Role models help us to identify the characteristics we want to build within ourselves. In fact, in regards to our overall sense of identity we generally share our most valued traits with someone we consider to be a role model. Psychology Today explains that most people seek out a role model, even when it is subconscious. We just look up to those that we feel is of high moral standards in our person lives, or someone who is successful in a situation that people can relate to in their lives.
Videogames have the freedom to totally create a character to their perfect liking, and put them in difficult situations that could relate to anyone. The imagination is limitless, and with the medium of videogames, developers can maximize their potential with their imaginations and positively reach out to their audience. Characters that can be romanticized, legends that can be interacted with and feel more real, and heroes with goals that the player can directly identify with has pushed gaming into a whole new scope within the entertainment industry.
Mario, Link, Master Chief, Samus, Lara Croft, Ezio Auditore, Megaman, and many more heroes in videogames have unyielding willpower and indestructible moral values, even in the face of the most impossible odds. These characters are all relatable to different people, for different reasons, with the unifying element of heroism. Our day to day lives are filled with hundreds of thousands of choices, all influenced by what we believe is "right" or "normal", and role models help us to define what these words mean to us.
Ezio Auditore, my personal favorite, is a character representing an unyielding desire to make a difficult life better than what it is. He takes control of the world around him, and just like the quote from Ghandi, becomes the change he wanted to see in the world rather than wallowing in despair. After being framed for his family's murder, he decides to make a difference and dedicate himself to the pursuit righteousness by reigniting the order of the assassins. His only motivation is not vengeance, though. He fights for the greater good, and uses the tragedies he faced as further reasons to protect innocent people from the same fate.
Although characters that are most effective in my opinion, are the faceless ones. John-117, AKA Master Chief of the Halo franchise, provides merely an orange mask as a face and few instances of dialogue, the (male) gamer is free to feel as if they were Master Chief themselves. Bungie Studios' Frank O'Connor describes Spartan 117 as, "so quiet and
so invisible, literally, that the player gets to pretend they're the
Chief. The player gets to inhabit those shoes [and] apply their own
personality." This type of immersion greatly enhances the psychological effects of the characters on the gamers.
I have never really thought about characters in video games as role models to be honest, and i think you bring up some very interesting points. As you said the easiest to recognize and relate to role models are the faceless ones, but i wonder where customized characters who have definitive personalities are placed in this mix. Characters like commander Shepard, who can be either male or female and virtually any race, are being portrayed more often in games recently, like in Sunset Overdrive and Destiny, or even Skyrim. Would people make their characters with the subconscious hope of finding a role model in the way they create a character, and choose how the character behaves?
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