I am not my avatar!
If one more conference asks me to provide an avatar headshot for their website or materials, I may shoot myself. The last few articles for gaming magazines asked, and it’s common with all the MMO/VW centric conferences too: “Please supply 150 word bio, and a picture of your avatar.”
Well, guess what. I don’t currently have an avatar. And even if I did, odds are good that I wouldn’t tell you what it looked like. I like to keep my identities secret, because I get enough random inquiries from spam, Facebook, and MySpace as it is.
Beyond that, though — I am just not content to have my avatar stand in for me. I played one general character for ten years or so, until I went public with that identity, sure. But alongside that identity, I played many others. My admin handle has switched to something contextual in every game I have worked on, too.
I know there’s lots of blogs and websites where people use their SL identity and avatar, or theit gaming handle, as their “branding” so to speak. But it’s just not me. Am I alone?
38 Responses to “I am not my avatar!”
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Nope, not alone. Or at least, not totally alone. I don’t stick with an avatar or handle for very long, and I wouldn’t be comfortable “branding” myself that way. Change is good.
I’m sure I’ve seen your avatar somewhere – chap with a beard and glasses, I think. Will they not accept that? Perhaps you should wear some more weapons and armour for them, you do look rather dangerously underequipped.
No, “Kerri Knight” is a pen name for my gaming/role-playing persona, writings, and characters. Sadly, I was born with a much less interesting name :9. I have 4 Yahoo! mail accounts: Personal/friends, formal, junk mail, and one for the pen name. There is nothing wrong with wanting to keep separate parts of your life….separate. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to tell the world what characters you play, either. However in some cases, like yours, there is a problem with what the world might do with that information.
I think you’re seeing the flip side of a phenomenon that’s all to familiar within digital worlds: an insistence on complete identity linkage.
Some of it’s the age-old “A/S/L?” demands, but some is a very odd meme linking trustworthiness with unity of digital and physical identity: Robin Linden has several times called those of us who don’t link “untrustworthy.”
I’ve taken a look at this development a few times in my blog, inspired by your work on avatar rights. I’d be really interested in your opinion from the other side: *is* this a war on imagination, a backlash against identity experimentation, or is something else going on?
This avatar thing was much more interesting back when we thought you would have one avatar to exist in an endless virtual world.
It turns out there is no endless world and instead it’s very siloed in different worlds and for only a few years at a time.
Also games like WoW and EQ and other games really got people thinking that their avatar will never be very unique.
These reasons are why I think people don’t associate with avatars like we first thought we would.
Second life breaks some of these rules. Their avatars are super customizable and their world does feel like the original metaverse we thought was coming in the 80s.
Second Life encourages a near-total separation of avatar and First Life identity; exposing someone else’s FL identity in SL is a TOS violation, and it’s considered rude to refer to someone in an SL context by their FL name, even if it’s exposed. Thus, there are many SL users who blog under their avatar’s name and image, myself included. I have a “First Life” blog as well, but I don’t connect the two.
But the reason people ask for this information, why they’d rather have the avatar, is that it’s a more accurate portrayal of yourself. Your avatar is who you see yourself as. Your flesh body is just some piece of meat you got from the genetic lottery, maybe customized a bit at great expense and effort with clothes, exercise, and plastic surgery.
[…] very positive way!Finally, Raph Koster just echoed the Digital Person’s lament from the other side: I Am Not My Avatar! He protests efforts to link him to his digital identities, asserting his right to be separate […]
I long ago gave up trying to fit “Richard the arch-wizard” into a 64×64 pixel box…
As a side note, I find it more than a little sad that the word “avatar” has almost completely replaced “character” when referring to the in-world object with which a player identifies. It takes away a level of identification, and means we have to refer to what used to be called avatars (the graphical representation of your character) as “toons”. The word “character” only really lives on as part of the acronym NPC, which is still in use.
Kami Harbinger said:
No, in the context of Raph’s post, avatars are gimmicks—mere artwork that helps publications look more “with it.”
Raph Koster wrote:
At least there are quotation marks. Avatars aren’t brands. Avatars aren’t even identities. They’re disguises.
Send picture of self, and say “Psst this is actually a render from the new engine – don’t tell anyone”
There’s an assumption that people actually play a game long enough to identify with their avatar.
Given your history with MUDs, I would suggest submitting a block of text when people ask for your avatar.
I’ve wanted to get away from “Slyfeind” for a long time, but it just keeps coming back to me. Every game I play, I inevitably make an elven thief, and I inevitably get people correcting me on the spelling of “fiend.”
Requesting a picture of an avatar seems a bit strange to me. It’s almost as if they’re trying to be hip and with-it on this new computer lingo.
My first reaction to seeing your comment is “Yeah, I guess the press has gotten way too caught up in the latest trendy thing.” At least they’ve noticed it. Which is a little ironic, because the pictures I tend to send around usually are various drawings of me as a cat person.
That dates back, though, to way before anybody was using avatars online anywhere. I think of it more as a “show biz persona”, just like one wouldn’t be correct to expect Paul Reubens to wear the clothing and makeup of Pee Wee Herman off the set, or Cassandra Peterson to always have her Elvira wig and costume on.
Games & virtual worlds are just one more place I could wear the costume of the character I’ve built up, just as I occasionally wear a costume in real life. Not often in real life though, because costumes are a hassle & not as comfortable or convenient as everyday clothing. Online it’s much more convenient. If there were ever a movie with the Dr. Cat character in it, though (doubt that’ll ever happen), I’d dress up in a hot, uncomfortable costume for that in a heartbeat.
I do think it’s appropriate for in-game news/interview media, or even websites dedicated to that game (either from the publisher, or third party) to run avatar screen captures or portraits next to articles or interviews relating to a particular person. If the context is all (or 90%) about what’s going on in the game, that’s what the people in the game know and experience as the visual representation of whoever is being talked about, and that’s fine. Of course in-game press is in a pretty fledgling state. For real world conferences, magazines, or even news websites, I think real people are still relevant for a while until we all get sealed in pods jacked into the Matrix when our machine overlords take over. Hopefully never – I still like fresh air and excercise, blashphemy though it be coming from someone in our industry! And didn’t you just mention that article about normal people playing games more than the hardcore nerds now? Bring ’em on! And show ’em real photos, that’s what they want.
It still amazes me that the idea “MMORPGs shouldn’t have voice chat” had so many adherents for so long. Most humans want to hear each other’s real voices, see each other’s real photos, and maybe visit each other in person for a real hug. I’m pretty sure they always will.
Dr Cat>It still amazes me that the idea āMMORPGs shouldnāt have voice chatā had so many adherents for so long. Most humans want to hear each otherās real voices, see each otherās real photos
What’s your opinion of the idea of having your real face captured via webcam and put on your avatar’s head?
Richard
‘oive nivah used a sudynym ‘n oi nivah will.
It was too much fun growing a personality for meatspace. Making one up for the metaverse would be less. It would be… acting. Let someone with a better touch handle the puppetry.
@Bartle: I think the idea sucks. I work as hard as I can to keep my image off of anything, much less a cartoon character.
I play a text game.
My avatar is about 20 characters. Long.
Avatar that.
I agree, you should send a real picture along with the explanation that this is your avatar in real life.
š
len wrote:
Virtual worlds have real-world applications. From live meetings and events to interactive videoconferencing and virtual offices, there are a dizzying number of uses for life-like avatars in virtual worlds.
Let’s look into my crystal ball. Combine Areae’s virtual worlds, Big Stage’s life-like avatars, and Microsoft’s visualization technology, and what do you get? A shopping experience unlike any other. Imagine walking into any store, using Surface to generate a product (e.g., clothing, costume, or a snowboard), taking three snapshots of yourself with your cell phone, placing the phone on the Surface to load the images, and instantly generating an avatar of yourself using the product you created.
From that point, you can send your “life visualization” into a virtual world, demonstrating your potential purchase in action, and where your friends can come together for a peer review from any Web-enabled device from anywhere in the world.
Not only that, but the virtual world you enter doesn’t have to be a space the store provides. You could enter a virtual world that you created to resemble any destination. Ever wanted to see yourself lounging on a sofa in front of a state-of-the-art home entertainment system in your future loft? Fighting a dragon in custom armor that you need for a (virtual) costume party? Riding a custom snowboard down a mountain, performing a Backside 720, with your friends? Yourself and significant other in a tropical paradise for his/her birthday? With 20 more pounds of muscle or the figure you’ve always wanted? With cosmetic surgery?
The future of commercially applied technology is all about removing the guesswork from the decision-making process for a healthier, safer society.
We’ve been shopping in virtual worlds for a long time. We’ve been attending virtual meetings for a long time. None of these are new ideas, Morgan.
The question was, do I want a camera to superimpose my real world photo on the avatar. The answer is No. I simply don’t like having my photos on the web. It leads to assumptions of intimacy I personally don’t care for.
That says nothing about the willingness to use a self-branding avatar. I had one of the first in CyberTown years ago. It became part of the library and then when I went to play at the in-world music events, I could watch other bands and soloists play with an avatar based on me. It was … weird. So give me an avatar that can’t be copied but doesn’t age. Hey, maybe I should use your photo or camera stream. Someone will figure out how to hijack those. š
That is a fine idea except that to date, there is one standard for avatar interoperability, H-Anim, and it is used in a language largely diss’d by a market of vendors who have failed to make good on promises of interoperability. So, except for the walled gardens (some like these and want them) and the niches (the vendors who insist that Flash and Java-in-a-box are the future, the kinds of things you are talking about aren’t mainstream.
When will they be? When Amazon.com and eBay feature virtual world shopping and Google gives away virtual meeting rooms with ads on the walls.
I play with my characters… not as them. This reminds me a bit of the whole “gender bending issue” so many gamers seem to obsess upon.
Len Bullard wrote:
Most ideas are not new. People have been dreaming since time immemorial. I don’t really care much for your “disqualification” of the “old” ideas I described. The fact is that such ideas, such dreams, can be renewed and realized with new technologies.
Only in limited, now-unimaginative ways that never were particularly successful as commercial applications.
Do you also stay inside a shack all day, atop an ivory tower far away from society? Not all human interaction is intimate (refer to proxemics), but in spite of hermitic fancies, avoiding personal relationships is not a global aspiration.
Great idea! DRM-protected avatars. Not. If an avatar is the representation of some human attribute, and communication is vital to the lifetime of that attribute, then preventing the duplication of an avatar is counterintuitive. You might as well not have an avatar at that point. As Dawkins described (in terms of genes and memes), the three characteristics that are necessary for successful replication are copying-fidelity, fecundity, and longevity. The first of the three is worth emphasizing here.
What you have to understand is that being human is more than just being a meatbag in a “meatplace.” You should see your physical appearance as more than simply the flesh you were born with, for better or worse. We as people don’t just see blank, meaningless faces printed on paper or displayed on screen. We connect faces with our perception of what those faces represent.
Ensuring that your avatar has copying-fidelity is all about communicating that for which you stand. What I think most people want is their avatars, their “meaning of life” as seen by others, to be irreplaceable. People want to preserve the characteristics they believe make them individuals. In other words, avatars should be reproduceable.
As for age, while human appearances physically change over time, age is also largely perceptual. A logo that remains constant for a hundred years is still seen as a hundred-years old. Coca-Cola, for example, has such a logo; however, given enough wit, perceptions can be managed by reinforcing the positive characteristics we as people apply to the concept of age.
Not yet, but I don’t think any one company will be the catalyst for mass adoption and diffusion. I was describing Metaplace as a virtual meetings and events solution to a room full of aspiring and working planners just a few months ago. In less than a minute, I had a gaggle of giddy girls fawning over the prospect of always having the ideal venue, never having to select and negotiate a site, forgoing the hospitality management ordeal, and being able to thrust thousands upon thousands of attendees into virtual spaces with only bulk e-mail. These were nontechnical people, representatives of the so-called mainstream.
The future isn’t five, ten, or twenty years down the road. The future is literally lurking on the horizon. This is 2008, a time of change, not a time for pessimism.
I’m with you on this one. Most of my avatars are like story characters — not like me. My much-neglected SL character is the closest thing I have to a representation of myself anywhere, but really, she’s pretty dreadful looking, and she moves terribly. My flesh-and-blood incarnation is much cooler in so many ways. I do use my gamer tag pretty widely, but I’m the only person on the entire planet using that name, so it’s not taken anywhere that I register. š
To address Richard’s remark, I still stubbornly use the word “character.” The first time I heard the word “toon” used — probably around the EQ I time period — it was being used to describe what I would call an “alt.” I found this extraordinarily odd. I’ve heard the “main” and “alt” terminology returning in the last few years, though I’ve heard “toon” as recently as this month.
@Tess: I don’t like mixing up fantasy and reality too literally either. I was taught as an actor that this is ultimately bad for the character one portrays. One may make a character out of bits of oneself (see sense-memory), but for the character to be perceived as whole, it has to be played that way, not as motley. The voice will betray the act and the camera sees it clearly. I use the word ‘avatar’ but begrudgingly. It not only presumes on ancient religion, it is too much of an assertion of amplified ego. Character is fine if one is indeed acting, but otherwise, it is just one more GUI widget for making the pixels dance.
@Morgan: I don’t buy it. Spin it as you will, semiotics of that sort are lost on anyone old enough to know such enchantments are hollow. Where I agree with Raph, communications are the key quality that the technology should enable and sometimes amplify. Otherwise, what you are talking about is distortion which while a charming effect, is just noise added to signal to distinguish it at the cost of other signals. To be human is to evolve as a member of a community but be distinguishable as a single identity, not to lose that identity or reason for the sake of belonging to the transients of a time or technology. We can play at any game on any stage, but at the end of that, it is the hand that touches that creates the change, not the flickering pixels that regale but also dull that touch.
As art, it is enchantment and valid. As reality, it is too pale and unsatisfying. As a way to improve an Amazon shopping cart, it is a bit slow.
I mention the age of the ideas only to point out that we do have experience with this, and even if the experience improves, nothing digital replaces feeling and smelling the fabric before one buys.
I had to chuckle when I read that…that is my wife, the quilting fanatic. She reads quilting blogs like there’s no tomorrow, belongs to umpteen discussion groups. She’ll buy gizmos & gadgets online but not fabric; unless it’s a pattern that she’s already had in her hands.
len wrote:
“Spin”, “that sort”, “lost on anyone old enough” [read as “you’re naive”], “enchantments”, “hollow”—there are too many implied messages in that one sentence for me to even begin to take you seriously. If you were more specific about what “it” is, I might care enough to respond; otherwise, you’re just wasting my time.
The anvil breaks the hammer, Morgan. After that, anything left undone remains undone.
Virtual worlds are just stuff. Artists, players, users can do with them what they will but it is their willingness that changes them, not the stuff.
I am not my avatar. It is a hammer. I am the anvil. What lies between these is the world.
len wrote:
Nevermind that hammers are useful, anvils support the forging of hammers, and a smithy works with a woodworker to forge the hammer in the first place—you’re still not making any sense. You don’t even appear to be remotely referring to the same topic we were talking about, which begs the question: do you know what we were talking about? Can you at least summarize what I wrote so I can try to put your analogic reply in the context of an explicit argument?
Maybe that’s the issue, Morgan. You assume I want to argue.
I am not my avatar. It’s that simple. My avatar may be a means by which I express myself, but is not me. No legal Golems.
The rest of your rant: I am not a Hermit at all. I am a happy husband, good employee, choir tenor and a helluva good guitar player and singer. My avatar can’t do all of that. So it’s just a toy, like a synth, a guitar or any other digital golem. Not moi.
You are branding. I am using. Different points of view with different sets of values. You are marketing. I am making. Neither more valuable but different. The analogies are to values, not markets.
len
len wrote:
You leave me no other choice but to assume you are (ineffectively) arguing a point when your response begins with “I don’t buy it” and follows with a comment that sounds an awful lot like “you’re naive.” Sounds like you’re trying to prove something.
So what? I never said otherwise.
Well, I’m finally beginning to understand your analogy; although, you’re wrong that an avatar is a toy. (You’re especially wrong that a guitar is a toy, but let’s not stray too far.) Virtual worlds are interpersonal platforms whose primary function is to connect people so they can communicate. Just like telephony. Just like instant messaging. Just like meetings and events.
Your avatar in a virtual world is much like your voice on a telephone, your screen name attached to an IM, and your message at a meeting or event. Your avatar is a tool, like a hammer or anvil, used to engage other users on the virtual platform. The quality of your avatar thus plays a significant role in how effectively you can engage other users.
Again, the idea of “you” [self] is perceptual. You’ve your own opinion on who you are, but so do other people. Most people want to avoid being defined by anyone and everyone. They work to ensure their self-identity is properly communicated through a variety of means, such as clothing, philanthropy, and even uniquely identifiable avatars.
The foundation of all relationships is trust, which can be cultivated by exposing your “self” to the risk of peer definition. Providing your photo on a business card, or even your likeness as a 3D avatar, can add credibility. You might not see a need for life-like avatars in your life, but don’t presume that other people won’t find such a need in their lives.
Using is branding. Making is marketing. The only real differences are the level of execution and the scale of distribution.
“Your avatar is a tool, like a hammer or anvil, used to engage other users on the virtual platform.”
Here we agree.
“Using is branding. Making is marketing.”
Here we disagree. Your argument presumes exchange. It might happen. It might not. Expression may not be a bargain. It may not be a deal. It may just be there.
The trap of the brand is to assume someone else wants it or that marketing can make them want it. Sad old sobriquet: you can’t cheat an honest man.
“The foundation of all relationships is trust…”
No. The foundation is proximity, real or virtual. A captive may not trust the captor. A captive may as the captor may make predictions and control outcomes by controlling stimuli. The relationship is not a given. I don’t assume others won’t need their numbers. Some will be quite comfortable with them nor do I assume that they are “rotting cabbages” (See Free for All – The Prisoner).
The real difference is how much freedom for how much governance.
len wrote:
I can’t even disagree because that’s just plain ol’ deluded idiocy. Branding and marketing are not about “cheating” people. Refer to Peter F. Drucker‘s comments on the purpose and basic functions of business, on why marketing is about creating mutually beneficial relationships.
Captives trust captors to act as captors. Captors trust captives to act as captives. Both proximity and time generate varying degrees of trust. Parents trust children to be safe when children remain in close proximity indefinitely. Marital and nonmarital partners trust each other to remain faithful when not separated by long distances over extended periods.
And when they won’t, what then? Trust isn’t about accepting conditions. It is about not having an incentive to check. Thus, “trust but verify” is a political paradox.
Marketing is a dress worn to a dance. Trust is a fart between the sheets. Branding is selling the fart to the dancer as a sign of a “meaningful relationship.”
Heresy? No. It is selling water by the river.
As I suggested less bluntly before, Len, do some reading and get some experience. You’re clearly off your rocker and have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.
Do I need to lock this thread? Come on, calling each other idiots is not how we do it here.
@Raph: Probably. There is no resolution to these divergent points of view. There have to be shared values or there is no point at which consensus can be recognized. If premises aren’t accepted, then the arguments that follow are equally unacceptable.
But I haven’t called anyone an idiot.
Dr. Bartle> Whatās your opinion of the idea of having your real face captured via webcam and put on your avatarās head?
Well, I have mixed feelings about that. It depends on how it looks, and what type of game/setting it’s in. I know some arcade machines experimented with the idea in the 1980s and it didn’t seem to go anywhere. On a socially oriented online game, I think it might go over well, though the “photo-realistic above the neck, cartoony below” and the fact that your body animates and your face doesn’t might be jarring. People might end up having photos for a half-dozen different moods and options to switch them, just like livejournal posts have the set of different avatars.
I don’t think it’s go over at all in a game like WoW, it’d clash too badly with the look & style of the rest of what was on your screen.
After voice though, connecting up people’s photos and/or live video is one of the “next frontiers” that online game / virtual world apps need to move into. As usual, Myspace, YouTube, etc. point the way to things we could add to the usual orc-slaying and guild-joining.
I remember when I met Jake Song back in 2000, he told me that video chat was big in the Internet Cafes in Korea, and he wanted to do something socially oriented with voice and video chat as his next project. Last I’d heard, NCSoft wasn’t interested at the time, so he left to start another new company. Haven’t heard how that turned out for him.
There are a lot of people that will want to avoid being seen on webcam. It’s a lot easier to pretend you’re beautiful on voice chat (or at least pretend you’re not ugly.) But the generation that’s growing up on the internet is a lot less hesitant to reveal things about themselves online – address, phone number, photo, anything. They realize that opening up more online means meeting more people and having more & closer friends.
That isn’t my current experience. When I talk to my son’s friends (college age), they want to go online and play games but not to reveal their real life identities. They’ve been burned in too many troll wars and have a keen sense of restricting access while having close friends in close proximity. When I talk to my daughter’s and her friends, they are intensely social within their own group and don’t care much for the Internet or games.
They are both addicted to texting. They don’t open up online. The connect in real life and exchange numbers. If anyone steps out of line, they block.