Bleed

Description
This pattern occurs when a player of a game starts to connect the character in the game with himself/herself, and various emotions "bleed" over to real life. The term is mostly used in role playing games such as LARP, but may also be present in any game which deals with a player character.

Examples
A good example in games is Sims Online, which is a social game where relations between characters come into play. A user affected by bleed may fall in love with another Sim (character), or may get upset by other Sims actions, where the other players did things in the game that they never meant in the real world. Another example is horror games, where a user who feels that the character is themself, gets more emotionally attached and is more scared by the game.

Pros and Cons
The pattern can be both good and bad as seen in the examples. It's good when it's used to increase immersion in a game, but can be bad especially if one player is affected by bleeding and the other player just see it as characters with no root in reality.

Relations
The pattern is related to the term bleed

Contributors
Created by Andreas Bjerkeholt from discussions.