10.Avatars and personalities

New Note 8

For this assignment, I borrowed my friend's computer to play World of Warcraft for a few hours. The experiment went horribly wrong when I realized that I had no idea what to do at all, yet I hung in there and managed to figure a few things out.

I had a great time when I created my character. I chose to be a gnome mage because it sounded like the most benevolent. Most of the others sounded either annoying, stupid or malevolent and I didn't feel much like being malicious. I also chose the Expansive Mind trait because it stated that it increased intelligence and I liked the symbolic value of the idea.

At this point, I had to stop and consider that my case in regard to the Yee & Bailenson article, that it wasn't my choice of avatar that influenced how I played. It was more that I chose my avatar because of the way that I was going to play the game. I realize looking back that I was in a really strongly emotional state at the time and that I couldn't really break out of it by will of choice.

So I opted to instead create a different character with different traits. This time, I created an orc warrior with blood fury in order to contrast with my first one. While creating it, I decided to myself that it was considerably different when compared to the gnome mage that I had before.

And oddly, I started playing the game somewhat differently. I used my character for more aggressive ends than when I used my first. Was it because of this new avatar that I chose? I suppose it was, because there was no purpose to the game in my opinion in using the character for the way that I would have preferred to use it.

Nevertheless, I had no interest in it. I wasn't particularly enthusiastic about playing with the gnome mage that I created, but I absolutely hated playing with the orc warrior because of the image that it created. I abruptly dropped the task for a few hours and then came back and resumed with my first character. The experience was just as unfulfilling, but at least it didn't repulse me in the way that the orc warrior did.

So where does this leave Yee and Bailenson? Well, I figure that yes, the avatar did change the way that I played, but more importantly, it changed the way I felt about the game. This is what changed the way I played, but the effect was so strong on me that I had to stop and go back to using the gnome mage. I found that when using the mage, I could play a game that was more simple and humble whereas using the orc was exceedingly lavish, aggressive and destructive.

So my final conclusion is that the avatar did change my gameplay because it changed who I played as. Ultimately, it seems that the images that we create of ourselves (whether symbolically or materially) can have an extremely profound effect on the way we view ourselves.