Gaming the Name: Player Strategies for Adapting to Name Constraints in Online Videogames
summary
Interviews with 29 players identify four concrete constraints—unique name requirements, character limits, language filters, and content moderation—and enumerate repeated workarounds: crafting a variation on an archetype to preserve identity, keeping backups, and preemptive conflict avoidance by sanitizing names before registration. Strategies map to Lampinen et al.’s framework of corrective and preventative behaviors, reveal polarized responses to automatic username generators, and quantify how negotiation over naming tradeoffs shapes access and self-presentation.
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