ABSTRACT
In the past decade, the popularity of massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) has grown exponentially with World of Warcraft (WoW) (Blizzard Entertainment, 2004) as one of the leading titles (Williams, 2006). As with most MMORPGs, players first create a digital alter ego to engage in social game playing in an online multiplayer virtual world containing thousands of players concurrently. In the course of the game, players act and interact socially through these personal avatars that are chosen from a range of races and classes. An implicit goal of the game is to “level up” (increase the strength and abilities of) your character by collecting experience points and by acquiring rare and powerful items (Cole and Griffiths, 2007). This freedom to tailor and grow an avatar raises the question of whether players create their characters out of sheer fantasy or rather grasp the opportunity to carve out an idealized version of themselves to engage in multiplayer interaction and competition. In this article, we draw upon current theoretical insights (Klimmt, Hefner, and Vorderer, 2009) and previous empirical research regarding identification in digital games (Van Looy, Courtois, De Vocht, and De Marez, 2012). More specifically, we first explore the moderating effect of identifying with a game character on the degree of self-discrepancy. Second, we look into the effect of self-discrepancy on pathological gaming and analyze whether pathological gamers are more drawn toward the experience of reducing self-discrepancy than non-pathological gamers.
