Avatars and Videogames

Definition and Background

Avatars are computer-generated icons or figures used to help individuals identify and represent themselves within a virtual environment. Avatars can exist in many types of virtual environments, including Social Media, Forums, Blogs, Chat Rooms, and Video Games. A video game is a game played by electronically manipulating images produced by a program. These games can be played on many different devices like phones, computers, and video game consoles. Avatars often appear in three-dimensional forms in virtual worlds in video games, and they allow players to customize their features, clothes, accessories, and other attributes. In the games, individuals become associated with their avatars. So, the actions and representations of the avatars reflect upon the intentions and identities of the users that are playing with them. Ethical implications of avatars include issues of lack of representation, dissociation from the actions of avatars, false identities, and other issues.

Avatar Creation

When creating an avatar in a video game, players are often able to choose skin color, hair, clothing, body build, gender, and other qualities. In some games, like the Sims, players can even choose personality traits for their avatars. By creating an avatar that resembles their appearance in the real world, players are able to connect more with their avatars, have a more immersive experience in the game, and just generally experience higher game enjoyment. The competitiveness, goals, and fanbase of a video game, as well as the background of the players themselves, can all heavily influence the decisions players make when choosing an avatar. For example, extroverted, dominant, strong avatars tend to excel more in competitive shooting games, while non-competitive games are less likely to need such specialized skills, and so players have more freedom with the attributes they choose. This also often results in more options in non-competitive games when it comes to personalizing avatars.

Commercialization and Inaccessibility

As video games become more popular, they usually begin offering purchasable virtual assets in their virtual worlds. These virtual assets can be anything from game currency to power-ups, and they are used to enhance and augment a user's experience in the game. Often, developers allow players to buy attributes specifically for their in-game avatars. This can include things like clothing and accessories, but it can also include hairstyles and skin/eye colors, which are major things that make up a person’s physical appearance. People are more likely to spend their real money on these assets in multi-player games, where the purchasing of the assets leads to players being noticed, respected, and interacted with within the game. However, many people cannot afford these special customizations. When features that make up a person’s basic appearance, like hair and skin color, are turned into something a player has to buy, video game developers are making the personalization of avatars inaccessible to players who are unable to spend extra money on these virtual assets. This can severely impact a user’s experience with a game since, as mentioned previously, having a similar avatar to one’s real-life appearance can help a player connect and interact with a video game more because they see an accurate representation of themselves on the screen.

Lack of Representation

Historically, the gaming industry has been dominated by white men, and so the ‘default’ avatars in video games are often white men. In order to have different features, players have to go and customize their avatars in a separate menu, and sometimes that is not an option, or the features that most resemble their real-life appearance are not available in the game.

Gender

In 2016, there were 350% more men involved in the video game industry than women, even though the US census showed that the population was about 51% women and 49% men. However, many games only offer one avatar, and it is usually male. Others offer female avatars, but the default when the game is first played is male. Others have more customization options for outfits and accessories for the male avatars compared to the females. Additionally, when female avatars are included, they are often sexualized and viewed differently than their male counterparts. Gender is not binary though, and as difficult as it is for women to find avatars that represent them, it can be even more difficult for people who don’t identify as cis male or cis female to find video games with avatars that are inclusive to their gender. By only including “boy” or “girl” as options for an avatar's gender, video games isolate many users who do not identify as one of those options. This is discriminatory towards the transgender community, and can cause harmful situations in multiplayer scenarios where the gender that a transgender player chose can cause other players to question their gender identities.

Sexuality

Many video games provide options for avatars to interact with a “significant other” of some kind. This person can add to the storyline of a video game, or enhance the general experience that a player has through conversation and stories that happen on the side. Some video games are fully focused on romance, with romance and love playing a central part in the game’s theme. However, most of these games target and cater to heterosexual people. If you identify as a male in the beginning, the video game assumes you are interested in females, and vice versa. Of course some games have worked to make it so that you can choose the gender of your love interest, but that is not always the case. Witnessing an avatar that is supposed to represent a likeness of a player act in a way that the player never would because their sexuality is different can seriously deteriorate a player’s experience in a video game.