Home

 › 

Articles

 › 

Is Your Gaming Avatar the REAL You?

Is Your Gaming Avatar the REAL You?

I possess an obnoxious tendency to overuse the share button on my PS4 to effortlessly post photos of my guild’s excursions in Final Fantasy XIV ‘s virtual realm of Eorzea to Facebook. On impulse, I subsequently tag myself and my guild in these photos. To most members of my social network, I’m sure they see mere snapshots of characters in a video game but when I look at them, I see a group of friends and recall the good times we’ve had. It’s gotten to the point where Facebook even automatically suggests tags for my Final Fantasy character. As far as Facebook is concerned, Benjamin Maltbie and his avatar, Keichii Lawliet, are one and the same.

This is the unique power of video games: immersion. It’s evident in the way gamers talk about video games as opposed to other forms of media. When a person talks about a movie, they talk about the actions of the characters. When they talk about a game, they often say things like “I slayed the Elder Primal Bahamut,” or “I learned a new ability.” Is this peculiar use of the word, I, which is used to refer to oneself, evidence that a player’s avatar is an extension of their actual self? It’s actually an intriguing metaphysical quandary.

Take, for instance, the phrase “I do.” Or, more specifically, “I got married to another player in a video game.” It may sound silly, but many MMO’s allow players to do just that. Now, obviously, in-game ceremonies, as romantic as they can seem, don’t actually imply any legal arrangement, nor are they accompanied with the gravitas of a “til death do we part,” vow. Regardless of these significant factors, explaining to one’s “real life” significant other that they chose to wed their character to another player’s may lead to an awkward conversation with a lot of explaining to do. What is the protocol in these arrangements? Is it irrelevant since the players are only roleplaying? And why are people so attracted to roleplaying in the first place?

Studies, like the one conducted by Joshua Smyth, a professor at the University of Syracuse, have shown that gamers who play MMOs often experience a decline in health and a tendency to lose track of time. They also report that they find the genre particularly rewarding. This is, perhaps, because of the way the games are designed. Largely social in nature, these games that put players in a large, complex world and allow players to constantly improve their character in a way which holds a high degree of visibility to the other inhabitants of the world. Social and economic ladders are also more tangible and easier to climb than in real world scenarios. Players really seem to get a sense of progress as their character gets stronger. Is it possible that they see their avatar as an extension of themselves? In some ways, this idea makes sense.

Video games require players to make thousands upon thousands of choices. The setting of the worlds are, indeed, fictional but the autonomy of the avatar is borrowed from the actual player. The movements, the socialization, and the paths to leveling up are all reflections of the player’s choices. In a manner, the internal nature of the player is being transferred to his or her avatar, opening a sort of window to the self for the game’s inhabitants to peer into. This effect seems to touch on the popular philosophical concept of dualism

It is immediately clear that the character itself has no material being, but dualism is an idea that separates body from mind. If the mind could be transplanted to another body, would the essence of self be significantly altered? If virtual reality could reach the point where the brain interacts directly with a computer interface and conveys sensory information to the player, is the digital version of a player representative of themselves? This is a question posited by films like “The Matrix,” but are video games just a less convincing version of The Matrix?

The idea of the self is a vague term, and it’s one that we rarely think about critically. Philosophers often consider the profound way in which the self develops over time. Is a mentally afflicted person who is said to be “not himself,” still, well, himself? Or, more curiously, are we the same as we were a decade ago? In most ways, the answer to this question is “no.” We are decidedly different from who we have been in the past, but if you tried to point to just when you changed and became something new, it would be impossible. The self seems to exist on a spectrum, unified over time. But what if the self isn’t just vague, temporally speaking? What if it is also vague in a spatial sense?

Andy Clark and David J. Chalmers explore this idea in their 1999 paper, “The Extended Mind,” where they wonder where the mind stops and the rest of the world begins. In the paper, they introduce the theory of “active externalism,” that suggests that a person’s cognition is partially driven by their environment. They give three hypothetical situations and find them fundamentally similar.

In the first situation, a person sits at a computer and looks at a two dimensional shape and is asked to solve spatial reasoning puzzles mentally. In the second, the person is able to press buttons to rotate the object visually on the computer, Tetris-style, to solve the puzzle. In the third situation, the person has a neural implant that allows them to bypass the button and rotate the object mentally. The first and third example seem nearly identical in terms of cognitive processes, but the only reason the second option would be logically different from the other two would be if the skin/skull boundary is considered proper justification. Clark and Chalmers find such reasoning insufficient.

Is Your Gaming Avatar the REAL You?

This theory leads to another interesting question about the self, once again complicated by this idea of things existing on a spectrum. How is an MMO player different from a Twitter user or someone who has represented themselves on a dating profile? All three examples are governed by different laws of physics and the rules for social engagement than in-person interactions. The information given is cultivated by the user, and gives an incomplete picture of the self, but, in the case of social networks, people rarely differentiate. It seems that what a person chooses to say on social media is an accurate enough reflection of themselves to the world, and their interactions are perceived as somehow more real, even if social networks are, in a fashion, make believe and fantasy. In games, where players make even more choices than those on a social network, the self seems equally present.

When a person refers to themselves, they have to do so in a temporal and spatial context. When they think of themselves, there are associations that go beyond some impossible to conceive core identity; Where were they? What did they believe? What did they feel? How did they act then and there? It seems that the concept of self is entirely vague and a person is able to consider all parts of themselves across the spectrum of space and time.

A game fueled by choices, and roleplaying as a general concept, whether it be in a fictional world inhabited by dragons or as an idealized version of oneself on Facebook, allows people to explore a variety of interests and desires. They can try new things and, temporarily, pretend to be something else. But those interests and desires in pretending are a reflection of something mental; they come from within. They may not be what you define yourself by, but they are a part of you. In this way, avatars seem to be extensions of some parts of some people. The importance of this extension is going to differ on an individual basis.

To top