To Be Me or To Not Be Me, That is The Question

Character Creation in video games is probably one of my most favorite parts of playing games. Character creation lets you create a being that you are going to control, letting you create perhaps a persona of yourself..or just something for fun! Creating a character lets you make your avatar however you want it to be. Oftentimes people will make their avatars look like them because that avatar will be representing them so they want people to know what they look like and who they are — plus it’s just really fun to create yourself. Yet, other times, it’s fun to make a character that is nothing like you! You can make your character maybe a persona of yourself that you like to pretend to be or perhaps a supermodel! That’s the whole fun of character creation; there are so many possibilities of creations that players can use to express themselves. I believe that expressing yourself is very important because without self-expression, it’s hard to actually feel comfortable with yourself.

How do I create my avatars you may ask? For me, it depends on the medium. In a video game, I almost always go for the same look: an extremely pale girl with piercing eyes, black and red hair, and sharp, rough features to make her look badass! I make my character in this fashion for video games because I feel that this is how I want my character to be portrayed in the games that I am playing; I want my character to look the part that it is playing. However, if I am making an avatar for, say, Xbox Live or a Bitmoji, then I try to make the character look like me because I feel that on this type of medium, I am representing myself to other people that I know, so I would want them to recognize me.

For example, this is my character from Fallout 4 who I named Azula (yes, like Azula from Avatar: The Last Airbender because she is my spirit animal). In Fallout 4, you are a survivor of a nuclear explosion and are on an adventure to find your lost son. I feel that my character fits the part because I feel that the character has to be badass-looking to survive some of the craziness that they endure in the game. I also love making my character look like this in most of the games I play because I feel that it expresses my personality (because I probably would not try to look like this in real life, yet I love the way my character looks!).

Another example I have of one of my character creations is my Xbox Live avatar. I made my Xbox Live avatar to look like me because it is representing me as a person and it is what others will see when they view my profile. I feel that an avatar that is representing me on my profile should look like me because I want people to get an idea of who I am.

Another example of an avatar that represents myself is my Bitmoji. I use my Bitmoji in conversations with people who I am close with. For this reason, I made my Bitmoji look like me!

I have many, many, many other character creations that I have made in video games but that would take waayyy too long to go through, so I think I’m going to stop here. Again, I believe that character creation is a great way to express oneself on different media platforms whether it is to make the avatar look like yourself, or to make it look like something from your imagination! It’s all up to you!