Do the characters we play reflect our personality?


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I only try to make the character look like me in five minutes, and that's pretty much where the similarity ends.

I pick the actions in the game based on the game, and not what I'll do in real life.

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I just find all of that stuff immature, and when I game online I tend to do it for fun, I'm not having fun if I'm indulging in any of the above drama. I think that's a respectable attitude to have, but I do not have any agendas to push it on other people, game how you want, you just won't find me with you if you frequent in any of the above categories. Gaming is a stress reliever for me, not a stress inducer, which might explain why I tend to gravitate towards SP more than MP in the first place, I cannot for the life of me be bothered with online drama, something you find fairly frequently on the consoles.

I have actually recently just come to this realization. I think I have always felt it to some degree, but especially now that I am for all practical purposes an old man, I agree with what you are saying and it is why I now personally prefer a good SP over MP any day at any time. I just get stressed to easily by MP these days, whether it is the annoying people (easily over 60% of the stress), or I am just not doing as good as I feel I can, more often than not lately I feel stressed rather than having fun, and I literally just was thinking to myself like two weeks ago that is why I have been not so into MP for awhile now.

With that said, minus one match with guys who were complete ass', I did enjoy myself this past Saturday when I did a MP marathon with Uncharted 2, so it does have a time and place for me, and I do enjoy me my BF and COD online, especially when I am doing good, but if it came down to the fact for whatever reason I could never play MP again, I would be more than fine with it. It is not that I am anti social, it is just I now prefer to get completely into a game when I play, and having a 15 year old call me names kind of takes me out of the experience a bit. LOL

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I have actually recently just come to this realization. I think I have always felt it to some degree, but especially now that I am for all practical purposes an old man, I agree with what you are saying and it is why I now personally prefer a good SP over MP any day at any time. I just get stressed to easily by MP these days, whether it is the annoying people (easily over 60% of the stress), or I am just not doing as good as I feel I can, more often than not lately I feel stressed rather than having fun, and I literally just was thinking to myself like two weeks ago that is why I have been not so into MP for awhile now.

With that said, minus one match with guys who were complete ass', I did enjoy myself this past Saturday when I did a MP marathon with Uncharted 2, so it does have a time and place for me, and I do enjoy me my BF and COD online, especially when I am doing good, but if it came down to the fact for whatever reason I could never play MP again, I would be more than fine with it. It is not that I am anti social, it is just I now prefer to get completely into a game when I play, and having a 15 year old call me names kind of takes me out of the experience a bit. LOL

Yeah I enjoy being the 'old man' at the ripe age of 22 :laugh:

(below isn't really related to your post Larry, just more of my additions to this topic)

I guess that's why I've put so many hours into TF2, it's just plain fun. With a class based system you don't need to be great at anything specific, you can heal/defend or attack within any game mode and have an impact on your teams success. Plus believe it or not I really do feel the visual style to that game presents an experience that tends to mellow players and influence the element of fun, who doesn't still laugh a little hearing all the class chants/voice overs running around?

It's just such a polished package that I feel caters to me perfectly, and consciously or subconsciously affects the majority of its players in a way that doesn't spawn too much overly aggressive competition. Of course things might change in a heated clan match, but I'm not playing clan matches.

I think that's pretty spot on, I mean you go into a game like Socom, you expect realism, you expect people that it's nearly impossible to have a certain kind of fun as it's all serious 24/7 with them, and that's fine. Jump into TF2 and there's a fat Heavy being tormented by a speedy scout :p I guess that appeals more to my stress relief online attitude.

I do play things like Halo/COD/Counter Strike, etc, and I do enjoy them, I just don't spend as much time as some people do with them.

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If anything, the characters we create reflect what we want to change about our personality and appearance.

So in reality I've always wanted to be a female cow that heals people? A most fascinating thing, I'm sure Freud and me would have lots to talk about.

Seriously though, no matter what game I gravitate towards it always seems to follow a few certain set rules; I always tend to pick the "non-human" variants of everything and every single game, every single character I always end up being a healer. It doesn't matter if it's a single player or a mmo/fps online it seems to be the pick of the day, either I'm healing in WoW or throwing medic kits around to people, or end up resurrecting people in Planetside.

Weird.

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So in reality I've always wanted to be a female cow that heals people? A most fascinating thing, I'm sure Freud and me would have lots to talk about.

Seriously though, no matter what game I gravitate towards it always seems to follow a few certain set rules; I always tend to pick the "non-human" variants of everything and every single game, every single character I always end up being a healer. It doesn't matter if it's a single player or a mmo/fps online it seems to be the pick of the day, either I'm healing in WoW or throwing medic kits around to people, or end up resurrecting people in Planetside.

Weird.

From what I can tell, you're open minded, you like to be of assistance, and you're extremely friendly.

:)

How did I get that?

You're a medic class player. You're always in the thick of combat coming to peoples aids and always around when people need you, no matter their race or past convictions.

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From what I can tell, you're open minded, you like to be of assistance, and you're extremely friendly.

I think the estimate that people want to change themselves in games might have some foundations to it because I'm not really any of those qualities, at least not much - perhaps deep inside hoping to change a little.

And I always liked cows..

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Obviously the character isn't a straight mirror of our styles/personalities but any personal choices we make in life reflect our personalitys be it in games or in other things. In all my years of playing games (13 years+) I have have never experimented with an all bad/evil character in games that allow character personality development/choices. Seems pretty lame but I can just never bring myself to kill that poor family etc. no matter what the rewards may be.

Surely this says something about me personality like hopefully maybe i'm a really nice guy, or possibly i'm just a *****

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I've always been a well-behaved, law-abiding citizen, so in video games I love to take the opposite role: be evil and kill everyone. Recently I bought Prototype and had a lot of fun with it, particularly doing evil things like throwing old men off skycrapers, chopping in half a whole crowd of innocents, and destroying entire army bases using their own tanks and helicopters. :devil:

I've never laughed so much in a video game as when I found the book "How to be an adventurer" in Icewind Dale II and read: "Face It, You're Actually 'Neutral Evil'".

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I don't think so. Not at all. Most times when I choose a class I look for a tactical advantage over the other team not because I feel a certain connection to that class. for example in Battlefield 2 I always used to choose the Medic class and would always wind up on the top 5. Now did I do this because I am a caring compassionate person who likes to go to the aid of others in need? No. I chose medic because most of the time Battlefield 2 players are bunny hopping dickwads that jump face first into a tank shell and get themselves wounded and I saw it wise to use the situation to my advantage.

I can understand where you are coming from and you do make some valid points but in my opinion it does not reflect my personality at all. My playing style may very well reflect my personality but the characters I chose do not.

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I definitely think our game character is a somewhat reflection of ourself. I usually play a beautiful female character in games (I'm male) because i like the closeness of a woman and because i like other players to look at me in awe. I even have special dress up gear in WoW and love it when people complement me on it. As for my class choices I'm usually a healer or sniper type of character. I like to be in control of everyone I'm playing with, deciding if they live or die but I don't want to be the leader. The same applies to me in real life. I like to get my way but I'm always staying at the sideline, quietly affecting the outcome of everything while trying not to get noticed to much. I like power but I don't want other to know I have it.

I'm also very knowledge hungry, both in games and in real life. I base my decisions on how i can use something to my advantage exploiting everything to the max without letting other people know I'm doing it. I always try to give myself an advantage not by skill but by knowledge of how to exploit the system. In a game that can be to study a boss encounter until I know every possible outcome, in real life its more along the lines of how far I can take something without ****ing people off. Always trying to find out what is going on around me, acquiring information about everyone and everything in any possible way I can.

When I read back what i just wrote i feel a bit psycho... but who cares its just a game life

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What if I have created a lot of characters in WoW just to play as them? =) What does that make me?

I want to agreed with some,very few, that may reflect and some that don't really have to do with our personality at all...

Disagreeing:I just play games to play games. Infamous being one. Good and Bad. I have played all through one side and the other just to get my money worth. I will play any game that is good and will try to create many personality from a good and bad moral standard to experience the different levels it offers. I play and create some many characters in WoW that I have wasted probably half a year of my life in total...0_0

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I've just started playing Fallout 3. I'm surprised it hasn't been mentioned in this thread, given how the karma system works in it.

For my first run, I'm being me (for the most part...I don't usually kill people who owe Irish bartenders money). The next couple runs will purposely bad/neutral though.

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I bring you Neowin's first philosophical gaming thread.

Paraphrased from here.

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Reasoning this, would the same apply to the characters we choose in games reflect our personality as well?

I've been noticing this playing games for as long as I have.. (I've been playing games since I was about four years old perhaps even longer)..

The characters we choose when "playing" reflect our "real" personality.

Examples from my life:

When I was a kid, I never ever wanted to be Cyclops (Scott Summers) when I was playing X-Men on the playground in school with my friends. I always thought that being the self tagged "leader" of the X-Men would be too much work and he wasn't cool. Instead, I always adopted the personality of Nightcrawler. Why?

Nightcrawler was born different. I knew I was different as a kid (I'm a high functioning autistic, meaning I appear normal, but I have difficulty in the social world with things that the normal person doesn't).. he was quiet... I'm extremely quiet unless I feel the need to express my opinion. Nightcrawler could always -disappear-, something I've always envied.. the ability to just get lost and reappear at will. Nightcrawler's faith and loyalty is intensely strong. Those who know me in real life know that my faith in things and loyalty to my friends is unparalleled. (My house and phone numbers are always open and always on, if they need a place to stay or a person to talk to.)

When choosing a "class" to play in games, I'm always fond of the classes that are in the for front of battle, or in the distance, and have either a companion or have a multiple class roll. Examples: I was a Dragoon in Final Fantasy 11 because of the pet, and because they were ranged. I loved the pet to death. In WoW, I'm a Death Knight until expansion because I don't have anyone to level with on my Druid (which is 66), but I still can tank and DPS, up close and personal. Deep in my heart, I miss my druid like you wouldn't believe. As soon as Cataclysm comes out, I'll be rolling a Worgen druid, and my death knight will be my raiding character and my money maker so that my worgen has enough money flow that he can support himself. I enjoy hunters too.. now, on the flip side: Mages and casters bother me. They're too far from the action, and they're too focused in what they do. I have to be within the action otherwise I feel like I'm missing an integral part of the action and I feel like I'm not a "part" of the team.

I play a Druid in paper D&D 3.5 because I like the versatility of the class and the ability to do pretty much anything my group needs me to do.

--

On the flip side of things.

My best friend, Kurt, adores Casters. Cannot stand melee. What kind of person is he in real life? Close minded (to a fault.. but he admits it, so it's okay.), stand offish, very quiet, and extremely introverted.

He can't play a melee character at all, even characters who use magic but are primary melee. Things like Paladins drive him mad because they're too "up close and personal".

----

Starting to get the concept?

How about you? Take a look back through your gaming character choices and your "imagination" choices when you were a kid.

Were / are they reflections of your real personality?

I think the topic at hand (at least in your situation) is not if the characters you play reflect your personality.

It is if your personality is reflected by characters you play. I dont mean to insult you by that in any way :) It is your choice and you are free to choose it.

I do personally admit that I do not like RPGs at all. I find them to be the 4chan of genres.

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for me it does indeed reflect traits that i cannot express in real life ... either more aggressive or more pacifist depending which way i want to character to go ...

for example sometimes i would play the bad guy because it only makes sense and i want to wreck some havoc on the virtual pixels, while at other times i want to save or be impartial ... but always an extension of myself.

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