The Persistence of Agency within the Virtual World

This paper explores player agency in video games to consider the impact of visual persistence within the virtual environment. Drawing from philosophical, psychological, and game design theory, we argue that a player’s perceived impact on the virtual world, manifested through visual change can strengthen engagement and immersion. We support this with examples from commercial games. We propose that reactive environmental design, supported by approaches like agency informing techniques and player modeling systems, can reinforce a player’s sense of agency through persistent visual feedback. This paper argues a direction for future research into this novel research space.