Revealing Social Identity Phenomena in Videogames with Archetypal Analysis

In this paper, we present a novel approach toward revealing social identity phenomena in videogames using archetypal analysis (AA). Conventionally used as a dimensionality reduction technique for multivariate data, we demonstrate how AA can reveal social phenomena and inequity such as gender/race-related steretoyping and marginalization in videogame designs. We analyze characters and default attribute distributions of two critically acclaimed and commercially successful videogames (The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Ultima IV) together with 190 characters created by players in a user-study using a third system of our own design. We show that AA can computationally 1) reveal implicit categorization of characters in videogames (e.g., base player roles and hybrid roles), 2) model real world racial stereotypes and stigma using character attributes (e.g., physically dominant attributes for Oblivion’s ostensibly African-American “Redguard” race) and 3) model gender marginalization and bias (e.g., males characterized as more archetypal representations of each race than females across attributes.) We highlight how AA is an effective approach for computationally modeling identity representations and how it provides a systematic way for the critical assessment of social identity phenomena in videogames.