Unveiling The Digital Self – Exploring Avatar Identification In Online Gaming

The interest in online gaming and metaverse is increasing. Both digital technolo-gies share the aspect of representing oneself via an avatar in online environments. To understand how individuals interact through avatars, we use the lens of exist-ing identity theories and observe different levels at play when individuals identify with their avatars. We argue that these different layers have fundamentally differ-ent characteristics and play different roles in the identification and implications. Our preliminary findings show indications for different identity layers, on which we plan to conduct a qualitative study. We aim to provide more detail on new concepts, such as avatar-avatar identification, to better understand which layers are most salient and may influence identification.