Abstract: This study investigates the relationships between virtual identity and non-virtual identity in video role-playing games. Utilizing James Gee's identity theoretical constructs of real-world identity, virtual world identity, and projective identity, the study analyzes the connections (via a projective identity in liminal space) between real-world identities of video game users and their diegetic avatar, the virtual-world identity. Phenomenological data (oral interviews and video gameplay transcription and analysis) was collected from two participants who each played ten hours of the computer role-playing game Morrowind. Participants with high levels of videogame literacy and interest in the role-playing genre of videogames were selected for this study. Findings indicate that the relationships between the virtual avatar and the real-world user were dynamic and complex: real-world identities continually informed the virtual identity of the avatar. This study provides one methodological approach for the collection, transcription, and analysis of video game data. This study also recommends the creation of two new terms to aid in the formation of reliable and consistent terminology in the field of video game theory. First, the term 'real-world' identity (used by Gee and other scholars to describe non-virtual identities) was found to be problematic. This study found that virtual identities, created and maintained by users' non-virtual identities, may be just as 'real' to users as their non-virtual identities. Therefore, this study recommends replacing the term 'real-world' with 'non-virtual' for future studies on identity construction in virtual spaces. The study also suggests creation of the term 'verisimulacratude' to help describe how users identify with and become immersed in video games set in fantastical simulacra-like gameworlds. Creation of the new terminological binaries virtual/non-virtual and verisimulacratude/verisimilitude allows scholars to more accurately study the rhetoric of video games and identity construction within virtual diegetic spaces.