It has often been suggested that identities created online are fragmented bits
of the self, cycled through and easily discarded. The focus has often been on
the creation of the digital persona and its representation, the avatar. Through
auto-ethnographic research and informed by the literature culled from Game
Studies, Sociology (Symbolic Interactionism, Structural Functionalism) and
Social Psychology, this text explores the way interwoven patterns of play in
massively multi-player online games create multi-layered digital identities.
Through character creation, gameplay, and role identities,...