research-article

An investigation of player to player character identification via personal pronouns

Authors:

Michael Hitchens,

Anders Drachen,

Deborah RichardsAuthors Info & Claims

IE '12: Proceedings of The 8th Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment: Playing the System

Article No.: 11, Pages 1 - 11

https://doi.org/10.1145/2336727.2336738

Published: 21 July 2012 Publication History

Abstract

The player character is an important feature of many games, where it is through the character that the player interacts with game world. There has been considerable interest in the relationship between the player and the player character. Much of this work has examined the identification of players with their characters, generally taking either a textual analysis approach, or has been empirical work that has explicitly identified the idea of identification through survey instruments, etc. The work presented here takes a different empirical approach, focusing on the use of various pronoun forms (first, second, third) as an indication of the relationship between player and character. Results indicate that the presence of story and information about the player character had no effect on identification with the plater character. However, characteristics of the players, particularly gender and general experience in playing video games, did have a statistically significant affect, indicating that different levels of identification are more dependent on the player than on the game. This indicates that players are not a homogeneous group with respect to player character identification and is an important consideration for designers to recognise.

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Cited By

Baskaran DRingland KMelcer E(2024)Playing Well Together with a Reward System: Understanding Player Preferences for the PS Trophy SystemProceedings of the 19th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games10.1145/3649921.3656989(1-4)Online publication date: 21-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3649921.3656989
Turkay SKinzer C(2017)The Relationship between Avatar-Based Customization, Player Identification, and MotivationTransforming Gaming and Computer Simulation Technologies across Industries10.4018/978-1-5225-1817-4.ch003(48-79)Online publication date: 2017
https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-1817-4.ch003
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Index Terms

An investigation of player to player character identification via personal pronouns
1. Software and its engineering

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Published In

cover image ACM Other conferences

IE '12: Proceedings of The 8th Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment: Playing the System

July 2012

182 pages

ISBN:9781450314107

DOI:10.1145/2336727

Conference Chairs:
Daniel Cermak-Sassenrath
Auckland University of Technology
,
Charles Walker
Auckland University of Technology
,
Program Chair:
Chek Tien Tan
University of Technology, Sydney

Copyright © 2012 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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University of Technology, Sydney: University of Technology, Sydney

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Publication History

Published: 21 July 2012

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University of Technology, Sydney

IE '12: The 8th Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment

July 21 - 22, 2012

Auckland, New Zealand

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Cited By

Baskaran DRingland KMelcer E(2024)Playing Well Together with a Reward System: Understanding Player Preferences for the PS Trophy SystemProceedings of the 19th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games10.1145/3649921.3656989(1-4)Online publication date: 21-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3649921.3656989
Turkay SKinzer C(2017)The Relationship between Avatar-Based Customization, Player Identification, and MotivationTransforming Gaming and Computer Simulation Technologies across Industries10.4018/978-1-5225-1817-4.ch003(48-79)Online publication date: 2017
https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-1817-4.ch003
Black D(2016)Why Can I See My Avatar? Embodied Visual Engagement in the Third-Person Video GameGames and Culture10.1177/155541201558917512:2(179-199)Online publication date: 22-May-2016
https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412015589175
Leavitt AClark JWixon DGergle DMorris MBjørn PKonstan J(2016)Uses of Multiple Characters in Online Games and Their Implications for Social Network MethodsProceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing10.1145/2818048.2819980(648-663)Online publication date: 27-Feb-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2818048.2819980
Soutter AHitchens M(2016)The relationship between character identification and flow state within video gamesComputers in Human Behavior10.1016/j.chb.2015.11.01255:PB(1030-1038)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.chb.2015.11.012
Turkay SKinzer C(2015)The Effects of Avatar-Based Customization on Player IdentificationGamification10.4018/978-1-4666-8200-9.ch012(247-272)Online publication date: 31-Mar-2015
https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-4666-8200-9.ch012
Turkay SKinzer C(2014)The Effects of AvatarInternational Journal of Gaming and Computer-Mediated Simulations10.4018/ijgcms.20140101016:1(1-25)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.4018/ijgcms.2014010101

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