What does "Agency" mean in regards to games?

Okay, I give up. It seems like the word "agency" is the latest buzzword in gaming reviews and podcasts. Over the past year I've heard it used with increasing frequency. I thought I had the gist of the word but then I'll hear it in a context that confuses me.

Sorry to clutter up the forum with my ignorance but help me out. What does "agency" mean when used in regards to gaming?

Agency is the level of control that a player feels they have in a game world. Games with minimal agency are those like the on-rail shooter where your only choice is either to shoot or die. Games with a lot of agency are more difficult to define. One example might be Dragon Age where the choices you make at each major plot point significantly effect the narrative. Another might be a physics puzzle game like Crayon Physics Deluxe where multiple solutions for any given puzzle are possible and the player can come up with whatever solution they feel is appropriate.

It's an MMO about spies if I understand you correctly.

Agency refers to the player's ability to control and manipulate the game. Not control like controller inputs, but does the player's actions have consequences in and effects on the game world. Usually the more scripted and linear the game, the less agency the player possesses.

Ah, thank you so much for clearing that up for me. I think I get it now. Fallout 3 = high agency and COD4 has practically no agency.

Nuean wrote:

Of all the buzzwords I hate, I think I hate this one most of all.

It's not so much a buzzword as an old term used by philosophers and sociologists that is only recently catching on in describing games.

Of all the buzzwords I hate, I think I hate this one most of all.

EDIT:
I hate this so much, I'm going to be that guy. I'm officially creating a new buzzword to replace agency. Effectancy!

If people want to talk about how much they can have an effect on the game world, they need a word that people can grasp the meaning of dammit!

So there it is, effectancy. Feel free to let the internet know.

TheArtOfScience wrote:

Ah, thank you so much for clearing that up for me. I think I get it now. Fallout 3 = high agency and COD4 has practically no agency.

As Chief Spanner Thrower, I'm going to argue that in some regards, COD4 gives the player more agency than Fallout, notably with the tactical depth of the combat.

I consider agency to revolve around choice. The number of ways to play multiplayer in COD is huge. Do you play a sniper, a stabby guy, an anti-aircraft build? Do you camp, or run around like a loon? Where do you camp? Do you set up claymores around your camping spot? Which parts of the map are you going to plot up in? Do you play team deathmatch, free-for-all, or objective games? How much use of cover do you make? Which weapons do you use? Are you playing for kills, experience, challenges or fun?

I would argue that COD provides the player with a lot of agency, which is why it sells like hotcakes.

Fallout 3, of course, also provides a similar level of choice in the realm of how you play the combat sections, but provides another layer of agency in that you have free access to the Wasteland, with full agency over where you go and what you do when you get there.

IUMogg wrote:

Agency refers to the player's ability to control and manipulate the game. Not control like controller inputs, but does the player's actions have consequences in and effects on the game world.

Ahhh, but can you say that a player has agency if the game is set up to allow them a great deal of choice (Fallout 3), but they lack expertise with the controller which is required to enact their decisions?

For example, if you don't know that you can click in the thumbsticks on a 360 controller, you would never be able to use stealth.

How does agency apply to 'button-mashers', who can sometimes win a round or match but have no real idea how they did so?

Not trying to pick on you Mogg, just stirring the pot!

Jonman wrote:
TheArtOfScience wrote:

Ah, thank you so much for clearing that up for me. I think I get it now. Fallout 3 = high agency and COD4 has practically no agency.

As Chief Spanner Thrower, I'm going to argue that in some regards, COD4 gives the player more agency than Fallout, notably with the tactical depth of the combat.

I think in his example he's referring to the single-player campaigns.

Switchbreak wrote:
Nuean wrote:

Of all the buzzwords I hate, I think I hate this one most of all.

It's not so much a buzzword as an old term used by philosophers and sociologists that is only recently catching on in describing games.

It's a common legal term. A quarter of my corporations class was about agency. People who act on behalf of others are agents, like a sports agent.

Okay. I'm confused again.

Choosing a kit in COD doesn't change your impact on the world it changes the method you utilize to cause that change.

Does that mean that a game like SF4 has high agency because you can select Ryu or Chun Li and your style/strategy changes due to that characters strenghs and weaknesses?

If that is the case then it would seem that any game with any RPG elements is a high agency game and...uh...Lucas Arts adventure games are low agency.

Nuean wrote:

Of all the buzzwords I hate, I think I hate this one most of all.

No way. "Adaptive Parkour".

Agency is usually in reference to single player experiences, since multiplayer has an assumed level of choice in the same way sports do. Comparing CoD multiplayer to Fallout single player kind of skips around the usual context entirely. You're not wrong, but it's not really the way agency is typically discussed in podcasts and the like.

IUMogg wrote:

Agency refers to the player's ability to control and manipulate the game. Not control like controller inputs, but does the player's actions have consequences in and effects on the game world. Usually the more scripted and linear the game, the less agency the player possesses.

Spot on!

Okay, I think I got it.

When I cited COD I meant the single player. Probably a poor example but it sprung to mind because of the sheer linearity of the campaign.

When it is phrased like IUMogg put it I compehend it. That explanation requires not only choice, but consequence. The act of changing the world around you through gameplay points towards a causal relationship between the choiced made by the player and the effects on the gameworld.

For instance choosing between two generic God of War attacks isn't really high agency because there is very little consequence whereas playing as good or evil in Fable has very high agency because there are myriad consequences to your actions.

Hopefully I'm close, lol.

TheArtOfScience wrote:

If that is the case then it would seem that any game with any RPG elements is a high agency game and...uh...Lucas Arts adventure games are low agency.

Broadly, I agree with that.

If Nuean doesn't like "agency", he's gonna hate "reification"!

Gravey wrote:

If Nuean doesn't like "agency", he's gonna hate "reification"!

Hey, I tried to take it out of academic crypto-speech, I really did.

TheArtOfScience wrote:

If that is the case then it would seem that any game with any RPG elements is a high agency game and...uh...Lucas Arts adventure games are low agency.

Like Jonman, I generally agree with this, though the term "RPG elements" could mean any number of things. LucasArts adventure games, though, are definitely at the "low" end of the spectrum, in my opinion.

OzymandiasAV wrote:

Janet Murray's Hamlet on the Holodeck is the first place that I encountered "agency" in discussion of storylines in games, but I think my interpretation actually lies closer to the one presented in a Karen & Josh Tanenbaum paper from last year.

Murray's take on agency is that it's a "satisfying power to take meaningful action and see the results of our decisions and choices." She couches agency in the realm of player choice, though she concedes that it's limited to the number of choices made available to the player by the developer. In my opinion, this definition fits works best when describing the player's capacity for driving one of many possible storylines in a game, like in Dragon Age or Fallout 3.

Tanenbaum proposes a bit of a different approach, one that isn't so reliant on choice. In her paper, she talks about player types that are "less concerned with limitless – but meaningless – freedom, and is instead interested in some systematic reification of the meanings which she is performing as an inhabitant of this world." In other words, this player isn't as concerned with choice as much as they are with their actual involvement in the events that occur in the game.

This is where games like Half-Life or Modern Warfare 2 (specifically, the "No Russian" level) enter the discussion. Even though those games don't really offer narrative choices or branches to the player, they push the storyline forward by making the player the agent of change; they put the player directly into the role of performing some action, an action that might be shown to the player through a cutscene in another game.

For me, it comes down to who -- or what -- is actually driving change in the game's state, either through the narrative or in the game world itself. It's not a binary condition: all games have agency (by virtue of being part of an interactive medium), some more than others.

I think both Murray and Tanenbaum (I've actually met Josh Tanenbaum! I'm an undergrad in SIAT) regard agency more as an aesthetic than a mechanic. Which is to say, giving the player 40 different endings does not in itself supply more agency than giving the player 1; agency is instead the sensation of empowerment, of feeling like you are able to affect the game world or characters, regardless of how you actually can affect it in a mechanical sense. In Tanenbaum's terms, if a game can make you really really want to do something and then do it for you (the famous MGS 4 scene), you are experiencing the sensation of agency even when your actual choice in the matter is minimal.

For me the textbook example is the pivotal scene in Portal. (Uh, spoiler alert.) Escaping from the fire pit is in some ways an action that the game does not want you to perform; there is no little green arrow, no visual cue in the distance, and more important GLaDOS offers no hints about your imminent death being avoidable. Thus, the sensation of having transcended the rules of GLaDOS' game (ie: Portal, the game) can be described as a sensation of agency.

Janet Murray's Hamlet on the Holodeck is the first place that I encountered "agency" in discussion of storylines in games, but I think my interpretation actually lies closer to the one presented in a Karen & Josh Tanenbaum paper from last year.

Murray's take on agency is that it's a "satisfying power to take meaningful action and see the results of our decisions and choices." She couches agency in the realm of player choice, though she concedes that it's limited to the number of choices made available to the player by the developer. In my opinion, this definition fits works best when describing the player's capacity for driving one of many possible storylines in a game, like in Dragon Age or Fallout 3.

The Tanenbaums propose a bit of a different approach, one that isn't so reliant on choice. In that paper, they talk about a player type that are "less concerned with limitless – but meaningless – freedom, and is instead interested in some systematic reification of the meanings which she is performing as an inhabitant of this world." In other words, this player isn't as concerned with choice as much as they are with their actual involvement in the events that occur in the game.

This is where games like Half-Life or Modern Warfare 2 (specifically, the "No Russian" level) enter the discussion. Even though those games don't really offer narrative choices or branches to the player, they push the storyline forward by making the player the agent of change; they put the player directly into the role of performing some action, an action that might be shown to the player through a cutscene in another game.

For me, it comes down to who -- or what -- is actually driving change in the game's state, either through the narrative or in the game world itself. It's not a binary condition: all games have agency (by virtue of being part of an interactive medium), some more than others.

Gravey wrote:

If Nuean doesn't like "agency", he's gonna hate "reification"!

I like it when vowels touch like that. It's hot.

4xis.black wrote:

I think both Murray and Tanenbaum (I've actually met Josh Tanenbaum! I'm an undergrad in SIAT) regard agency more as an aesthetic than a mechanic. Which is to say, giving the player 40 different endings does not in itself supply more agency than giving the player 1; agency is instead the sensation of empowerment, of feeling like you are able to affect the game world or characters, regardless of how you actually can affect it in a mechanical sense. In Tanenbaum's terms, if a game can make you really really want to do something and then do it for you (the famous MGS 4 scene), you are experiencing the sensation of agency even when your actual choice in the matter is minimal.

I agree that empowerment is at the heart of the matter; my first post was intended to line out the different ways that empowerment can be achieved, through choice (Murray) or through action/immersion (Tanenbaum).

The MGS4 scene is an interesting one, though. To me, that moment comes across as a glorified QTE that banks on sheer immersion; the sensation that you get from performing the actions prompted on the screen is supposed to draw the player into Old Snake's situation, give them a small taste of what he's going through.

If you're willing to buy into that situation completely, then the moment pays off spectacularly. If you're not "all in", though, it ends up being a little frustrating, a protracted exercise in button-mashing that doesn't really align well with any of the other actions you've taken in the game to that point.

I'd be curious to hear Rob's take on that. I remember that he finished the game, kicking and screaming, but I don't remember his specific reaction to that moment.

4xis.black wrote:

For me the textbook example is the pivotal scene in Portal. (Uh, spoiler alert.) Escaping from the fire pit is in some ways an action that the game does not want you to perform; there is no little green arrow, no visual cue in the distance, and more important GLaDOS offers no hints about your imminent death being avoidable. Thus, the sensation of having transcended the rules of GLaDOS' game (ie: Portal, the game) can be described as a sensation of agency.

You see, my take on that moment is completely different. In my opinion, the exhilaration in that moment comes not from the fact that you're "transcending" the rules of the game, but from the twist itself, which immediately puts you into a compromising position with a limited time to react and save yourself.

Even though GLaDOS didn't immediately tell me that escape was possible, I subconsciously knew there was a way to make it out of that situation, as the game had already spent a couple of hours training my brain to look for inventive ways to use the Portal gun to escape from perilous situations. I was still operating within the "rules" of the game; it's just that the context in the game had changed.

That I was actually able to perform the escape from the fire pit myself served as an effective punctuation to the plot twist; GLaDOS turned the tables on me in this story, but I (as the player) turned them right back.

TheArtOfScience wrote:

Okay, I think I got it.

When I cited COD I meant the single player. Probably a poor example but it sprung to mind because of the sheer linearity of the campaign.

When it is phrased like IUMogg put it I compehend it. That explanation requires not only choice, but consequence. The act of changing the world around you through gameplay points towards a causal relationship between the choiced made by the player and the effects on the gameworld.

For instance choosing between two generic God of War attacks isn't really high agency because there is very little consequence whereas playing as good or evil in Fable has very high agency because there are myriad consequences to your actions.

Hopefully I'm close, lol.

Sounds like you got it. I think games have been experiencing some growing pains in trying to develop and expand the idea of agency in games. It's the conflict between the sandbox style and story. I think a recent example is GTA4. The more you give a player the chance to influence the game world and more options on completing goals, the harder it is to place a coherent narrative in that world. Many of the complaints I heard about GTA4 dealt with the disconnect between how the player chose to play as Niko and how the narrative forced certain actions on the players.

That is why heavy story based games tend to have the least amount of agency. The developers want you to play through the story they created in the way they want. I think that is why I was so turned off by Uncharted 2. That game allowed almost no agency. You had to go from point A to point B on the prescribed path. That path meant either taking out certain enemies or solving a puzzle in a specific way. The player had no control on how the story played out or how the goals where achieved outside of choosing their weapon and offensive strategy.

I also think that it's difficult to create an interesting sandbox. Most players require some motivation to spend a fair amount of time with a game outside of just playing in the sandbox by seeing what the systems created will allow. Developers have tried to create this motivation by forcing a narrative on top, but I'm not sure that has completely worked yet. There is also the issue that any created or authored work has a natural tendency to stray away from agency. Even the games that allow the most agency are restricted by the systems created by the developer.

Latrine wrote:

Agency is the level of control that a player feels they have in a game world.

More or less anyone saying this is right.

It is a word generally used, philosophically, to indicate that a being has a morality, freedom, is what we would call a person. You can really boil it down to do you actions have effects felt in the game world?

A game that really makes you feel like an agent in the world is one that treats your character as important, your actions have logical consequences. A game like Deus Ex, The Witcher, or Dragon age really seek to make the player feel like an active participant in events. Call of Duty, most MMO's you will typically have as much agency as a drop of water in a river.

Ideally, a sense of Agency is what truly can separate a game from movies, books, TV,

KingGorilla wrote:

A game that really makes you feel like an agent in the world is one that treats your character as important, your actions have logical consequences. A game like Deus Ex, The Witcher, or Dragon age really seek to make the player feel like an active participant in events. Call of Duty, most MMO's you will typically have as much agency as a drop of water in a river.

Agency can also exist without a designed plot (contra narrative, which players can construct by themselves). I would argue that games like The Sims give the player the most agency—but there's that sandbox-story conflict again.

Gravey wrote:
KingGorilla wrote:

A game that really makes you feel like an agent in the world is one that treats your character as important, your actions have logical consequences. A game like Deus Ex, The Witcher, or Dragon age really seek to make the player feel like an active participant in events. Call of Duty, most MMO's you will typically have as much agency as a drop of water in a river.

Agency can also exist without a designed plot (contra narrative, which players can construct by themselves). I would argue that games like The Sims give the player the most agency—but there's that sandbox-story conflict again.

I'd draw the distinction that there is narrative agency and gameplay agency. Half Life 2 or Portal have high gameplay agency, insofar as there are multiple ways to solve any one encounter, but the same narrative result. Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis and Ripley's Believe It or Not!: The Riddle of Master Lu have narrative agency, in that there are multiple paths through the game-story, but limited game-play-space. Some games, like Fallout or Deus Ex have both.

Gremlin wrote:
Gravey wrote:
KingGorilla wrote:

A game that really makes you feel like an agent in the world is one that treats your character as important, your actions have logical consequences. A game like Deus Ex, The Witcher, or Dragon age really seek to make the player feel like an active participant in events. Call of Duty, most MMO's you will typically have as much agency as a drop of water in a river.

Agency can also exist without a designed plot (contra narrative, which players can construct by themselves). I would argue that games like The Sims give the player the most agency—but there's that sandbox-story conflict again.

I'd draw the distinction that there is narrative agency and gameplay agency. Half Life 2 or Portal have high gameplay agency, insofar as there are multiple ways to solve any one encounter, but the same narrative result. Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis and Ripley's Believe It or Not!: The Riddle of Master Lu have narrative agency, in that there are multiple paths through the game-story, but limited game-play-space. Some games, like Fallout or Deus Ex have both.

I was thinking about a similar kind of difference, but didn't include it in my post. I was wondering about a distinction between low-level agency (what you call gameplay agency) and high-level agency (like your narrative agency, but not necessarily excluding gameplay breadth). So low-level agency would be exhibited in all those granular moment-to-moment decisions, with more agency meaning more meaningful options available to the player to solve a problem. Deus Ex, Fallout 3 would be examples of games with substantial low-level agency (attack, distract, sneak, negotiate, subvert, etc), whereas Half-Life 2 or Call of Duty have no substantial low-level agency (every encounter is: shoot). Same goes for adventure games, where there is only one solution for each puzzle.

Games with branching story paths, dynamic relationships, multiple endings, or no designed narratives, exhibit high-level agency. High-level agency can still be enacted moment-to-moment (e.g. The Sims), or maybe it only occurs at certain plot beats (e.g. Fallout 3, Mass Effect), but this form still requires meaningful input from the player that affects the overall course of the game's narrative, whether designed or player-constructed.

I probably cribbed that concept from somewhere, but I can't think where. If so, I don't think I explained it well enough, and if not, I don't think I've thought it through enough.

OzymandiasAV wrote:

This is where games like Half-Life or Modern Warfare 2 (specifically, the "No Russian" level) enter the discussion. Even though those games don't really offer narrative choices or branches to the player, they push the storyline forward by making the player the agent of change; they put the player directly into the role of performing some action, an action that might be shown to the player through a cutscene in another game.

For me, it comes down to who -- or what -- is actually driving change in the game's state, either through the narrative or in the game world itself. It's not a binary condition: all games have agency (by virtue of being part of an interactive medium), some more than others.

I guess I don't disagree with your definition so much as your examples. Just because I'm put in the role of an important actor in a given story, doesn't mean I feel a sense of agency.

In Half-Life, all the characters talk at you instead of to you. You're supposed to be the savior of Earth, but you really have no choice in the matter. You're jerked around by the G-Man, who follows you everywhere, keeping an eye on his pet hero. And at your most powerful moment (the romp through Half-Life 2's Citadel), the G-Man appears to remind you that you're still just a pawn.

I also felt almost no agency in Modern Warfare 2's "No Russian" scene, because I had no choice in the matter. If I refused to shoot the civilians, the other terrorists would march on without me. If I shot the terrorists, they'd kill me, and I'd be forced to restart the level. Then, once we started fighting the police officers, my teammates couldn't progress without my help.

I was utterly powerless. The whole time, I felt like I was struggling against Infinity Ward's painfully visible script.

TheArtOfScience wrote:

When I cited COD I meant the single player. Probably a poor example but it sprung to mind because of the sheer linearity of the campaign.

No, COD is the perfect example. You have the choice to move forward to hit the invisible button that stops the infinite number of terrorists from popping out of the tin shack, or you can stay where you are and shoot them as they come out until you die of old age.

This may have changed since COD 4, that was the last one I played.

Good thoughts. I don't even feel the need to add to this.

wordsmythe wrote:

Good thoughts. I don't even feel the need to add to this.

And yet... ^^