Using Your Own Personal Experiences For Video Game Characters

So, I'm someone who when I play a game, I internally apply a backstory for a character to make them more appealing to me.

For example, when playing Breath Of The Wild. As a MTF trans woman, I like to think of Link as gender nonconforming and even trans and add a backstory in my head to make that character more appealing to me and easier to identity with. Especially in that game where the character of Link doesn't have much depth there and is easier to put yourself in that position.

I was wondering if anyone else here did this? With anything really. I think it can be really fun and heighten enjoyment out of a game by adding more context or story that wasn't there before, or maybe even add your own experiences in life to a character! ^_^

Sorry if this seems like rambling or something, I'm a little tired and don't have my wits with me at the moment. ?

I never write fanfiction in my own head for a character, and I don't really appreciate that part of fandom. The closest would be enjoying someone either writing a let's play from the POV of a character(Rutskarn's Half Time), or when funny let's players like Vinny make up characters and voices for characters in the games they play(like Ghoul being an incredibly lonely person in the Persona 4 Endurance Run).

But I certainly use them as an avatar for myself whenever it's convenient. For instance, I play a lot of RPGs, but I pretty much never roleplay. I'll always make choices based on what I as a person think. That's not to say the character always end up as a representation of me. I have yet to romance a female character in Dragon Age games, even though I'm a straight man. I tend to play as a female avatar, and the romance options for them are always annoying, unattractive characters I that dislike(Leliana, Morrigan, Sera etc). The male romance options, on the other hand, are great, likeable characters like Alistair, Zevran or the Iron Bull. But despite not being me exactly, it's still an expression of what I like rather than anything I decided my character likes or what the game tells me they like. Even if the character is highly defined(say, Naked Snake) I'll play him non-lethally out of my own preference and morality rather than what his might be as a soldier and spy. And if they are non-characters like Dark Souls characters, they're just an avatar of myself rather than a person with a backstory I imagine.

Undertale was real easy for me to grasp because it's how I pretty much approach all games, just not as explicitly.

I suppose this is less directly related to identity than OP's example, but still fits.

"Shades-of-grey" thinking (mixed with a dash of existentialism) forms the backbone of my life philosophy. As a result I'm very tired of "Chosen One" tropes, as well as being super averse to black-and-white moralizing and ideologies in general.

Paradoxically, I love role playing games, the home turf of the "Chosen One" trope and black-and-white morality. To bridge this gap, I always try to create and play protagonists who eschew the typical hero traits, actively don't want to be involved in The Hero's Journey bullshit and try to ignore that responsibility as well as they can within the confines of the game. My human warrior in Dragon Age Origins, for instance, was an ugly-as-sin asexual brute entirely focused on avenging his dead family...saving the world was completely incidental to murdering the shit out of every single person who wronged him. Though I do tend toward the "good" options in moral choice systems, I still try my best to play fast and loose depending on the situation. Bonuses from min-maxing morality take a backseat to consistently being inconsistent and breaking out of narrative molds.

I've never re-thought an established character, even one who is very light in actual story/background/character.

But I do from time to time head-canon some light back story to characters that I can create in RPG's for example.
I don't care how improbable it is time wise or travel wise, I kind of like the feeling that all of my Dark Souls series characters are related for example. I don't put too much thought into it, but just a fun little 'oh, my Dark Souls 2 character is the daughter or grand daughter of my Dark Souls 1 character.

I always play morality choice based characters as myself if I'm doing a good run (my own version of good of course) I like to look at them as 'what if me but in a wasteland?!' the perfect version of me of course, the real version of me would probably be in a cave full of twinkies crying and jumping at every little noise.

I always distance myself from any bad characters/plays however. I pick the opposite gender, opposite view points, opposite class of what I normally do, opposite everything, I don't want to relate to my Mass Effect Space Hitler at all.

It actually really bothered me in New Vegas when they put out a DLC that directly gives your character a back story. It just wasn't me, it wasn't my back story. It was a fun DLC, but it kind of stripped some head-canon-magic from me.

If the character is a distinct individual and written as such I don't mess with it.

That said, I play a lot of sports games and I do that all the time in their career modes. In College Hoops 2K8 (R.I.P.) there is a fantastic coaching career where you start at a losing school from a small conference. Eventually, if you are successful you work your way up to better jobs in more prestigious conferences. All the action takes place either on a basketball court or in a menu (recruiting, setting rotations, etc.) with no narrative. I always develop a full narrative for my coach. Everything from early life, to his college (and maybe NBA) playing days, his first jobs in basketball (video coordinator, recruiting coordinator, assistant coach and so on) and even keep adding narrative throughout his career. Sometimes when I am ambitious I will even play his college and NBA careers.

I also have recently begun more roleplaying with RPGs that have created characters. My Mass Effect retrospective is an example of that to some degree, so I have some basic ideas of backstory and early life for those characters.

For a long time I used to play RPGs from an efficiency perspective: make the most friends, do all the quests, help everyone all the time because you need that LOOT. That all got kinda boring though. Now, for instance, I just started playing Catherine, and while (so far) staying with your girlfriend seems like the obvious good/best ending, I try to keep Vince's morality in the middle, pissing people off occasionally and stuff. He seems like that kinda guy to me, I guess.

If it's self-created character I often try to come up with a very rudimentary backstory and character traits and try to roleplay with that in mind. I don't get deep into the backstory part, but if my idea for the character is something like bounty hunter or assassin that just cares about the job and getting paid that's how I'll try to make my choices. Although I suppose that usually only happens on subsequent playthroughs. Usually my first playthrough is through a fairly straightforward archetype that I freely choose what I personally want to do in any given moment.

If it's pre-established character, like Geralt from The Witcher, I don't really add anything beyond what the game gives me, and I try to roleplay them as close as possible to what that character would do in a situation. Although some of that would still inevitably result in a personalized headcanon.

Link is a weird one, as he is a blank slate, but not completely. I've never considered giving him any extra backstory. He's always just the hero.

I very rarely try to put myself directly into the shoes of the characters I play though. Even self-created blank slate characters are never based off myself completely.

This isn't exactly "personal experience", but I've taken to just remaking my canonical Commander Shepard whenever a game wants me to create and customize a character. And despite being completely impossible for dozens of reasons, I like to imagine it's all the same character on one timeline from game to game. Meaning this one woman has been:

• An N7 space commander person
• The leader of 3rd Street Saints, and then POTUS and a superhero or Matrix lady or whatever happened in SR4
• The Dovahkiin
• The Chosen Undead
• Arisen
• Whatever you are in Fallout 4
• For a brief period of time, a businesswoman/celebrity in that Kim Kardashian: Hollywood game

Shep gets around, y'all.

I don't think I've ever done this, unless the game has you create a character... but even then I can barely even think of names for them, much less think up backstories for them.

I roleplay in my head a lot. Like when I play telltale games for instance, I tend to make choices not based on what I would do, but what I believe the character that I made up would do. Which is probably why I was so dissapointed in the latest batman one, as the notion they had of Bruce Wayne just couldn't align with how I wanted to play him. But that's entirely off topic.

Tldr: Yes, I do that a lot.

I'm more of the kind of person that inserts himself into the character when possible. What choice would "I" make here, etc. I apply the character's defined backstory, experiences, and the world to my own thoughts, attidue, morality, and all that. Which a lot of role players will say is boring because I tend to be the same kind of person in every rpg, but hey, it hasn't been boring for me yet and I've been playing rpgs since I was a child. It's interesting because I'll think back on choices I've made in rpgs throughout my years and can clearly see how I've changed in attitude and maturity because I would make different choices if I replayed some of those games today.

DnD is the only place that I'll really establish vastly different back stories and personalities from my imagination rather than using myself as a base.

I'm autistic and absolutely terrible at analyzing and dealing with my own feelings. What /does/ work for me though, is projecting my feelings onto video game characters (mostly the ones I have created in RPGs such as Dragon Age), but also pre-written characters if I find parts of them I can identify with. It's a coping technique that really works for me. So yes, I do this a lot.