Do you think this is because we as gamers attach so much emotional affect to our hobby that it sort of demands more information be known about these little supposed-people we control, to identify with and/or feel something for them?

Yes I do. Or at least I know I’ve felt this way about things in general I don’t have enough information about but am interested in. Games I think are a great example because they’re things many people love dearly but originally had threadbare back stories at best. Long time gamers have a long and prideful, if only just a familiar, history of making more from less. The developers, too, have familiarity, no doubt prideful as well, of creating great things from within tiny bounding boxes. It might be the single best catalyst for creativity, but I digress.

And @Lusi: Check again!

I’ll have to think more about the process of “it’s there, so we’ll have to explain it” in myth building. A power up like Mario’s magic mushrooms are essentially a cogwheel in the overall gameplay mechanism: nothing in the program requires it to be a mushroom, but the need for graphic representation had to result in something, so why not a mushroom? Then, from the other perspective of a player, the question becomes “why a mushroom?” Another level of abstraction is added.

This is fairly obviously analogous to the “why is the sky blue” and “how did the badger get his mask” sort of myths. But what would be the videogame analogue of mythmaking in maybe a more biblical sense, or like Hesiod’s Theogony? Actually I think they tried doing that with Hyrule Historia… ughhh.