This question comes exactly at the time when I've been thinking about this myself. I'm getting my first tattoo in a week, a stylized version of Mordin Solus from the Mass Effect games. I was always really against the idea of getting a pop culture tattoo, mostly because I almost found it...too typical? Like it was too "on-brand" for me, too expected, while also realizing that getting a pop culture tattoo is pretty much branding your body with the advertising of a consumerist product.
But after a lot of thinking, I decided that it was okay since the design of the tattoo is my own. Thus, I feel like I'm interacting with and expressing my love for the series on my own terms. This is of course similar to how fan fiction, fan art, and things like Etsy function. As a Mass Effect fan, it's been decreed by Bioware that I can express my support of the game in only a few ways; with specific merchandise, or iconography that's built into the game like the Renegade/Paragon logos. I love my official N7 sweater, but for my own body, I love the idea that I (and my tattoo artist) have created something entirely new. It feels like I'm putting my own stamp on the series, as I put it's own stamp on me.
One major change for me has involved playing games where you create your own character.
It used to be that, given a character creation tool, my first instinct would be to recreate myself as best as possible. This would also lead to me following old patterns - always being the "up-close-and-personal" character, and making choices based on what I would do in the moment.
There was a point - probably around when I became more invested in social justice issues and recognizing of my own privilege - where I started to think more about how a created character's various traits (gender, race, class, weapon choice) all come together and tell you various things about their personality. I've been using this to then inform my choices in-game. The most recent example has been in Dragon Age: Inquisition, where my character is a female Qunari Warrior. The in-game plot is that the Qunari character is a person who has strayed from the Qun and become a mercenary. As such, I tend to pick dialogue options that show her discomfort with the religious aspects of the Inquisition, and her ability to survive without any sort of real "home".
In short, I'm trying to play a specific character more than just myself, which has had the double effect of broadening my horizons gameplay-wise (I've invariably been a different class in each Dragon Age game) and allowing me to explore in-game perspectives that are slightly outside the normative "white male" ones. It's really improved my experience of these games, because it adds on the personal goal of figuring out who my character really is throughout in addition to whatever goals actually come from in-game.
There's something to the travel>mission>shoot>loot loop of Borderlands that just gets me. Those are probably the only games where I can very easily settle in for a whole day of gameplay without realizing it.
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