Identity Play

My real life identity is a female school librarian, a mother of two daughters, a Chinese immigrant, a not-tall-enough middle-age female, a frugal wife, a swimming lover, and very dedicated house-keeper. Yinyin Yen is the character I created in second life. The virtual identity I created is tall, outgoing, nice outfit, capable to fly and travel. Comparing to my real life, my second life avatar has more freedom and less stress. Playing this virtual life allows me think new thoughts about my life, and what I valued and experience what I can’t do in my real life. We can refer this to a learning theory why we play video game: good video games reflect good principles of learning.

For identity play, students need to be fully engaged themselves in the classroom to have best learning. In literature class, when students are required to have presentations after they finish biographies reading, they need to involve themselves fully in this identity play to get better performance. In Science class, students need to relate themselves as a scientist, no matter which scientists or how much they want to be scientists, they need to completely identify and define their own roles in the class. Teachers play a role to help students to build up the bridge between student’s real identity and virtual identity.
Good video games are designed for different levels of play, offer players the feeling of achievement, reward all players if they continuously play a good game, and furthermore, provide opportunity to competence. Good video games are carrying out these learning principles which benefit learners beyond video game playing.