Hyperidentities....MMORPGS....

I am not a fan of MMORPGS, Massively multiplayer online role playing games. But through this article I learned much about them. There is this whole universe where the avatar exists, usually people who play this game have more than one avatar they can pick and choose from, I thought it was always the same character. You then name your avatar, if you do not have a name in mind the game assists you in picking out a name. MMORPGS are and have been getting huge, and they seem to last for ages. Often times MMORPG players are referred to as users not players because of the fact that it is almost impossible to end the game. One thing I read in the article that I found very interesting was the Mechanism of Transference. basically, it is when a person transfers their emotions unconsciously to the avatar itself. Once thinking about it, i realized that people do do this, if they don't feel human the create a night elf, if they don't feel male or female they create a quite androgynous character. I think another way video gaming is becoming more like art is because more we are feeling and getting so emotionally involved in the game that we are actually transferring out feelings into out characters into the game, obviously it is easy to do that in film-but this proves video gaming is getting closer and closer to be considered art.