Pixels, Parts & Pieces

ISBN-13: 9783836434102 / Angielski / Miękka / 2007 / 104 str.

Kelly Boudreau

Opis

It has often been suggested that identities created online are fragmented bitsof the self, cycled through and easily discarded. The focus has often been onthe creation of the digital persona and its representation, the avatar. Throughauto-ethnographic research and informed by the literature culled from GameStudies, Sociology (Symbolic Interactionism, Structural Functionalism) andSocial Psychology, this text explores the way interwoven patterns of play inmassively multi-player online games create multi-layered digital identities.Through character creation, gameplay, and role identities, relationshipsbetween the player, their avatar, physical environment and other playersdevelop and redefine meanings which create harmonized identities. Far frombeing fixed internally in the player, these identities are interwoven throughinternal and external interactions, creating perceptions and performances ofplay that emerge as complex negotiated selves, interacting between the selfand the social. This book is addressed to those interested in understandingthe complexities of identities developed online from both a personal andtheoretical perspective.