Questions about Gee: What is a projective identity and how have you experienced it in your game play? What meaning have we attributed to the characters we play?

December 3, 2008

Posted by Wendy Anderson
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5 Responses to “Questions about Gee: What is a projective identity and how have you experienced it in your game play? What meaning have we attributed to the characters we play?”

  1. dreamgirl41 said
    December 3, 2008 at 7:41 pm

    Projective identity is when your real life identity leaks into your virtual identity. The example he used was that he was very religious, and he refused to do any actions against his religion, even in the game. Usually this is common when we have a game that promotes customization, we tend to lean towards making our characters resemble who we are or who we want to be. More importantly, games that have non linear gameplay, such as World of Warcraft, are a great example of this. People usually tend to do the things natural to them, meaning aggressive people will turn towards physical attacks and passive people will turn towards long range.

  2. spankykosanke said
    December 4, 2008 at 4:05 am

    In my opinion, projective identity is how one “projects” themselves into their domain in which they are interacting on. We tend to make or chose a character that relates most to us.

    One example of this is when I buy a sports game, where you can create a player, and the first player I usually make is myself, or how’d I like to see myself in the game.

  3. lu813 said
    December 5, 2008 at 2:48 pm

    I agree with both responses made. Project identity is how one projects themselves and it is when your real life mixes with your virtual identity. When you make a character on a game you usually make it to look like you. Although when you do this, you are also making things look how you want them to look which is projecting your identity but it is not your real identity. For example, I make a character and I have her with brown hair and brown eyes and I make the hair exactly like mine. The only thing is that maybe when I am creating her I don’t like how tall I am so I make her shorter than what I would be. That is mixing your identity into the game but it is also making your character how you project yourself.

  4. ayosick said
    December 5, 2008 at 8:55 pm

    It is where you project your real life identity onto your virtual identity. I always see myself doing this when I am playing videogames. I think that you do this because you carry your ideals from real life over to virtual life. I usually try to create characters that look like me when I have the chance. I think that this is something fun to do and I enjoy doing it.

  5. profoundperception said
    December 8, 2008 at 3:19 am

    I don’t think you can play a game without projecting your identity onto the character. As the player, every little decision, every little action you take, is your morals/decisions being projected into the virtual medium. As such, the character in the virtual medium who is doing what you tell he or she to do is like a puppet. And it is up to you to give that puppet life, through your decisions on what course of action to take in each situation.

    That puppet does not live, but it is an extension of you. Because it cannot do anything on its own, but must do everything you tell it to, the puppet is essentially your soul being projected into a golem.

    That golem is you in a nutshell.

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