This link has been bookmarked by 2 people . It was first bookmarked on 23 Jul 2008, by Tara McGowan.
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26 Oct 08
László BuzinkayJátékosok viszonya avatarjaikhoz különböző életkorokban.
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23 Jul 08
Tara McGowanArticle from Czech Republic on Virtual Worlds and differences b/w kids, teens and adults and their avatars
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Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic
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MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games) are persistent virtual worlds falling within the fantasy genre, in which the player controls his or her character which subsequently becomes a part of the online fantasy world.
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32 players was obtained upon contacting players in discussion fora, where they were asked to fill in a web-based questionnaire in English. A battery of 12 questions was tested dealing with the various aspects of relationship between the players and their avatars.
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The motivation to succeed is significantly stronger among younger male players (i.e. adolescents) and among those who play more intensively. According to Griffiths et al. (2004), the intensity of playing (measured in the number of hours per week) is also characteristic of younger, adolescent players.
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From the player's viewpoint, the avatar is a kind of individual overlap owing to which they may experiment with their identities.
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the focal role of so-called images in one’s psyche (e.g. Hillman, 1997, Kast, 1992), which are certain complexes around which fantasies and emotions resolve and which can be experienced as certain independent parts of one’s psyche.
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it may mean that the player does not perceive the avatar as something “more” but simply as a game mechanism, i.e. something the purpose of which is to reach something else, such as entertainment, social contact, self-esteem, and self-efficacy through success etc.
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it is younger players who tend to identify with (i.e. not to distinguish from) their avatars, while the younger the respondents were, the stronger the phenomenon.
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“immersion” factor shows a deeper interconnection of the player and the avatar. This factor connects imagination, daydreaming of the game and avatar with the emotional relationship towards it, which has support in the psychodynamic approach considering imaginations and emotions as “two sides of the same coin”
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Wolfendale (2006) implies the existence of a stereotype that the attachment to the avatar is something negative and that it concerns socially isolated individuals (or that it leads to social isolation).
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majority of “gender swappers” are male.
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Adolescents demonstrated the highest tendency to identification of themselves and their avatars, i.e. they had the highest need to perform well in the game.
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there is thus a possibility that MMORPGs provide adolescents with space to complete their developmental tasks, typical of this age. Adolescents are focussed on developing the feeling of their own competence, which is strongly linked to the feeling that the individual was an actor and that success resulted from their own skill and capabilities: the perception of one's own performance is thus more important when developing a positive self-assessment that others' opinions.
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the importance of the compensation factor decreased with age.
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Our study shows that the age is, at least to some extent, an important factor affecting the style of playing MMORPGs, since there is a significantly lower level of identification among adults than among younger players.
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among adults, the motivation to play MMORPGs is represented by something else than their avatars (it can be, for instance, the social dimension of the game, etc.). On the other hand, for younger players, the virtual character may be an important motivation factor, especially from the viewpoint of performance and success in the game, as in case of adolescents.
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