bort

Joined: 04 Dec 2006 Location: Are you related to Bandai and Namco takes of games Sent from my iPhone
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Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 2:35 am |
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| ic wiki wrote: |
| An avatar may not be controlled by a player. It may be controlled by an AI Agent. |
I think this is backwards!
Hindu avatars are incarnations of gods.
Forum avatars are representations of humans.
The term avatar in these and most every other definition I have seen implies that there is something of human (or higher) consciousness behind it, or at the very least a foreign influence. Artificial intelligence is not human, not conscious, and is a part of the game system. There are about a billion other terms that could be used to describe AI objects (for one, "objects") more accurately and without contradicting other definitions. Also, the term's most famous use in games is as the title of the player character in the Ultima series.
I wrote this horribly and cannot think today, but in short I do not know where one would get the idea the term would apply to anything BUT player characters (PS: I realize there is no established gaming lexicon but it still doesn't make any sense).
Also in a lot of games (RPGs for example, lots of puzzle games) you do not control a (physical) object or character at all. Anything with substantial menu diving has you playing mostly as a cursor, and in tile-moving puzzle games (unless the player character is "all tiles") you play as the force that spins things around and moves them. Even "avatar" would be stretching it for these. |
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