Saints Row IV

Challenging the User-Avatar Dichotomy in Avatar Customization Research

Victoria McArthur's 2018 Eludamos article challenges the dominant "user-avatar dichotomy" in avatar customization research, which treats avatars as objects shaped primarily by users' identity motivations.

• Avatars should be understood as emerging from heterogeneous actor-networks that include interface affordances, game-world aesthetics, co-situated players, and socio-cultural ideologies, not merely as tools of user identity expression.
• Interfaces are active co-constructors of identity rather than neutral tools, so self-representation research must move beyond anthropocentric frameworks.
• Designers now control the range of customization options available to players, and default avatars (such as The Sims' white male character) carry social stigma while reinforcing dominant cultural assumptions.