Involvement And The Media

Humans are programmed to respond emotively to things that are perceived as human to them. A dog is not human to most people. However, when humans perceive them as a sort of human (a pet), they treat the dog as if it were another human. For example, a pet owner is unlikely to just toss the dead dog into the trash. Likewise, involvement is essential when consuming media.

There have been suggestions that game characters aren't personally identified with as much as movie characters. This is likely since gamers are given agency to determine the storyline. It is possible that the player character's real personality isn't fully formed in order to afford this degree of agency, and thus there isn't a fully established personality to empathize with. Moreover, movie characters are invariably more "realistic" in that they involve "real" people instead of animated sprites. Being more "human", these characters appear to be easier to relate to.

Hence, involvement appears to be determined to a large extent by the perceptions consumers have of the media personalities. If the personalities are viewed as incomplete or unrealistic, involvement decreases. However, the fact that games occasionally have fleshed-out characters that are seemingly human-like yet are unrelistically rendered indicates the possibility that visual aesthetics may not be as powerful as some suggest.