This study about the connection between the appearance of online avatars and the creators' real appearance was pretty intriguing. I have never played Half Life, but I've heard of it and know that there are plenty of online games/communities that allow you to customize your character as you wish. I thought it was interesting to see that many avatars looked somewhat similar and leaned towards Caucasian aesthetics of beauty even if their creators were inhabitants of other countries or cultures. I would have thought that with so many options, people would want get a little wild with their character's appearance and have few boundaries, but this study shows that people tended to go for humanoid avatars that had similar features to themselves. And yet, many opted to create idealized versions of themselves, with larger breasts for females or larger muscles for men. I also think it is interesting that Half Life players recreate other things from their real lives, such as buildings and even following some of "real life's" social norms (i.e. the example of no sex in public places.)
As a side note, a digital media art professor here at SJSU once showed my art class some of his projects, and some of them involved online gaming communities such as Half Life and World of Warcraft. Thinking back, his avatar did look similar to how he did in reality (bald and wearing all black.) He built a gallery in Half Life, asked other people online to contribute art, and held an art gallery for people to come in and see, all within Half Life. He did other things, and I thought it was very cool that this sort of thing you see in reality could be translated into the online gaming experiences.
I have never played a game using an avatar character, but I do think that people will often try and portray characteristics about themselves in their personal profiles that sometimes give an indicator of values or belief that they have or would like to have. I believe that many people see the digital world as an opportunity to recreate another self image, one that embodies what they partially have and what they would like to have at some point in their life. I think the problem is that few people actually they this seriously enough to think about what qualities they would like to have and instead project fantasies about their would-be lives.
ReplyDelete