Way back in March, I was at the Toronto Spec Fic Colloquium, and Liana K gave a talk on representation in video games that included a discussion the lack of diversity in playable characters in cases where you can’t design your avatar. In the process she finally helped me put a finger on something that has been bugging the crap out of me.

The image comes from an Altered Gamer article that discusses what they consider the gaming industry’s over-reliance on a very small pool of voice actors for main characters, and specifically actor Nolan North, who has scored leading roles recently in Uncharted 4. The article explores the problem of drawing on the same actor, over and over again, and modelling characters on that same characters performances: while North has a wide range, his leading men tend to fall into a few relatively narrow categories. Altered Gamer explores this as a narrative problem, stating “this overuse of people like Nolan North is crippling at least my adventures through games where his charms become blurred with one another.” Basically, it’s boring.

There are a lot of problems with this lack of diversity in playable characters that goes far beyond it just being boring. Though it is boring. It is so, so boring. I am endlessly complaining about one again being forced to pilot the digital body of BrownHair McNormal Guy, with his stubble and growly voice, hunched shoulders and tragic past. He’s insufferable.

I explored a few of these problems in a recent conference paper I gave at Avant Canada, which I’m shamelessly going to excerpt here.

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The repositioning of identity that occurs when a player assumes the identity of character within a game is cause for varying degrees of tension and anxiety, depending on what the player is actually asked to do in the process of assuming that identity. In “Identification or Desire? Taking The Player-Avatar relationship to the next level” in First Person Scholar, Gerald Vorhees examines this in detail, looking at the ways in which “queer sexualities are not simply invited into gameplay and gamespace, but rather that they already occupy, covertly, a critical position within games and game cultures that enables the possible subversion and transgression of the masculinity and heteronormativity that overtly characterize games and gaming.”

While Vorhees notes that games “have done stellar work as a bastion of patriarchal heterosexism” and “objectifying women,” they do also provide valuable sites for disruption. Specifically, Vorhees looks at games with customizable avatars, where the player can carefully select all of the physical characteristics of the player character they play as. Building on Scott McLeod’s suggestions that the composition of the player/avatar relationship allows the player to invest in the game experience, and that it is the “player’s misrecognition of the character for the self allows players to feel immersed in the game experience,” Vorhees suggests that in fact it is possible to “reconceptualize the player-avatar relationship as queer, as a thoroughly fluid, ambivalent connection that exists on a spectrum from social to sexual.”

Specifically, he examines games within the Fable and Mass Effect universes, where queer relationships are an accepted and deeply embedded part of the world, and that romantic relationships with characters of all genders (and aliens, in the case of Mass Effect) are possible regardless of the gender that the player character chooses. Specifically, Vorhees states that “games which encourage players to attend to and safeguard the physical appearance of their avatars push the nature of the player-avatar relationship, bound by the force of homosocial desire, toward the libidinal side of the spectrum.”

But, what about instances where the identity of the player is chosen for you? Where customizing an avatar is not optional? In most cases, the choices are uncannily identical and, by nature of being so entrenched, so profoundly expected, they become creepily invisible.

The flip side of this is that when games pre-select a player character outside of the expected — white, straight, male, physically able, probably with brown hair and stubble and a tragic past — the placing of that character’s identity upon the player is revealed for the radical act that it is. Any moment where a player is expected to assume the identity of the other is extremely complex and fraught, particularly when that identity does not reflect but instead creates friction with the identity of the player. Asking a player to assume a straight white male avatar is seen as default; it’s when the player is asked to do something different that it becomes suddenly visible, and in the process, becomes a subversive act.

Consensual Torture Simulator by Merrit Kopas places you in the role of a dominant and sexually sadistic partner of a submissive, masochistic woman. Depending on the player’s own gender and orientation, this asks the player to take on varying degrees of queerness and kinkiness, in ways which are not typically or frequently represented. The introduction and denouement of the game are fixed in place; the player must go through a courtship sequence and negotiation of boundaries with the submissive NPC, and after the gameplay is concluded, an aftercare sequence is also mandatory. During gameplay, the player chooses to cause consensual pain to the submissive NPC with various implements and techniques, while having to pay attention to the reactions of the submissive, their own energy and intensity level, when soothing on teasing is the way to go, escalate or de-escalate the intensity of the scene, and respond to a parter’s safeword. In this way, the player is not only being placed in the position of a dominant, sadistic, potentially queer partner, but also a considerate one — which may in itself be a radical act.

ReProgram by Soha Kareem also places the player in the position of a kinky person, albeit in an even more specific way. While the NPC is defined more clearly in Consensual Torture Simulator than the player (who is left a little bit vague), the player in reProgram is explicitly defined as young and female — we even know that she has long dark hair and dark eyes, and that her name is “pet.” The player assumes her very specific physical identity, and also her interior psychological life, as pet engages in various types of self care and exploration, including meditation and deep breathing, journaling and poetic composition, masturbation and sadomasochistic sexual practices. The action pet takes are often pre-determined, but the player chooses the order in which these activities takes place, and, in some cases, how pet feels about them, toggling emotional options from aggravation to guilt. There is more variation, more opportunities in pet’s emotional experience that in her physical being; the player has no choice but to be her, to assume her identity, and help her navigate her multi-tiered psychological landscape.

Dis4ia by Anna Anthropy is a flash-based autobiographical game or, rather, series of mini-games in which Anthropy explores her experiences with hormone replacement therapy. Each mini game explores a particular challenge faced by the character, who is transparently Anthropy, narrating the game directly in the first person; to play through the game, and through each challenge that she describes — from dealing with body hair and high blood pressure to her emotional responses to hormone replacement and the reactions of members of her family to the therapy she’s undergoing — the player is assuming a small part of her identity and experience. Each victory of the player is a victory of Anthropy’s and vice versa, as the transformation that Anthropy undergoes also becomes the player’s.

Construction of identity in games is still pretty messed up — after all, we’re talking about a medium where’s it’s generally more accepted to ask a player to assume the identity of a plumber or an alien or a druidic minotaur than it is a woman, a gay character, a person of colour, a transperson. It’s important to remember the profound, and profoundly weird, thing we’re being asked to do every time we pick up our controller or put our hands on a keyboard, to assume the agency and identity of another, and to remember how valuable, how disruptive, how radical that act can be, depending on the identity in question.

Works Cited

Dabe. “Too Much of a Good Thing: The Overuse of Voice Actor Nolan North.” Altered Gamer. August 8th 2012.

Thorhauge, Anne Mette. “Player, reader and social actor.” Fine Art Forum 17.8 (August 2003). Web. December 15th 2013.

Vorhees, Gerald. “Identification or Desire? Taking The Player-Avatar relationship to the next level.” First Person Scholar. May 28, 2014.