Finding Identity through Art and Role-playing : A study on the Pouflons community

Abstract: “Playing pretend” is often regarded as childish, but many people continue to role-play well into adulthood through various forms of games, activities, and experiences that become an established part of societal norm. In this study, I attempt to establish links between marginalized identities, self-discovery, self-acceptance, and role-play. My findings may help in development of serious and applied games, as well as role-play’s use in therapeutic settings. I surveyed players online from a specific Art Role-Playing Game (ARPG) community, Pouflons, to find out how their characters’ personas and identities spillover and bleed into the player’s primary identity. Existing literature has reported instances of bleed between character and player identity, but usually in an autoethnographic report, small study, or only in theory. I intended to confirm the phenomena of identity bleed and emancipatory bleed by using a larger sample size, at 138 complete responses. I found that this community had a large population of people identifying as LGBT and that a clear majority of players report that their identity has been affected by their role-play.