A common beginning to video games, historically, has been a request to name the main character. This provides a sense of ownership over the character, and with that possessiveness comes ownership of emotion. The character’s problems become the player’s. In many games, this is taken a step further, where the game requests your name, asking you, the player, to become the character. One popular example of this is the Pokémon series of games, where the first thing a player sees, upon starting a new game, is a personal conversation with an arboreal professor, asking for the player’s own name (and appropriately enough for this post, gender.) Following this, the player’s name is called by the character’s mother (implying that this is their mother), clarifying that they have now entered the world of Pokémon.
Various techniques have been developed over the years to encourage this identification. For example, Earthbound (Nintendo, 1992) goes a step further, by asking the player for their favorite foods and to name their pet as well during character creation. These personal preferences are reflected throughout the game, popping up as Ness’s PSI powers and meals at home. (Admittedly, there is a much more powerful use of identification that could be a better example/counter to this point, but I consider Earthbound to be a sacred space that should not be violated without someone’s permission.) These do not have to be at character creation either, the Mass Effect (Bioware, 2007) franchise provides players with the ability to make meaningful choices, and tie the protagonist, an otherwise faceless Shepard’s entire being to their own moral and aesthetic choices, that resound throughout the cosmos of Mass Effect, and even between different games in the series, thanks to the signature save-file exportation feature. Pyre (Supergiant Games, 2017), does something similar with player performance in the rites: the Reader is defined by the player’s skill in addition to their choices. Plenty of other examples exist, particularly in regards to romance/dating options in games, but I decide to elide them to get to the point.
Dys4ia does not want the player to become the character, for the simple reason that the character is a representation of the author, Anthropy, herself. Besides her explicit statements on the matter (having taken down the game for the precise reason of people taking ownership of her experience), Anthropy demonstrates it by doing the opposite of many of the earlier techniques. For example: there is essentially no user feedback: no matter what the player does, or fails to do, the story continues. On a personal playthrough of the game, I completely misunderstood the objective of the shield minigames, and yet, I still continued. I could not control the game or its pace, and the avatar was fickle and changed without any sort of choice. I was not piloting the game, I was being taken for a ride.
Over the past few years, I’ve become more reluctant to name characters after myself in games. I’ve been uncertain of the distinction, am I playing the role of someone in an existing world, or am I meant to make the character a reflection of myself? While Pokémon is a game I have always considered to be a reflection of my self, things get a little murkier when I actually get the potential to interact with others. For example, and this might come as a surprise to some people, I have exactly 40 hours in Stardew Valley, while others at this point tend to be so invested that they play much longer. This is because I stopped playing after having a similar crisis.
When I first played Stardew Valley in high school, I considered the character to be a stand-in for myself, just as I had for a somewhat similar game, Animal Crossing: New Leaf, before. I believe that this is the the norm, given screenshots and interaction with the game’s community. A core feature of Stardew Valley is the ability to strike up friendships with, and eventually even romantic relationships with, the townspeople who live in the valley. After playing the game for about 40 hours, or two and a half in-game years, I had reached the point where the friendships begin to transition into something more. So I quit.
It felt strange to expose myself emotionally in a video game in that way. I’ve cried playing video games before, and I’ve had my face light up with glee as games rose to a climax. I’ve seen characters develop, and I’ve been happy to experience them as a story. However, I felt like Stardew Valley was outside my comfort zone, simply because it did too well a job at making me identify with the protagonist. The idea of being in a relationship was just too much for me then, especially because the specific mechanics of relationships in Stardew Valley feel somewhat shallow. (The primary way of gaining favor is to just keep giving gifts with repetitive dialogue on a regular basis.) I realize that this feeling might be alien to others, but I hope I’ve characterized it well enough that someone can tell me of similar experiences.
Since then, I’ve been wary about naming characters in games after myself. For the most part, I’ve refrained from doing so since, (with the exception of Pokémon and Dragon Quest games for sentimental reasons). I need that level of separation in order to have the freedom to not be myself in a game. Coming at Dys4ia from this angle, it’s no wonder that Anthropy eventually deplatformed her game. With this emotional framework, it would feel incredibly invasive for people to consider this game as something they are experiencing themselves, ignoring even the mechanics of the game, screaming “this is not made for you.”
This post genuinely opened my eyes to considering the rationale behind the practice of making a video game avatar a representation of yourself, something I’ve taken for granted since I first started playing video games. I’ve almost always named and designed avatars around myself, and even when that is not a possibility, I find myself choosing options in decision-based games based on what I believe I would choose in real life. However, as you have suggested, this is not the only way to play a game, and doing so may significantly alter the relationship of the player to the game in ways that are not often acknowledged. I’ve decided that for the next game I play that requires naming or designing an avatar, I will not base it around myself, and will then examine how this change affected my experience of the game.
First of all, thank you for sharing your personal feelings and experience playing videogames in the past. Your reflection on your own emotional attachment to videogames and on how a player’s feeling to a game becomes a critical feature to explore in Dys4ia is thought-provoking. However, I have a different take on this game and believe that Anthropy intends to let the player experience the character’s feeling of despair.
I agree that in Dys4ia, players are left with little agency: rather than playing a game, we are more like reading a story which will ultimately be told no matter what action we had or what decision we made. Players are like puppets while Anthropy is the one to hold the strings. I see this as Anthropy’s intentional decision to take back her own agency to herself and to her body that has long been lost in the process of people’s endless questioning of her gender identity. As we can see from the first section of the game, her decision to take hormone replacement therapy was not a fully voluntary decision but a result of the society’s refusal to accept her and negation of her own voice. By having players follow her step and listen to her story, Anthropy shows the trauma and hardship she had to experience and puts the players in this negative position with a lack of control over the situation, just like what she had before. The mechanic of this game successfully generates players’ empathy to Anthropy’s situation and allow them to share her emotions (Jagoda & McDonald, 180).
Tying this back to the other reading from last Thursday, I wonder if Dys4ia can be seen as a direct counter-example to Myers’ argument that game play is not fully determined by the game rules (Myers, 47).
This was incredibly insightful in how you dealt with this over-personalization of video games. From my understanding, people are often after the more intense personalization of games which I think the Earthbound example you provided really represents. Yet, for you, this attempt to personalize a game is what became a key factor in the creation of the discomfort you felt while playing Stardew Valley. Looking further into this idea that personalization can be a turn-off rather than a turn-on for those who play games, this lack of interest can create a market for a game based on anonymity and unawareness of the self while playing a game.
Anonymity on the internet and games tends to be one sided – you know who your character/you are but others do not know who you are. Yet, the anonymity I suggested above is one where both parties – the player and the other who interacts with the player – are equally as unaware about the character. I think this is what Dys4ia really explores well through the constant changing of who or what your character is represented by, even though it is a one-player game. If this type of mechanic were to be implemented in a multi-player game, the only thing stopping the player from confusion would be the fact that you can control your own character and not others’.
I bring up this idea specifically because I am curious as to whether this game would appeal to you, the writer of this post. Just because you have a personal dislike for over-personalization and the blurring between game and reality, does this mean that you have an interest and attraction towards games that aim to do the opposite? Would this “opposite game” really defy the personalization of characters you play? Or could this make us more comfortable with the idea of a constantly changing self?
This post was really interesting to read and think through – thank you for bringing up such a personal example and speaking conversation and thinking through it 🙂
I find your discussion of how you felt a crisis when you over-identified with the avatar in Stardew valley to be incredibly interesting. It coincides with a lot of my own rationale when deciding where to position myself with respect to the character. I never identify completely with the avatar or try to in any game I play but somewhere in the middle, both watching my character as someone outside the game, like watching a move, while still maintaining a special relationship with him/her like a double personality. I forgot where I read this, but in psychoanalytic terms it is precisely this existence of distance that warrants a safe fantasizing of identification. Once this distance is challenged, we feel insecure and our own sense of self is threatened. I think this is embodied quite well in yours and my own experiences.
A game I know of that plays with this process of identification is Vallaha Cyberpunk Bartender action, a Japanese galgame where you play as Jill, a bartender, mostly in the first person. But in one of the scenes, Jill is thwarted by a friend from behind the counter to become a customer, and you suddenly play as her friend with your identification with Jill is placed in a awkward suspension, where you actually see Jill as an Other, in third person, sitting across you as she tells you her traumatic story with her ex. It would be great to explore other games that play with this process as well and what unique experiences they create.
As others have mentioned, I thought this was a very interesting perspective on identification. I feel like many people use the chance to identify themselves within video games to do exactly what you hope to avoid, such as believing you are a part of the world that you play in. Personally, I find this identification as a way to imagine that I am a part of this fictional world. It’s not necessarily to “get away” from the current world, just an experience of a different one.
I’m glad I was exposed to your perspective, as it’s important to realize we don’t all want the same things out of video games. I feel more invested in my games when I can play as myself, as I feel I am more a part of that world. I like the idea that sometimes, games can provide a different purpose by allowing the player to be someone else.
I agree with another person’s comment above about how sometimes the point is to feel emotions that others may feel, such as in Dys4ia. It in no way can truly capture what those who transition go through, but it does give some insight into the downfalls and pains. Anthropy purposely allows the player to be a part of the experience by controlling aspects of the game, allowing them to feel more included in the process, although not acting as a replacement. Games allow us to see experience other people’s perspectives, rather than something like a movie where you sit as a bystander. All in all, this post reminded me that sometimes it is important to take a step back to analyze our game experiences.
I also heavily dislike naming characters after myself in video games. Glad to find someone else does- it seems a bit of an unpopular opinion.
I find, much alike you, that it breaks the immersion of the world rather than enhancing it. This also might be the English major in me, but the author’s intent is not for “me” to be a character in more narrative-based games- they can’t accurately write for every single player who might play the game, so I am always going to be inaccurate to my true self. At the point where I’ve simply named the main character after myself, and they retain their original features, it seems kind of a pointless effort. That’s not even to mention the vast array of games where “I” would simply not fit into the narrative, as a 20 year old student raised in America.
I’ve also found that games that pander to the “self-insertion” of the player character can often cater to the player character in ways that feel unrealistic to the narrative, or tokenize the other characters. I can feel you on the dating point- dating in the more self-insert-y Persona games (3-5) and Fire Emblem games (13-14) always felt wrong to me, in how every character was interested in “me” no matter what, paired with the constant descriptions of how “special” and “powerful” the main character was. It felt like the games were placating me, at times!
On a more psychological and personal note, I’ve always felt more comfortable creating characters inspired by me in games. There are games with a “canon” main character you can edit, such as renaming Link and Joker, but games like the Elder Scrolls: Oblivion or Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines don’t have such a character, and encourage you to build your own. I feel better creating a “Nicole-like” character, who invests into speechcraft and magic, rather than trying to dutifully recreate myself. I think this might get to why I feel so uncomfortable- because I’m not a fictional character, and treating myself like one creates a great deal of dissonance. A character inspired by me, however, is its own distinct entity I can at least partially separate from.
Altogether an interesting read, and a lot to think about!
I totally get this perspective. In the case of Fire Emblem, I actually played no games between GBA titles and Three Houses. I disliked the idea of romancing other characters for mechanical bonuses (and in Three Houses, I was always unnerved by the gift giving/tea time sequences), and in Three Houses, it felt particularly creepy because the vast majority of romancible characters are your students.
In contrast, in games like Pokemon, I have always felt like I can create a me-like character who I don’t have to embody in the games.
This is perhaps a broad generalization but it seems that people tend to fall somewhere in-between three categories when it comes to creating a character in a game:
1) A character that represents the person as they currently are.
2) An idealized representation of who the person wants to be.
3) A character that most closely fits the expected style of narrative for immersion.
I, perhaps unlike many others, never harbor an emotional connection to the character I represent in regards to whether they’re their own person, created by me, or something else (silent protagonist, non-human, etc.). It’s eye opening how varied people’s responses are regarding this subject. Something that I wonder is how the perspective of a game also plays into people’s identification with characters. For me this is much more important than what the character represents. I generally feel much more immersed in a world when viewing it from first person than in any other style. For games that are top-down or isometric it makes me curious as to whether people still project themselves onto the character or if they begin to feel more like an omniscient being guiding someone else. This also makes me wonder what you’d think of meta-games, where the space between the character and player is widened such as Undertale or Stanley’s Parable. The player themself becomes a character seperate from the protagonist and sometimes even the narrator (if one is present) is distinct making three representations!
Many other people have already said this, but this was a really interesting read! I definitely have similar feelings about naming characters after myself in games where the narrative is a huge focus; it feels “wrong” to identify that character with myself. Their narrative is not my own, and I can’t truly map those characters onto myself (or vice-versa). The times when I do name a character after myself, I still consider that avatar as their own character, and it is, as you said, just a character that happens to be “like me”.
That’s the scenario I have with Stardew Valley, as well. While my main file is named after me, my avatar does many things I can’t do, and their dialogue isn’t really my own even when I’m making the choices. I do understand that it can be more difficult to make that separation in a game like Stardew, though. The game itself gives you a lot of customization and freedom to build your ideal self if you so desire, and the community around Stardew takes it a step further with the truly astounding amount of mods that exist. Many mods are purely about cosmetics– changing “your” house and “your” clothes to better fit what you desire in real life– but some take it much further to let the player truly customize their in-game life, relationships, and surroundings. In my opinion, however, when you take it too far, it isn’t really Stardew anymore, it’s more like a life sim type of game. (Granted, this brings up two different arguments: whether mods can be considered part of a game, and how far is “too far”.)
Regardless, thank you for sharing your thoughts!