To browse Academia. Massively multiplayer online roleplaying games, or MMOs, present an increasingly popular digital media experience whereby identity emerges as players contribute materially to play but contributions are governed by affordances and constraints of the game. Although notions of identity and the Self in digital games have been examined through a number of approaches, it is still unclear how the way one sees the avatar in the uncanny situation of having two bodies β one digital, one physical β contributes to a sense of Self in and around these games.
Further, it is unclear how non-human objects contribute to human senses of Self. In that vein, this study examines two research questions: How do players have relationships with their avatars in a digital game? And how does the Self emerge in relation to those relationships?
Toward understanding how nonhumans play a role in the emergence of the Self, this study approaches these questions from an actor-network perspective, examining how human, nonhuman, material, and semiotic objects exist in complex webs of relations and how those relations give rise to particular senses of Self in relation to particular gameplay situations. Actor-Network Theory principles are integrated with postmodern notions of identity to propose a Network Model of Self.
In this model, the Self is a network of personas that are, themselves, complex networks of objects. To address the questions of how the Self emerges in relation to different player-avatar relationships, I conducted in-depth interviews with 29 players of the online digital game World of Warcraft.
Transcripts of those interviews were analyzed via thematic analysis for patterns in player-avatar relationships and via object-relation mapping for semantic and structural patterns in how object-relations give rise to persona- and Self-networks. Through this analysis, a four-point typology of player-avatar relationships emerged, characterized by variations in emotional intimacy, self-differentiation, perceived agency, and primary gameplay focus.
