Writing critically about video games is something that piques my interest lately more than anything. I feel like with the proliferation of online gaming, among other things, video games have entered a golden age. There are plenty of topics to write about - and some of them don't even have anything to do with actual video game titles. Take avatars, for example. Your virtual avatar on your Xbox or PS3 is on it's way to becoming as robust as the real you - in some senses. Now I don't own a PS3, financial reasons notwithstanding. I barely have time to play my Xbox games as it is, and adding to a pile on another console entirely would just be asking for trouble. Consequently, this post will focus on the Xbox 360.
With the new dashboard update last year, Xbox user's gaming identities got a lot more complex. You now had an avatar similar to the Nintendo Wii's Mii, only slightly less childish. You can alter the avatar's appearance to reflect yours and even dress it up to look like you. At one point, my avatar wore dark jeans and a plain black hooded sweatshirt with Converse-like sneakers and a Cleveland Indians baseball cap - basically my everyday outfit. Or, you can go in another direction - one with some more implications on the future of these avatars. You can fashion an avatar that's completely different from the person you are in real life. I started to go a little bit in this direction - my avatar has a wicked scar cutting across his face a la Anakin Skywalker in Revenge of the Sith. Sure, I don't have a scar like that, but the teenager in me thought it kicked ass. My other friends have purchased or unlocked items by playing their favorite games. One has a sinister looking trench coat while the other looks like a soldier from Gears of War. Currently, my avatar is wearing some pretty sweet looking (if I say so myself) Mandalorian armor a la Boba Fett, and has the Monitor from the Halo series flying around him.
But what does this all mean? It's all rather elementary, still, right? In some ways, yes. I'm aware of a few games that actually use your avatar, but none on a level that's more than aesthetic. But the real purpose of these avatars mirrors the purpose of video games and fiction in general - they give you an escape, a means to exist in a reality other than your own. I can create an identity that can be exactly like me or nothing like me at all. And for people who don't game with friends they know in real life, but rather with people they've met online, this avatar comes to represent how other people view this person. It's all still rather simple, but I see it as something that's going to become more robust as time goes on. But these avatars also serve another purpose - bragging rights. Some avatar awards are unlocked by playing games. How did you get that shirt with the bloody hand? You did it by killing 10,000 zombies in Left 4 Dead 2. How did you get that sweet Halo Reach shirt? You played in the multiplayer beta! You can get some serious e-reputation boosts by the way you dress your avatar.
The idea of online bragging rights brings me to my next topic dealing with online avatars: the achievement system (or on PS3, the trophy system). These track your gaming accomplishments. Now, since these haven't developed into anything more complex, such as giving you Microsoft Points as you rack up Gamer-score points, they exist almost solely as boasting mechanisms. Did you beat Halo 3 on the legendary difficulty? Mass Effect 1 and 2 on insanity? Do you have all of the achievements for Bethesda's Fallout 3 and Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion? That must have taken some serious skill/time investment. You're level 100 on Gears of War 2 multiplayer? That's impressive. Now, while achievements in some games are ridiculous, like turning on the game or completing the training session at the beginning of the game, some of them, the aforementioned among them, are some pretty serious gaming accomplishments. Gone are the days where you brag to your friends about beating Mortal Kombat only to have them scoff at the notion that you could have possibly done such a thing. Everyone knows that I beat Mass Effect on insanity because they can look at my gamer profile and see that it is so.
Now, you could (and a lot of people I'm sure do) say that e-bragging rights are completely absurd. And I agree, to a certain extent they are. But I like to think of them not just as a way to boast, but as kind of an electronic journal of my avatar's gaming accomplishments. It's the same reason why I've saved every ticket from every movie I've been to since Jurassic Park III. I like to look at those things and remember those times in my life and the people I was with - the memories I've had. I can look at that list of achievements and remember the good times I had playing those games. I'll remember that quarter at Ohio State where I sat in my dorm room for three months and sunk 110 hours into Oblivion. I'll remember sitting up late at night in my first apartment beating the absolute hell out of Fallout 3. That's because, to me, at least, those memories are just as real and full of emotion as any I've made in real life - but that's another entry for another time.
All in all, I like the direction that online avatars are going. With Facebook and Twitter applications going up on Xbox Live, who knows how these virtual identities are going to interact with the real world. My guess is simply that we're just entering a golden age of gaming and that things are only going to get more complex. Until then, if a gamer by the tag of "melted plasteel" happens to come out of nowhere and snipe your head off in some multiplayer match, better luck next time.
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