Survey: Portrayal of the Self in Gaming

[ImNeat]

A friend/co-worker of mine is doing research for an article to be published in a journal. The subject is gender and gaming, and the focus is how the general gaming public views their 'physical' image in the games they play. That is, if individuals feel their characters imagery sufficiently portray them personally (or if it even matters).

If any of you are video gamers (console or PC), and would take a second to complete this short public survey, I am sure she would appreciate it greatly.

And please discuss... I'll pass on any interesting thoughts to her.

Thanks!

(Also, it would be great if anyone could pass the survey on to a female willing to fill it out. That would help achieve some gender balance in the study).

[fingal]

I don't think gamers see themselves as the characters they play ... I mean, I've never played a game and thought 'This character is me, and I want it to look and feel like me.' It's more like being absorbed in a good book or an interesting film.

Having said that, I'm not a hardcore gamer ... just an occasional late night RPG man.

[zba78]

Perhaps your friend might want to take a look at Nintendo Wii's concept of the Mii. details here

PS. Just done the survey (and left a 'good luck' note at the end)

[Roxoff]

It's an interesting point. I'm sure there are people about who do try to play themselves when they get the chance to do something else. But I dont see the point. As I said in the survey, I spend all day as 'me', when I get the chance to play a game as someone or something else, I like to take it.

I've known hardcore gamers that just take the defaults in everything - for multi-player 1st person shooters (doom/quake/unreal, etc) its quite a 'disguise' to look like some newbie that hasn't worked out how to customise their character yet.

[fingal]

It's an interesting point. I'm sure there are people about who do try to play themselves when they get the chance to do something else. But I dont see the point. As I said in the survey, I spend all day as 'me', when I get the chance to play a game as someone or something else, I like to take it.

I've known hardcore gamers that just take the defaults in everything - for multi-player 1st person shooters (doom/quake/unreal, etc) its quite a 'disguise' to look like some newbie that hasn't worked out how to customise their character yet.

I got the name 'fingal' from playing a MUD, and the gaming experience is very different there. You slip into 'acting the part' if you play too much .. even if 'it's only text based'. The human imagination is powerful beyond belief.

Sometimes while I was playing I would forget about my body, and in a sense I could 'see' the 'places' I was in. This takes some people over ... I met some of the gamers I used to play with, and they were mostly in their 20s, but they couldn't call me by my real name! You can bond with people very strongly in a MUD, and it can feel very very personal indeed. As someone said, 'The game might not be real, but the fear is.'

I felt slightly reassured when someone said to me, 'I like Fingal ... he uses all his spells when he fights, not just one.' Phew ... they don't think I AM Fingal, but it could feel that way. In a sense, games can involve you emotionally. I stopped playing for those reasons .. It was too intense for me.

[techieMoe]

Although I've known people that tend to take on the name of their in-game avatars, I can't say I've ever met anyone who took on the actual outer visage. When I was in college the popular thing in my dorm was Counterstrike, and most of the guys on my floor knew each other by our call signs (I was "Fritz" or "Rev" to most of them, and they were names like "Grot", "Stucco", "Fatty" and "Swollen Ostrich"). There are some (such as the aforementioned group) that I still do not know by their proper names.

I tend to take a default avatar in FPS and RPG games. After all, to me it's just a game. It doesn't matter to me whether my in-game character resembles me in real life (in fact, I'd rather he/she not for privacy reasons). On Elder Scrolls 3 and 4 I was generally either an Orc or a Redguard, which to the uninitiated looks pretty much like a black guy. In Diablo 2 when I played on BattleNet I was generally an Amazon, so in that case I wasn't even playing my own gender. They're just games.