Abstract

How do patterns of digital gameplay influence the functional and social roles, personal identity, and the relationship between a player and their avatar? From Turkle to today, existing theories of online identity seem to suggest that these identities are fragmented bits of the self, cycled through and discarded with ease. In Game Studies, focus has often been on the creation of the digital persona and its representation, the avatar. Through auto-ethnographic research and informed by the literature culled from Game Studies, Sociology (Symbolic Interactionism, Stuctural Functionalism) and Social Psychology, I explicate the way actions, tasks and goals create interwoven patterns of play that structure multi-layered digital identities within social and functional roles of the game. Within the construct of character creation, gameplay, and role identities, relationships between the player, avatar, physical environment and other players develop and redefine perceptions and meanings, which shape and harmonize identities. Far from being fixed internally in the player, these identities are interwoven through internal and external interactions, creating perceptions and performances of play that emerge as complex negotiated selves, interacting between spaces in the self and the social.