A Gamer’s Identity

           I come home from a long and tedious day at school, walk into my room, pick up my Xbox controller, and suddenly I am in another universe. I can be a soldier, an assassin, or a professional soccer player competing in the world-cup. The choice is up to me. The best part is that I can share this reality with my friends. Video games allow me to share vivid experiences, unlike those attainable in everyday life. I can share these moments with my friends while with them in the same room or from different continents. Video games let me take a break from my stressful reality and relax with friends, but they offer more than that, too. Not only do video games offor an experience unattainable in any other way, video games fulfill real-world human needs in positive ways. Video games provide a space for people to express and explore their identity.

            Steven Johnson is a best-selling author of eight books including Interface Culture: How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create and Communicate which is considered one of the most important books explaining the way cybertechnology impacts human perception and communication. Johnson touches on the fact that gaming has intrinsic value, as when he says ,“I have no doubt that playing today’s games does in fact improve your visual intelligence and your manual dexterity, but the virtues of gaming run far deeper than hand-eye coordination,” (Johnson 486). Johnson argues that gaming is more than just mindless fun, but in fact is problem solving. Johnson explains that most of the time when playing a video game, you are stuck and trying to figure out how to progress forward.

As a gamer, I enjoy games that make me think and solve puzzles. One of my favorite games is Portal, which is a puzzle game developed by a team of MIT graduate students. The game forces players to utilize the physics of the upcoming science of, “portals,” which are used to teleport the player around puzzles. The game pushed me to think outside of the box and forced me to plan ahead. The concepts taught early in the game were built upon, just like lessons taught in school. The experience of abstract thinking and problem solving in this video game pushed me to learn in a way not available in the classroom.

            Video games present information that is much more appealing to kids and adults alike. Johnson tells a story in which he introduces his seven year old nephew to the popular city-building simulator SimCity. After an hour of explaining the mechanics of the game to his nephew, Johnson began to revive his rundown virtual manufacturing district. “As I contemplated my options, my nephew piped up: ‘I think we need to lower our industrial tax rates.”  One hour of playing a video game taught a seven year old the effects of high taxes industrial areas. “That’s a powerful learning experience,” explains Johnson (Johnson, 490).

            Not only do video games promote critical thinking, they also offer a space for players to find and express their identity. Online multiplayer games, like the popular World of Warcraft, allow players to create characters, or avatars. The characters that the player creates in multiplayer games are an expression of aspects of the player’s identity and ideal self. A person’s ideal self is who they want to be or eventually grow into, rather than who they actually are at the time. Research on online communities, like the World of Warcraft community, suggest that the identity a player creates in the virtual world are a union of their ideal selves and their actual identity. Sherry Turckle, Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, argues that online video game environments offer gamers the ability to create multiple versions of their identity and enables people to explore new and different aspects of their identity (Bessiere, 497).

“The Ideal Elf,” by Katherine Bessiere, A. Fleming Seay, and Sara Kiesler, is an essay that examines and discusses the relationship between gamers and the games they play. The three authors research the connections shared with technology and humans. In the Ideal Elf the authors focus on World of Warcraft. A survey of fifty-one World of Warcraft players was conducted in 2005, by the research team behind The Ideal Elf, to find the connection of the players’ identities and the games they play. The authors, “…consider the freedom and possibilities that come with creating an online character with ‘collaborators who have no prior knowledge of the player or his real-life situation.’” (Bessiere 495).

The survey was meant to determine whether players created characters more like themselves or like other people and also whether a players’ character was meant to represent their ideal identity. The data gathered from the survey, “…suggest that MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing game) virtual worlds offer players the opportunity to create idealized characters as virtual, alternate selves,” (501). On average, the participants rated that the characters that they created were more, “…conscientious, extraverted, and less neurotic then they themselves were,” (503). The results also showed that those who were more depressed or had lower self-esteem tended to use their characters to represent their ideal self. The authors of The Ideal Elf were able to conclude from the study that, “…despite the many rules, constraints, and difficulties of the game world, its anonymity and fantasy free players from the yoke of their real world-life history and social situation, allowing them to be more like the person they wish they were,” (503).

As a gamer, I experience creating characters that represent a mix of my identity and my ideal self. In a game that I was playing recently, the plot revolved around in game decisions that my character made. I tended to stick to the more moral decisions, even though it required more work. I would like to think that I did this because, if I was presented with a similar situation in the real world, I would make the moral choice. While I don’t think that an ancient alien species from deep space will attempt to take over the earth, the choices I made to eradicate the aliens represent choices I will have to make in real world later in life. In the game, the character that I created, representing my ideal self, took the harder path to save as many innocent lives as possible. This represents the fact that, in life, I hope to take the path to do the right thing instead of cutting corners.

While video games can be a place for people to express their identity, some argue that video games offer no benefit other than improving eye-hand coordination. In the newest version of Dr. Spock, a parent’s guide on how to raise children written by Benjamin Spock, pediatrician and author of a parenting advice book that was the second best-selling book  next to the bible for fifty-two years, said that, “…the only thing that video games offer to children is an improvement in eye-hand coordination,” and that “…they sanction, and even promote aggression and violent responses to conflict.” Spock’s opinion on the subject can be summed up with this, “…most computer games are a colossal waste of time,” (Johnson 482).

The opposition to video games reminds me of an old Yiddish proverb that my Dad likes to sprinkle on top of conversations whenever he can. In English it is translated to, “Too much of anything is not good.” Like anything else, video games must be used in moderation. Even Dr. Spock agreed that, “…video games are ideal teaching tools,” and that they can be a great way to “…stretch a child’s visual skills or logical thinking,” and can provide children who have trouble fitting in with others a, “…path to prestige and peer acceptance,” (Spock 744). Dr. Spock said that video games are a waste of time, but also said that they can be a great leaning tool, can provide children a way to socialize with others, and most importantly promote advanced and logical thinking.

                Video games, like any other learning tool, need to be used in balance with other tools to achieve their fullest potential. When used correctly, video games present information and lessons like no other form of media and can be a place for people to explore themselves and find their identity. Video games shaped my identity both by influencing who I am and by giving me a medium to express it. The community surrounding the world of video games is a community that I am proud to be a part of and without video games, I would not be who I am today.

Works Cited

Bessiere, Katherine. Seay Fleming. Kiesler, Sara. “The Ideal Elf: Identity Exploration In World

of WorldCraft.” From Inquiry To Academic Writing. 2nd ed. Boston: BedFord/St. Martin's, 2008. 481-84. Print. A Text and Reader.

Johnson, Steven. "Why Games Are Good For You." From Inquiry To Academic Writing. 2nd ed.

            Boston: BedFord/St. Martin's, 2008. 495-504. Print. A Text and Reader.

Spock, Benjamin, and Robert Needlman. Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care. 9th ed. New York:

Gallery, 2012. Print.