Gaming the Name: Player Strategies for Adapting to Name Constraints in Online Videogames

Abstract

Videogame players must negotiate their preferences and manage their identities within the infrastructural constraints of their respective gaming platforms. We studied the creation of usernames--the names players use to represent themselves in online videogames--to understand what happens when the demands of a game, platform, or service are at odds with gamers? desires. Through a series of open-ended, semi-structured interviews (N=30) conducted with online videogame players, we found that usernames are co-constructed via a process of negotiation in which players adjust their ideal tags using a variety of adaptive strategies, or workarounds, to find suitable options. In response to unique name requirements, character limitations, language filters, and in-game moderation, workarounds such as tweaking preferred usernames, preemptively avoiding certain names, and keeping secondary choices as back-ups allowed players to satisfy some of their name preferences while still facilitating access to their gaming platform of choice.