Identification in the Process of Video GamesCase Study of Four Prominent Games: Duke Nukem, Grand Theft Auto (GTA), The Elder’s Scrolls: Skyrim, and Call of Duty (COD)

Video games as new types of media, have created a new form of interaction between the media and the audience through a distinct and distinctive look. Video games are the creators of social worlds that cannot be considered unreal, but they must be regarded as supernatural. This new type of media interaction incorporates functions, cultures, social feedback, and most importantly, social implications, which have made it a new social issue that differs greatly from its predecessors.

Inspired by Espen Aarseth, approaches to computer games are categorized in two categories: Narrative Approaches and Ludological Approaches. Narrative Approaches emphasize a humanist and subject-oriented stance that places computer games at the root of narrative structures that represent meaning for gamers. In contrast, the Ludological Approach believes that computer games create their own independent identity space, and that the gamer redefines itself within this context alongside other components of the game.

After briefly reviewing theoretical approaches, this article provided evidences for the strengthening of the Ludologic Approach by exploring the detailed gameplay of four prominent games, namely the Duke Nukem, Grand Theft Auto (GTA), The Elder’s Scrolls: Skyrim, and Call of Duty (COD). In these analyses, we especially relied on theoretical perspectives of Johan Huizinga, Ludwig Joseph John Wittgenstein, Roger Caillois, Simon Gottschalk, Jesper Juul, Edward Castronova, Espen Aarseth, and Gordon Calleja.In this research, based on Jean Baudrillard's framework, we used character and structural relationships in the context of games to analyze the characters, the game world, and their relationship to the game, and looked at their characters' responses to their semiotic needs. The identity creation aspect of video games often arises in response to a common identity problem among the target audience of these games; a problem that is either socially expressed or socially constrained. That is why video games are increasingly seeking to represent the reality through simulation, and are trying to link themselves to reality in their synthetic world. So, Huizinga's view of the magic circle is being questioned, because in these video games we are not confronted with anything other than the real world and do not seek to create a boundary between the game world and the real world when doing them. They are real worlds with the aim of looking to implement the same things in these virtual worlds. What is changing here is the identity that is associated with these two different worlds, and this process of changing the identity is done in a way that can represent something presented in a playful identity that does not exist in the subject itself. Understanding the game world as a new reality, also gives rise to other aspects of a game (in the general sense). Caillois refers to it as the believable aspect of playing action; this kind of believability is due to the graphical and technical interfaces of video games in which the imagination transforms into the object that occurs in its most perfect form. That is why the aesthetic aspects of the game have their intended effect. As we move forward in the history of video games, the gameplay elements, graphics and physics of game-changing animations can play a stronger role as a real-world simulator and improve immersion as cyber text progresses. But, let's not forget that we always face a representation in video games. This does not mean that the reality is distorted, but that these representations are independent reality. They have the ‘absence and meaninglessness of that reality’ if they have real-world implications.