Sometimes games encourage us to role-play as another person, pretending to take on their persona, their point of view, thoughts, their motivations, and their state of mind. In tabletop role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons, this role-playing is the central point of the game, or nearly so. At some point and with some degree of drama, we will affect an accent, mime mannerisms, and emote our character’s reactions. Video games also often ask us to role-play, though it’s usually around adopting character motivations and morals –unless you’re getting into things on a MMO’s role-play server.
What do psychologists and others who study games know about role-playing? What makes us more effective at it, what pitfalls can it hide, and how can we role-play to enjoy games more? These are the questions I’ll answer with this episode’s guest expert.
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Audio Credits:
- “Robot Motivation” by The Polish Ambassador, licensed under Creative Commons: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0
- “Heroic Age” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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