It is useful to distinguish in this study a PC from an avatar. The player character (PC) is the in-game character which is controlled by the player and through which the player can act in the game world (Vella, 2016). One of the most important game elements when engaging the player in the game is the player character or avatar (Mallon, 2008 Tychsen et al., 2008 Lankoski, 2011).
As the effects of games on players have been mixed (Ferguson, 2007 Prot et al., 2012), it is necessary to gain a deeper understanding of how players engage with games. Video games are continuously gaining popularity not only as an entertainment medium, but also in fields such as art (Folkerts, 2010 Devine, 2017 Chew and Mitchell, 2020), education (Klopfer et al., 2009), and health (Baranowski et al., 2008 Colder Carras et al., 2018). We discuss how those findings should be taken into consideration when designing diverse and meaningful gaming experiences. The themes are “Tolerance of forced character switch”, “Malleability of character image” and “Flexibility of character attachment”. Through thematic analysis, three themes were found, illustrating the connection between aspects of the player-character relationship and the overall game satisfaction. We performed semi-structured in-depth interviews with 12 players of The Last of Us Part II, a game that has elicited highly polarized reactions in relation to how players responded to a switch of the PC in the game. We, therefore, investigated in this study how the player-character relationship influences satisfaction of the player with the game.
The diversity of players and the importance of the PC in the game suggests meaningful connections between how players relate to their PC and the resulting satisfaction with the game. While player characters (PCs) are the key element in engaging players in narrative games, the experience and relationship of the player with the PC have received scarce attention from the perspective of the subjective player experience.
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