The Daily Grind: Do you think of your avatar in the first person?

I never have had an attachment to my avatar. Typically I make characters I find attractive, thus, I usually make women. Even my forum avatar is of a woman (Luis Royo Prohibited).

Only time I make male avatars in games is when it affects the game play, such as in a Fallout, where it can kind of get creepy getting hit on by guys in the game. That weirds me out.

Back in EQ1, when the game played in first person mode almost exclusively, it was always "I". And when I'm playing in a game, I of course refer to myself as "I". But when I'm talking to someone about my character builds or achievements, I refer to the character in third person, simply because I have too many characters to speak of to not differentiate. I think the altitis is part of that disconnection. I can jump between three different characters in a single play session, so to not qualify them as separate entities would just be really confusing.

Forgive me, but I think you (James) are misunderstanding the post you're citing. Referring to your characters in the first person IS the normal way to go about it. It has nothing to do with personal attachment.

MOST people refer to their characters as I, as in "I was grinding and..." Or "...So then I stunned them and..."

The Terra Nova post was asking if it was weird to refer to your character in the third person, as if they were seperate from yourself.

You might argue that doing such is the ultimate form of personal attachment: that you've essentially created a whole fictional being out of your character. But its definitely unusual to refer to them as seperate entities for most purposes.

The exceptions would be when discussing gear, quests, abilities... "X has finished all of netherstorm, but Y still has a long way to go". Something like that.

I read an interesting article about the psychological aspects of relating to an in game avatar "dress up soldiers" vs "toy soldiers" and what that said about the player themselves. I'll see if I can dig it up.

If I didn't relate to my character on a "he/she" basis I'd get crazy bored. I

Also, Drew requests that you credit toothpastefordinner.com whenever you use any of the material from that site.

You know, since you're a professional and that pic is under a copywrite and all that.

If I'm roleplaying yes, otherwise, no. Either way I do consider that avatar to be "me" in that world.

My initial stab at it would surmise that I use old tabletop RPG tropes, separating player/character.

But that's not very satisfactory a generalization on second thought, since there are people who will say "I stab him with my dagger." or "Fizban shoots a fireball at him now" to describe an action they want their character to do. This particular case probably reflects how willing-to-be-immersed someone is.

For me, first person usage would be for things I choose to do as a player.

"I'm going raiding tonight (as name of character/class)." Brackets left unspoken, but understood, if I'm only playing one character as my main or if there's only one character of the right level range.

"I went exploring and found a neat location." - I, the player, found it, and it's stored into player memory to be shared with all future characters, unless I'm roleplaying on purpose.

"(As a marauder,) I (the player) like to use impale (a specific skill) to stab people (other players, as their characters) in the back." - lots unspoken here, but implied in context.

I normally refer to my characters in third-person, especially when there's a need to get specific about aspects which are unique to classes/specs or in some way differentiate them from the general norm.

Maybe because I run an alt stable in most games, so I have to tell them apart. "My shaman needs a new staff. His current one sucks. But the marauder just got a nice drop in Gunbad last night."

If I said "I need a new staff (referring to the shaman)," the unspoken assumption would be, in order for me, the player, to do something. I need that new staff to heal better, or kill things, etc.

Perhaps I look at them more like a novelist would. The characters are aspects of me, mixed with other things, and that makes them new characters in and of themselves and referred to in the third person. It's important for me to name my MMO characters properly. They take on a new not-me aspect then.

Gah, I'm confusing myself. Let's just go with whatever feels correct at the time.