Player Identity in Online Games

Who am I in the game I play?

  • I play a fiction character, common in MMOs and RPGs

  • I create a character, using the tools of the game.

  • I am a screename and an avatar/icon.

  • I play as "me" -- my screename is an identifier, not a character

  • My real self, the name I use for email

  • Common in portals -- I have no need to be a "character"

Anonymous:

  • Character-driven
    • An anonymous player can represent himself as something he is not (e.g. men playing women characters)
    • Other players cannot find out te player's real identity unless she chooses to reveal it
  • Privacy-driven
    • I don't want other players to be able to contact me or to know who I really am

Non-anonymous

  • A player's real identity is known to the other players in the game

Enter social gaming...

  • New types of game identities have become popular, especially for Facebook games in particular
  • Facebook's mandate: a user's identity is his real identity
  • Facebook games therefore often take two forms different from the typical game identities we have seen:
    • partially fictional
    • anonymous, but discoverable

Gamasutra interview with Susan Wu, CEO of Ohai City of Eternals, a new social MMO

  • "The game resets on the Facebook platform, and players are identified by their real world identities in game -- as they are on the service." Says Wu, "This is a big hypothesis. We're basically trying to get rid of the 'virtual' in MMOs."

What's next for game designers?

  • Games tat build on social capital
  • Games that require friends as currency
  • Games that triangulate relationships (e.g. I attacked Storm in the Night and let my real friend Nicole know)
  • Characters that use a mix of fictional and real identities
changed December 2, 2009