Spirit of Seriousness and Bad Faith

Abstract

This theoretical essay explores the players experience and situatedness within the game world from an internal perspective, seeking to understand the conditions of a gameplay situation as a "self-avatar". It analyzes the aspects of the gameworld, the player, and the avatar of The Vanishing of Ethan Carter to illustrate and to support its arguments about the meaning-making process forward the self-avatar in-game situatedness. It contextualizes existentialist concepts referring to life situation developed by Jean-Paul Sartre, such as bad faith and spirit of seriousness, in the gameplay situation, reflecting theoretically on the in-game relationship between being, player, and avatar through the intersection of philosophy and games studies. It proposes that the production of meaning and players interpretation of their individual experience occur due to the interplay between multiple perspectives, opened by the complexity of the player’s situatedness towards the game, the avatar, and the gameworld. It endorses that the player’s perspective and situatedness within the gameworld cannot be experienced separately from the avatar, since the self-avatar is an emergent being situated within the gameworld consisting both of the player’s existence and intentional acts, as well as the features of the avatar.