Since the first video games, digital interfaces as well as video game genres have become greatly diversified, with many different methods for identifying with and manipulating game characters (or avatars). The avatar, the intermediary between the world of the gamer and the world of the game itself, has become a complex, hybrid figure where the boundaries between player and character are increasingly blurred. To highlight the main trends in the changing figure of the avatar in video games, this paper draws on current research on avatars and player identification to put forward a typology based on different means used by players to identify with their characters: puppet avatars, mask avatars and motion-based avatars.