online publication date: Sep-2022
  • (2021)Becoming Human? Ableism and Control in Detroit: Become Human and the Implications for Human-Machine CommunicationHuman-Machine Communication10.30658/hmc.2.72(137-152)Online publication date: 15-Jan-2021

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cover image ACM Conferences
HRI '20: Companion of the 2020 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction
March 2020
702 pages
ISBN:9781450370578
DOI:10.1145/3371382
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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Association for Computing Machinery

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Published: 01 April 2020

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Author Tags

  1. androids
  2. attachment
  3. human-robot interaction
  4. video games

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Cited By

View all
  • (2022)Diseño emocional e inmersión en videojuegos narrativos. El caso de Detroit: Become HumanPalabra Clave10.5294/pacla.2022.25.4.325:4(1-27)Online publication date: 23-Dec-2022
  • (2022)Moral Minds in GamingJournal of Media Psychology10.1027/1864-1105/a00032334:5(287-298)Online publication date: Sep-2022
  • (2021)Becoming Human? Ableism and Control in Detroit: Become Human and the Implications for Human-Machine CommunicationHuman-Machine Communication10.30658/hmc.2.72(137-152)Online publication date: 15-Jan-2021

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