Gamer Identities

League of Legends and the Crisis of the Gamer Identity
Gaming culture is not new. From the first players of tabletop role-playing games in the 1970s, passing from the graphic adventures in the 1980s; to the first Multiplayer Online Battle Arena games of the 1990s, the gaming culture has been growing and changing. Consequently, these otherwise scattered players have gathered under the banner of the videogames they play, creating a subculture and a sense of identification around the videogames. According to the Handbook of Self and Identity, identities are:
“The traits and characteristics, social relations, roles, and social group memberships that define who one is. Identities can be focused on the past what used to be true of one, the present what is true of one now, or the future-the person one expects or wishes to become, the person one feels obligated to try to become, or the person one fears one may become. Identities are orienting, they provide a meaning-making lens and focus one’s attention on some but not other features of the immediate context” (Oyserman, Elmore, and Smith, 2012).
Hence, identities can be considered orientations according to which we live our lives. Following the proposed definition, we could consider the Gamer Identity as a social group membership that shape the social behaviors of its members and turn them into a conglomerate of people. Nevertheless, gamers cannot be considered an urban tribe because they do not gather around an image, or a…