Watching yourself die...repeatedly

[Galletea]

Recently I've been playing Fallout 3, which as I'm sure you're aware has a character customization thing. My character is not based on me in any way other than being female. My boyfriend on the other hand has fashioned his man to resemble himself, after many painstaking minutes of tweaking and has, as a result, watched himself die in many interesting fashions.

Do you make your avatars resemble you? And do you feel any more connected with them for doing so?
Does it bother you that you're watching yourself die?

It is something that I never thought of doing, but watching my boyfriend's likeness get blown to pieces does make me wince more than usual.

EDIT: I'm quite aware that the "does your character look like you?" thread has been done before. I'm more interested in motivations for doing so, and the affect it has on your gaming experience.

[small]I'll apologise now if this has been done but I haven't seen it in the last month's pages of threads; yes I'm that bothered by deja Nazis.[/small]

 

[Mariena]

I always try to make my characters look like myself if it's possible.. if not, I'll just make something cute out of it.

But in the end, because either my talents for character customization suck, or the character customization itself sucks, the character ends up looking nothing like me.. save for the blonde ponytail and blue eyes.. The body is dictated by the game itself, which is just about always a C/D cupped supermodel with superhips and a killerbutt..

So.. wait.. It DOES look like me! (okay okay, it doesn't.)

 

[The_Deleted]

Just started Saints Row 2 and found the Plastic Sugery options to be pretty exhaustive. So naturally I'm trying to build myself. No option for the Phil Collins hair line, sadly.

 

[Galletea]

But does making yourself in the game make you connect with the character more? Or is it just lack of imagination as to what to create?

 

[Dramatic Flare]

I have a series of fun avatars on gaia (i know I know -flameshield-) But due to the exhaustive avatar creation system in place none of them look like me.

 

[Amnestic]

But does making yourself in the game make you connect with the character more? Or is it just lack of imagination as to what to create?

Bit of both in my case. If I'm making a female character it's obviously slightly more difficult for me to fashion them after me and still make them look good. In that case I'll just try to make them look pretty.

Generally if they're male they'll come out close to how I look with maybe a bit more facial hair and a bit more awesome-ness.

Watching myself die repeatedly can be both frustrating and entertaining. I recently decided to see if I could punch out an Enclave Eyebot. Turns out that I can, however the resulting explosion blew both my head and left arm off.

You will all be seeing more of my most recent Fallout 3 avatar very soon ;o

 

[Ultrajoe]

I managed a decent representation of myself in the oddly fantastic game 'Godfather'....

It was... disturbing to be gunned down, but made cut scenes awesome and using the streetsweeper auto-shotgun and god-weapon into private fantasies of death and flame.

Watching myself die repeatedly can be both frustrating and entertaining. I recently decided to see if I could punch out an Enclave Eyebot. Turns out that I can, however the resulting explosion blew both my head and left arm off.

But it was manly and awesome, i salute you, fellow warrior of the fist.

That visceral kick of blowing away a ghoul or smacking the head off a super mutant is made all the more impressive by the fact that your doing it with your fists. Or in my case, a hydraulic ram attached to my fist. Double the manly? I think so. I was in the mall, out of ammo and at one end of that trench filled war-zone. When 'Through the fire and flames' came up on shuffle in my earpieces i just had to bash my way down the entire length of the thing. The fact that Vats was portraying a video game version of myself just made it so much more awesome.

Unarmed. You wish you were this awesome.

 

[xitel]

I never get bothered by my character dying, except for the fact that it means I have to start over from my last checkpoint. Even if my avatar looks like me I dont get bugged by the simple fact that the character is dead. I never really get connected to an avatar, even if it looks like me. In fact, I find myself more connected to characters that look nothing like me.

 

[Erana]

Zoey from L4D looks enough like me to freak my brain out when I see her being murdered by zombies or bad teammates.
The worst part is that now I get accused of being a fangirl because, after a day of being in a ponytail, my hair gets in my face!
It was (in an odd way) flattering, but now its just annoying.

 

[Mariena]

But does making yourself in the game make you connect with the character more? Or is it just lack of imagination as to what to create?

As I'm the one playing the character, I'm playing .. me. So I try to make it look like me. I try to have the character do the stuff I would do in real life. Though this is usually quite hampered by by the game. Apparently the Saints Row 2 character customization is amazing (even Yahtzee seemed satisfied by it).. but until that ***** is out for the PC I'm going to have to wait.

I tried making a character look like me in City of Villains, wearing a combat suit.. but it never looked like me.. apart from my 'signature' blonde ponytail.. So I ended up scrapping it and swapped it around for a cute long-haired brunette. Whatever.

 

[Galletea]

You will all be seeing more of my most recent Fallout 3 avatar very soon ;o

Intriguing.

I did wonder if I'd be less likely to run headlong into certain death situations for kicks and giggles, if it were me doing the aforementioned. Then again it may simply be more awesome to watch myself punching heavily armoured enclave types.

 

[Frybird]

I, to my surprise, found myself becoming slighly disturbed by watching Issac Clarke die oh so often in Dead Space (since i play on Hard, that happens...often).

He sure does not look anything like me (given the short glimpse you can get in the intro)...but i think this bucket helmet thing kinda helps to build up a connection.

Also, i can't help but imagine what it would feel like to be impaled, amputated and ripped apart by a regenerator...

 

[Pigeon_Grenade]

well Sometimes its good watching yourself do it, sometimes its good watching the Character do it, if theres no Customization, and sometimes you want the char to look like what you want yourself too, mind you i try not to let myself in any version die, in fallout 3, worst way ive died so far was deciding i could make it to the ground from my house in megaton just fine
and the fall killed me... dident burst into bits though..

 

[Amnestic]

You will all be seeing more of my most recent Fallout 3 avatar very soon ;o

Intriguing.

I did wonder if I'd be less likely to run headlong into certain death situations for kicks and giggles, if it were me doing the aforementioned. Then again it may simply be more awesome to watch myself punching heavily armoured enclave types.

The first installment will come soon, I forgot to grab a few screenshots which are kind of important ;/ Didn't have any saves midway through the vault so I need to start on a new save to go get them.

 

[Monkfish Acc.]

I don't usualy try to make my characters look like me because I don't like my appearance. When I do, though, I find myself oddly okay with being destroyed in various entertaining fashions.
Other people in the room, however, tend to wince as my digital doppelgänger has chunks of himself scattered about the place. It's actualy kind of funny, isn't it? The way you're bothered by watching a friends likeness die, and then are totally indifferent when it's your own?
Or perhaps that's just my emo self, I dunno.

 

[Erana]

My WoW char looks like a colourblind gay bard so I am quite happy to get him killed over and over and over again.

Urge to go pollitically correct at him... Rising...

 

[smallharmlesskitten]

I try and make a skinny version of me.

 

[The Wooster]

My WoW char looks like a colourblind gay bard so I am quite happy to get him killed over and over and over again.

Urge to go pollitically correct at him... Rising...

Are you saying gay people don't have a general fondness for brightly coloured and/or fashionable clothing?

 

[Amnestic]

My WoW char looks like a colourblind gay bard so I am quite happy to get him killed over and over and over again.

Urge to go pollitically correct at him... Rising...

Do it! Dooooo iiiiiit!