My pre-determined freedom

I think the topic of video game agency is a very nice little pool of interesting thought. On the one hand we have those who go all shakespearian with their "can't controll your fate", "your virtual life is pre-determined" folk arguing against the existence of agency. And then you have them rebels who argue for the idea of agency in videogames. Those who, like Mel Gibson's William Wallace, desire nothing more than to have their birth-righted freedom expressed. So who is correct? I say why not both of them!

Anti-agency peeps have the point of videogames being a constructed space. As such, we are limited to the parameters some guy with developing carpal tunnel and jelly-donut crumbs on his shirt has set up. Theres no such thing as getting a 25 kill-streak nuke in farmville, nor is there the option to mug a prostitute in spyro. We are subject to the underlying codes written in terms of what is possible, and what is impossible in the diegetic world. In this regard, we are, as Kevin put it, 'rats in a maze'.

However like a rat we too have the ability to 'stop running'. A rat has the ability to run back or jump or scratch its butt if we so desired. Like the rat a gamer is restricted to a 'path', but we can still engage in this path in several ways. With games the ability to look or shoot or t-spin our brick or run a random hooker over allows us to express this agency however we feel. Yes jelly stained shirt dude programmed it to be so but the mere fact that you chose to run that hooker over and not "follow the road code" (LOL at that person) is exactly tha 'A or B example' of choice.

When these points are combined we see that they aren't counter intuitive, put work in conjunction with one another to create that experince that makes videogames what they are. The ability to act and affect, albeit within a certain framework, this diegetic world of the game. In other words, gamers are simply pseudo-scottish rats running over dead hookers in a maze cleverly constructed by some divine entity intent on making us fools of fortune. or there abouts.