The Role of the Avatar in Gaming for Trans and Gender Diverse Young People

Abstract

A significant proportion of trans and gender diverse (TGD) young people report membership of the gaming community and resultant benefits to wellbeing. To date their experiences and needs regarding a key feature of games, the avatar, are largely unexplored, despite increasing interest in the therapeutic role of avatars in the general population. The aim of this study was to better understand the role of the avatar in gaming, its impact on TGD young people’s mental health, and their unique needs regarding avatar design. N = 17 TGD young people aged 11–22 years (M = 16.3 years) participated in four focus groups. A general inductive approach was used to thematically analyze the transcribed data. TGD young people report considerable therapeutic benefits of using avatars with positive mental health implications. Importantly, TGD young people use avatars to explore, develop and rehearse their experienced gender identities, often as a precursor to coming out in the offline world. They also report negative experiences of feeling excluded due to the constraints of conventional notions of gender that are widely reflected in game design. Participants described simple design features to better reflect gender diversity, such as increased customization. Such changes would facilitate the positive gains reported by participants and better reflect the diversity of young people who use games. The findings have important implications for both recreational and serious or therapeutic game design.

Choice-based games and resilience building of gender nonconforming individuals: a phenomenological study

“…All participants emphasized Theme 1 (Character creation), and this feature provided many appealing ways gamers could experiment and experience (Theme 2) their gender identity and expression through controlled environments. These findings validated the previous studies on the avatar (Morgan et al, 2020;Rivera, 2022) and the values of queer gamers' exploration of gender and sexuality within gaming realms (Ruelos, 2018). Character creation and customization with participants also focused on being able to project oneself onto the character to try alternate selves or experience qualities they may not have in the real world (Isbister, 2016).…”

“…By providing an additional, creative outlet for GNC individuals to explore their gender and themselves, these mental health interventions and resilience exercises can potentially reinforce who they are and build confidence in their self-image (Morgan et al, 2020). Rivera's (2022) study resonates with Morgan et al (2020) with a case study, stating interaction with a video game avatar can be "a potential cornerstone of healthy identity formation" (p. 485).…”

From Battleground to Playground: The Video Game Avatar as Transitional Phenomenon for a Transgender Patient

“…On the other, there is the constant potentialthreat of corporeal annihilation as a repercussion of nonconformity to a cisheteronormative 5 society—it is, after all, estimated that at least 17 percent of hate crime incidents in the United States are motivated by perceived sexual orientation (Marzullo and Libman 2009), while queer and/or TGNC youth represent as much as 40 percent of the homeless population (the Trevor Project 2020). It is therefore no surprise that virtual space has long been a site of exploration and discovery for queer and/or TGNC players, allowing for the creation of diverse, complex, and rapidly shifting communities (Craig and McInroy 2014; Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network 2013; Morgan et al 2020; Pilecki 2015). This phenomenon can also be described in Winnicottian terms, as Andi Pilecki (2018) has done, writing on the potential of the internet community as a “holding environment” in which TGNC people in early stages of their self-discovery might safely integrate their true and false selves, or give their true selves any lives at all (p. 153).…”

“…The most obvious representation of this thesis may be that of the video game avatar, a character controlled by the player and in many cases created and customized as a representation of the player’s self within a virtual space. 3 For many youths who are questioning their sexuality or gender identity, interaction with a video game avatar may be their first attempt at exploration; this is especially true given the widespread cultural impact of video games, which only continues to grow (Morgan et al 2020; Wills 2019). Envision, for example, a thirteen-year-old gay boy who recalls a sense of empowerment in his choice of a skirted princess in a fighting game, trouncing his male peers, who have all chosen overtly macho men as their avatars.…”

“…Their reasons for doing so varied, but in short the avatar offered safe opportunities to explore gender expression, a mechanism for coping with the dysphoria of the corporeal space, and a preliminary way to disclose one's true gender to peers. Similarly, Morgan et al (2020) interviewed seventeen young TGNC subjects, finding considerable therapeutic benefit in their subjects' use of video game avatars to explore and rehearse their gender identities, often with the intention of eventually manifesting this virtual confidence in the corporeal space.…”