If You Gave An Avatar Any Other Face, Would It Still Be You?

Given the immense time I have on my hands at my night job, I get to thinking a lot. One of the things I have been thinking about lately, besides what killed the dinosaurs (the fact that we don't know yet bothers me), is avatars. Take any avatar really (not the movie though, no thank you), whether it be the Mii, the 360 avatar, or an in game customizable avatar (as in Oblivion or Mass Effect). The thing I've been thinking about is how much do we make those avatars in our own image, or how much do we use those avatars to live out a different life. Personally, my avatars are usually a proxy of me; as my 360 avatar is as close as I can get it and evidently my Mass Effect 2 Sheppard looks an awful much like me (which I didn't mean to do). Furthermore, why is this? While I understand that games are a form of escapism, much like books and some drugs, what does this mean? Does this mean that we would like to be these characters that we play, or that we want them to be exactly what they are, extensions of ourselves in situations that are dangerous in thought, but actually safe to ourselves. Something else to nibble on, what does the existence of games like the Sims or Second Life mean? That we are unwilling to put in the work to change our real lives or that we are getting something from these sort of games that we can't get from real life? It's things like these that bother me, any ideas?