ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). In MMORPGs, gamers play a role and actively interact with others through avatars. Avatars are designed and controlled by gamers, and avatars can be manipulated in the computer-mediated environments (CME) to acquire virtual possessions and make virtual money. Avatars in online gaming are more dynamic and actively manipulated by gamers to extend a sense of self. One of the contributions of this study is to examine how consumers use one or more avatars to actively construct an extended sense of self. Online games or video games in general constitute a liminal space through which gamers seek a transcendental sacred experience and in which the rite of passage of identity cultivation takes place in the new CME society. Gaming provides a place for this initiation ritual, and for many Chinese gamers, to play is to regain or reorder the order lost in their rapidly changing society.
