Avatar Creation in Videogaming: Between Compensation and Constraint.

We examine the extent that videogame avatars provide players with opportunities for identity exploration, aiming to test the findings of self-discrepancy theory research on the user/avatar relationship with novel cognitive anthropological methods. Specifically, we examine if avatar traits are (more representative of players' ideal rather than actual self) or (more representative of players' actual self) as a function of players' self-esteem. Utilizing cognitive anthropological methods, we examine the relationship between and . We first asked 21 respondents to list traits they associated with their various selves. We then asked 57 new respondents to perform four pile sorts of the salient items from these lists (1 unconstrained sort of like-traits, and 3 sorts of terms indicative of respondents' ideal/actual/avatar self). Analysis of this "free list" and "pile sort" data allowed us to clarify (in a manner sensitive to gamer culture) relationships between respondents' various conceptions of self, including how those relationships were modified by self-esteem. Illustrative quotes from the interviews further clarified these relationships. Paired -test analysis shows that informants as a whole describe their avatar compared with actual selves with fewer negative terms (). Low-esteem players what they deem as positive traits onto their avatars, while simultaneously avatars' negative traits by minimizing them. Compared with low-esteem gamers, high-esteem players associate significantly more positive attributes with their various selves- and -while describing avatar compared with actual selves with fewer positive terms and comparable numbers of negative terms (the latter a process of ). Results point to the necessity of theoretical accounts that recognize that avatars may reflect a complex relationship with the user's actual and ideal self, without assuming that avatar play frees gamers from offline social, psychological, or bodily constraints.