Abstract
Avatars or agents are digitized self-representations of a player in mediated environments. While using agents to navigate through mediated environments, players form bonds with their self-agents or characters, a process referred to as identification. Identification can involve automatic, but temporary, self-concept “shifts in implicit self-perceptions” (Klimmt et al., 2010, p. 323) of the media user by adopting or emphasizing the action choices on behalf of the social expectation of the avatar in the mediated environment. In the current study, we test the possibility that users' identification with video game avatars–a bond built between avatars and players- would account for subsequent behavior changes. We did so by using 3-month longitudinal data involving a narratively-based serious game: Socially Optimized Learning in Virtual Environments (SOLVE), a 3D-interactive game designed to reduce risky sexual behaviors among young men who have sex with men (n = 444). Results show that video game identification predicts both the reduction of risky sexual behaviors over time, and reduction in the number of non-primary partners with whom risky sex occurs. And when players identify with the game character, they tend to make healthier choices, which significantly mediates the link between video game identification and reduction of risky behaviors.
Highlights
Avatars1, or self-agents, are digital self-representations of a player in mediated environments
Results of this study were consistent with previous studies regarding the importance of video game identification (Lu et al, 2012b) in demonstrating positive behavioral change
We found that game virtual future self (VFS) identification significantly related to the reduction of risky behaviors
Summary
Self-agents, are digital self-representations of a player in mediated environments. The SOLVE-IT (SOLVE with intelligent technologies) intervention involves an animated interactive virtual dating narrative game in which users choose their characters’ skin coloring, hair color, and make clothing choices for their characters that are aged to create a “virtual future self (VFS)” that, like SOLVE guides, scaffolds the user in making a series of risky or safe choices in interacting with potential sexual partners, so that “over time, self-regulated learners actively instruct and reinforce themselves, gaining confidence and self-efficacy in their ability to understand and succeed in achieving their goals, while avoiding social and physical harm H1: Identification with one’s virtual future self game character is positively associated with subsequent real-life reduction of risky behavior among YMSM who play SOLVE, an IN game designed to enhance safer sexual practices. H2: Virtual choices mediate the relationship between video game identification with the virtual future self (VFS) mentor and subsequent behavior change
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