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• 1 2023-12-08T18:26:35+00:00 It Paints Me (1) 43 "It Paints Me" Page 1 plain 2023-12-09T01:32:42+00:00 In "It Paints Me," there are only three times when the player is asked to make a choice between two alternate paths. The first two are pictured below. For the first one, the artist has to choose between painting Marie's face and painting her hair. For the second one, the artist has to choose between remembering the photographs they put on the wall in the hallway or the paintings. 
  
  So the question is, how much agency does this give the player? In Janet Murray's chapter, "Agency," of her book "Hamlet on the Holodeck," she writes, "Agency is the satisfying power to take meaningful choices and see the results of our decisions and choices. We expect to feel agency on the computer when we double click on a file and see it open before us." (126) The type of agency she is describing, where the player feels as if they are in charge of the story and deciding the outcomes themselves, seems to be demonstrated when the players make these two choices, but actually, these choices are relatively unimportant in the grander scheme of things; no matter what the player chooses, the sequence of events after the choice is made is exactly the same and the story remains mostly unchanged. The paths only branch off into two outcomes for a second before they merge again to continue telling the same exact story. It feels like satisfying power, because for a moment, the player clicks on one of the choices and sees the results happen on the screen, but choosing to paint Marie's hair versus her face in that moment will not change Sam's mental state or his actions thereafter.