Digital Jozi: Hybrid identity, avatars and anonymity in online gaming spaces

Abstract

This thesis examines how Johannesburg-based gamers and game creators harness anonymity, immersive virtual environments and avatar customisation within Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) to negotiate identity, cultivate community and generate cultural value. Drawing on three months of ethnographic fieldwork, which comprised semi structured interviews with eight participants and participant observation in online games such as Apex Legends and Fortnite as well as in the Digital Arts Department at Wits University, this thesis presents a Hybrid Identity Construction Framework that integrates analyses of local urban infrastructure with theories of virtual realism, intersectionality and digital embodiment. Findings reveal that anonymity empowers players to subvert real-world hierarchies, experiment with self-presentation and navigate trust and mistrust across online and offline contexts. Immersive virtual realms emerge as co-constitutive dimensions of a hybrid reality, offering spaces for creative experimentation and emotional connection while simultaneously reflecting and intensifying existing inequalities of race, gender and class. Avatar customisation then serves as a mechanism for identity reconstruction, enabling participants to express creative agency, resist societal constraints and transform collaborative gameplay into socio-economic opportunity. Ultimately, this research shows that access to these transformative spaces that are shaped by connectivity, device ownership and socio-economic status profoundly influences identity performance and participation, and that the skills, networks and cultural capital cultivated through gaming translate into tangible prospects within South Africa’s growing creative industries.