My Avatar, My Self: Identity in Video Role-Playing Games By Zach Waggoner
(Read Chapter 1. page 3-20)
Summary:
Within this online text, Waggoner dives into understanding the relationship between the Avatar and it's Player. He begins by explaining his interested in games with Role-playing characters. When he began playing as the Avatar, he found himself obsessing over quests, decisions making skills, armor, weapons, skill strength, and so on. Waggoner found himself not only losing sleep, but playing his game more than 18 hours a day. After coming to terms with his addiction, Waggoner decided to research this odd connection between himself and his avatar. Begging the question: Is my addiction and commitment to this Role-Playing game based on the concept that I AM the avatar? And, if so, what is it that pulls me into this virtual reality and away from my real world reality?
More over, Waggoner does an amazing job at tracing the source of his addiction and creates an accurate understanding for the relationship between avatar and player. He uses scholarly research studies as well as a history of video games themselves. This processes helps the reader understand the difference between user avatar relationships within a story mode video game (Uncharted or Tomb Raider) and a Role Playing Games (Morrowind or Wold of Warcraft). The RPG's (Role Playing Games) allow the user the freedom to create their own avatar in any way they choose. Also, this virtual world allows the avatar the freedom to choose their own missions and explore the virtual world as they see fit. This freedom of molding and exploring with the avatar, builds the bridge that connects the player with their avatar, essentially making them one.
Response:
At first, I did not fully understand the difference between an Actor and an Avatar, so establishing the two clears up the various connections gamers have with different types of game play. For example: an person who likes to play Video Games is more interested in a story mode game like Tomb Raider; where they player plays the character Laura Craft as a third person, with some side mission access but limited to free exploration. They are aware that they are not Laura and have to play the game as it progresses attempting to defeat whatever task lies ahead. But, with a V-RPG (Virtual Role Playing Game), the player can project his/herself into the avatar ergo, they are the playing the game.
Distinguishing the difference really helps me see that the avatars are a part of us and we enter this virtual space with the intention to explore a world that is not physically at reach. The avatar also allows us to make decision we wouldn't normally make in real-life but also, allows us to create a better version of who we want to me. As we shape and mode our avatar, we in turn become the healer, the explorer, the scavenger, the wizard, or the brave fighter. We project a secret part of ourselves, whether consciously or unconsciously, into the avatar.
Therefore, I--is, am, are--the avatar.
Quotations:
"[An avatar is] a virtual, surrogate that acts as a stand in for our real-space selves, the represents the user. The cyberspace avatar functions as a locus that is multifarious and polymorphous, displaced from the facility of our real-space selves... Avatar spaces indisputably involve choice in the creation of one's avatar; there is substantial scope in which to exercise choice and create meaning [within the video game.] " (9)
" In games we have a chance to enact our most basic relationship to the world--our desire to prevail over adversity, to survive our inevitable defeats, to shape our environment, to master
complexity, and to make our lives fit together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle." (10)
Waggoner,
Zach. My Avatar, My Self: Identity in Video Role-Playing Games. Jefferson,
North Carolina. McFarland & Company, Inc. 2009.
Rachel, I'm wondering after reading this summary, what process games use to create avatars as opposed to actor, a distinction I appreciate. James Paul Gee says that video games encourage interaction between three identities, the one in the game, which he calls the virrtual identity, our identity outside the game, our real identity, and a projective identity. He uses that term to talk about how we project our identity into our virtual character, and that the virtual identity is a project that we are creating by playing the game. He's writing about WoW and the way the game is set up so the avatar in the game grows and matures, which itself creates certain attachments between the avatar and the player.
ReplyDeleteI just finished reading "Ready Player One," and it seemed to me that's the connection between player and avatar that got overlooked in that novel.
Yes, this form of projection is mentioned within the article, along side many different understandings and forms of connection between the avatar and the player. I will make sure to go more in depth next time.
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