On The Way to January Day!

For the past 6 months, I’ve explored how the media views role-playing games, the history of RPGs, and the psychology behind the benefits/problems concerning RPGs on the brain. I have looked into the science behind the decision-making process and risk behaviors, but for January Day, I plan to go in a different direction from what I have initially been researching. I’ve been spending a lot of time with board games and not a lot with video games, so my plan is to research something that fills in the gap between the two: character creation.

Character creation is something I find incredibly interesting. It definitely has effects on how we see each other and how immersed we are in the world of a game. So, when you get to a loading screen and have all these options at your disposal, how do you choose what to do? How likely is it that you will create a character similar to or different from yourself? I want to make that the focus of my January Day project and see if anything is changed by beauty standards or racial biases.

However, just as important in character creation is personality! Thus, as a hook, I want to use some sort of pamphlet in my discussion that people can take with them that explains to them what kind of character they would be based on their personalities. I haven’t decided whether I want to set up a quiz-like flowchart and explain how things like the Harry Potter Sorting Hat function or if I want to just use the archetypes provided by the MBTI (Myers-Briggs) that most people know. While the MBTI classifications aren’t perfect, they’re relatable. We’ll find out!