I haven’t played online videogames in a long time, but apparently I’m being forced out of my peaceful retirement to return to the virtual realm that I came to despise a long time ago. I chose a game that my suitemates have played a lot lately, as it was recently released along with the Half-Life 2 “Orange Box,” that game is Team Fortress 2. I chose this game, a “First Person Shooter”, because I absolutely refuse to play Massively Multiplayer Online Role Play Games (MMORPGs). In this game there are 9 different classes of players, each with their own distinct characteristics. I chose to play as the “Heavy” class for the full hour. It is important to note that the characters in this game are meant to be cartoonish, and are often disproportionate; nevertheless, this character’s avatar is a very large man, with a huge upper body and arms thicker than his legs. He carries a huge mini-gun, like what you might see attached to an attack helicopter, as his primary weapon (he calls it Sasha, hence the title). He also wears a Kevlar vest and a string of his high caliber ammunition across his chest. Here is a video featuring the character himself.
During game play I found myself very much influenced by the character’s unique abilities, for instance while firing his mini-gun, he can only walk slowly, which causes him to basically stay put while firing, because of this I tended to stay put and mow down everything in my path without discrimination, as is the character’s basic strategy. However what was more relevant to the Proteus effect, was that my personality actually did change during the game. I began to laugh when a poor unknowing opponent wandered through the hail of bullets and met his demise, and I would get unreasonably aggravated when a faster, sneakier character would escape from my barrage and/or come around and kill me before I could react. Beyond that, in an attempt to help strategize and win the match, I tended to give commands to other teammates over the in-game chat. My character was one of the largest in the game, which, according to the Proteus effect, would lend itself to my acting in a more dominant fashion. Therefore, my tendency to try to act as a leader is consistent with the Proteus effect. However, I am not personally convinced that my actions were necessarily influenced by my character’s avatar, because my own tendency in real life is to try to take control of a situation and be a leader. Overall I believe that the Proteus effect is especially relevant to role playing games, but not necessarily as relevant to first person shooters like Team Fortress 2.
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Assignment 10: Me or Igby
10: An Undead Warlock in World of Warcraft
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2 comments:
This is a nice analysis of the Proteus Effect in a different sort of online environment. I think you're right in supposing that some of effects you experienced were due to your actual personality (and possibly the nature of the game itself). You would have to play the game as a different style of character and see if your behaviors remained the same or if they changed (thus more clearly supporting the Proteus Effect).
Great post Gerard. I had to read your post because it had a youtube clip of the heavy weapons guy from TF2. I've never actually played the game, but one of my roommates plays it all the time. I have also seen the Proteus Effect change some of his reactions, too. Sometimes I can hear him yelling just like the heavy weapons guy from all the way across the house. I guess the reason people do this in TF2 is because the characters in the game have so much personality.
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