The Digital Materiality of Amiibo

The debate around the digital materiality of books and other texts has sprouted ever since they first started to be digitized. Even though the text from the books is directly digitized, the experience of reading a book is changed. Many argue that while the digital surrogates of print books preserve the verbal content, their meaningful physical features are largely obscured in the digitisation process (Forlini & Hinrichs, 2017). However, digital materiality also works the other way around. What does digital materiality mean when the object is not digitized, but the digital is made into an object?

One company that decided to create an object just like that was Nintendo. In 2014, they first released Amiibo Toys all around the globe. Amiibo work in an exciting way; all Amiibo look like figurines from Nintendo's most popular game franchises, like Super Mario, Smash Bros, Animal Crossing and, like in this object's case, the Legend of Zelda. The Amiibo used to create a 3D model can be seen here. Thus far, Nintendo has released 188 different figurines, so there is a lot to collect for fans of the game series. Therefore, one function of the Amiibo is to be a collectable, visually appealing, decorative piece of PVC plastic.

It is, however, interesting to think about how the physical object impacts its digital counterpart. According to the theories of digital materiality, digital surrogates of objects often preserve the literal context but not their meaningful physical features, as these are obscured in the digitisation process (Forlini & Hinrichs, 2017). But, in the case of the Amiibo, this happens the other way around. The Amiibo brings new affordances and meaning to an object that was previously only a 3D model on a screen. While the Amiibo certainly cannot behave like its in-game counterpart, it allows for a character to gain new forms of materiality, such as size, weight, texture, and the possibility to really look up close to a 'real-life’ version of what was previously digital (Forlini & Hinrichs, 2017). To add to the reversed digital materiality, the Amiibo have another trick up their sleeve: not only can they cross the borders between digital and physical, but they can even mediate between those worlds.

As seen in this video, the Amiibo can be used in-game for a variety of purposes, including access to bonuses and enhancing the overall gameplay experience.

Amiibo work with an NFC tag in the base of the figurine. The bottom simply needs to be tapped to the NFC tag point on the Nintendo Switch game system. When tapped, the player will receive their gift or bonus! The duality of the function of the Amiibo adds to the way that users interact with the object. These two affordances endow it with what Lester describes as dualistic performativity: combining information and sensory or emotional experiences (Lester, 2018).

On the one hand, the Amiibo can be seen as a piece of information since it generates content by giving the player gifts or bonuses. But the Amiibo is also primarily physical in nature; the player can hold the figurine, feel its texture, and look at it even when not playing the video game. It is also important to realize that affordances do not shape meaning separately; they should be seen as elements that interact and shape meaning together. The physical and digital combination makes the Amiibo unique in its digital materiality and performativity.

Combining the physical and digital has another way to improve engagement. The way Amiibo mediates between the physical and digital means that the object mutates and thus implies that the way the object is perceived changes (Varnalis-Weigle, 2016). Although the affordances of a physical object like a figurine may be readily perceived through its design, shape, feel and texture, in the case of virtual imaging, this is not so much the case (Coulton et al., 2014). 

Like seeing a character move on screen, virtual imaging needs to be dynamically attributed to gain perception of feel and shape. An Amiibo can help the player perceive these affordances through the screen since the player can relate what he sees on screen with the affordances of the figurine. It is also important to note that engagement with the Amiibo is highly dependent on emotional, personal and social experiences, as well as memories the player may have (Drucker, 2013). A player who has fond memories and experiences of a game will most likely respond more positively to the affordances of an Amiibo from a game they like since they have already built an emotional connection with the digital character. 

So, Nintendo embraced innovative technologies in providing users with a way their collectables would create more engagement while gaming, and generate more revenue from selling the Amiibo (Varnalis-Weigle, 2016). Nintendo re-evaluated the meaning of the vessel, the figurine, and turned it into something new that the player could experience. This is not the first time that Nintendo has done such a thing; back in 2011, when the Nintendo 3DS was first released, Nintendo decided to include so-called "AR (augmented reality) cards" with each system. By pointing the camera of the 3DS towards the AR card, minigames could be played which combine the physical world with the digital world.

Both the AR cards and Amiibo re-evaluate the meaning of the vessel and turn it into something that increases player engagement and changes the materiality of both the object and its digital counterpart. 

Instead of looking at a card or figurine, the user sees how the objects in real life translate to their experience on screen, whether in a minigame or by getting gifts in another game. These innovations give new meaning to the object and the digital and are salient examples of the potentialities of digital materiality and dualistic performativity.  

References

Clark, W. (2015, 16 December). Nintendo’s Amiibo succeed and fail at the same time. VentureBeat. Retrieved 27 January 2022, from https://venturebeat.com/2015/12/16/nintendos-amiibo-succeed-and-fail-at-the-same-time/

Coulton, P., Burnett, D., Gradinar, A., Gullick, D., & Murphy, E. (2014). Game design in an internet of things. ToDIGRA, 1(3).

Drucker, J. (2013). Performative Materiality and Theoretical Approaches to Interface. Digital Humanities Quarterly, 7(1). http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/7/1/000143/000143.html

Forlini, S., & Hinrichs, U. (2017). Synesthetic visualisation: balancing sensate experience and sense making in digitised print collections. Proceedings of the conference on Digital Preservation for Social Sciences and Humanities.

Lester, P. (2018). Of mind and matter: the archive as object. Archives and Records, 39(1), 73-87. https://doi.org/10.1080/23257962.2017.1407748

Varnalis-Weigle, A. S. (2016). A Comparative Study of User Experience between Physical Objects and Their Digital Surrogates. Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies, 3(1).