I never thought so much about what it really means to identify with a character before reading the “He Could Be a Bunny Rabbit for All I Care!” piece[1]. I found myself trying to reflect what makes me connect with a character or avatar and having a hard time putting my finger on it.

            Generally, when making a custom avatar, I don’t tend to make them look like me. An exception to this is that I will often match my avatar’s hair color to my real-life current hair color. That’s about where the similarities end. I feel like when I’m making an avatar, I usually go for what I would like to look like instead of how I actually look. This typically means light grey eyes, a smaller nose, fuller lips. I don’t necessarily hate the way I look, but I also don’t want to spend hours looking at myself. Making a different looking character also helps me get into role-playing a bit more, I think. I feel like I would be too focused on my own real-world limitations with a character that looked just like me.

            Depending on the game, I might make my avatar look like another character from a game that I really like. Usually, in games where I’m playing as a caster (magic user), I will model my avatar after Yennefer from The Witcher 3. For example, I did this in Dark Souls 3 where I gave my pyromancy-welding avatar a small frame, luxurious black hair, and purple eyes. In The Witcher 3, you cannot play as Yennefer, so it’s extra fun for me to imagine being as badass as her in another game.

            In a lot of games that I play (Dark Souls 3, Red Dead Online, Bloodborne, Fallout 3, New Vegas, and 4, etc.), how your avatar looks has no bearing on how you play the game. However, when we were creating characters in World of Warcraft in class, I found my decisions were being limited by functional gameplay choices. Aesthetically, I was immediately drawn to the Draenei race; Something about humanoids with horns is really appealing to me. However, when I was looking over the class options, I noticed that the Draenei can’t be warlocks. I’ve played WoW in the past and the warlock class is my favorite. I generally like to play games as morally grey characters and I also really like demonic lore, so the warlock class fits perfectly with those preferences. In the end, I chose to make an undead character. I actually do really like the undead race and they were a close second choice for me, regardless of their ability to be warlocks. Obviously, I don’t identify with being a rotting reanimated corpse, but there are a few things I could relate to; A fascination with the macabre and a spookier/grumpier disposition. And the hair color, of course.

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[1] Shaw, Arienne. Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture, University of Minnesota Press, 2015.