In a digitally mediated society, usership becomes a permanent means of production and consumption, confusing the role of the user as consumer, when in fact she is more often the unconscious producer of data goods. Labour hides behind the appearance of control. Control Freak proposes its controller(s) as a chance to replay the game and notice our dominant behaviours in digital interactions.
Walking, jumping and interacting as a headless low poly early Lara Croft is an homage to the online myth regarding the 3d designers ‘accidental’ enlargement of her breasts. The oversexualization of female playable characters has by now been proven to negatively affect the behaviour and mental state of the player, resulting in self-objectification, commonly known as the ‘Proteus effect’1.
1 Fox, Jesse, Jeremy N Bailenson, and Liz Tricase. “The Embodiment of Sexualized Virtual Selves: The Proteus Effect and Experiences of Self-Objectification via Avatars.” Computers in Human Behavior 29 (2013): 930–38. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2012.12.027
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