The other standard piece of information making up an avatar’s identity is their description or appearance. Depending on the system used for displaying the environment, the physical description of the avatar may be textual or graphical. In addition, depending on the system, the avatar may also have optional material (always textual) that can be entered in to describe their character in greater detail. Players often make use of this to embellish upon the bare strokes that the standard description allows.

The most interesting aspects of descriptions and this type of profile are the ways players reveal themselves through them. The very first step is that of choosing a gender.

Currently, the player base of commercial graphical muds is over 70% male. However, the gender breakdown of avatars within the game shows a far higher percentage of female avatars. Similarly, the population of text muds in general shows that the majority of those who play are in fact male, but that the amount of female-presenting characters can approach 50%, depending on the nature of the game played.

In general, female players tend to be attracted to the more social spaces, whereas the goal-oriented systems tend to be predominantly male. However, in both spaces, numerous males choose to play female-presenting avatars—enough of them, in fact, that it’s a standard joke in mudding circles that odds are good that your netsex partner was a fourteen year old boy, regardless of what gender you are and regardless of what genders you presented to one another via your avatars.

There are basically three reasons given for this behavior. One is a particularly pragmatic reason: female-presenting players tend to get special treatment in muds, perhaps because the vast majority of the players behind the masks are actually males. The female characters tend to get assistance more quickly than males in dealing with the tribulations of being a newbie, and they tend to be given gifts of equipment and items. While they tend to get sexually harassed and propositioned at an alarming rate, by and large, they have a smoother online experience than those who are male-presenting. To this end, many of the most blatantly female characters are often playing up the supposedly feminine behavior with the explicit intent of getting favors and stuff.[1] Conversely, many females choose to present as males in order to avoid the sexual harassment.

The second reason often advanced is simply “to see what it’s like on the other side.” It’s hard to quarrel with this, nor is it worth the time to investigate the psychology behind this motive. Players who give this reason often report a sense of liberation with playing the opposite sex, of freedom from traditional expectations and gender roles. Others report greater insight into the opposite gender as a result of having experienced life “in the other person’s shoes.” The gender identification with one’s character can become so complete that male players report having become angered at being forced to wear overly revealing clothing on their avatars (feeling the sting of sexual objectification), and female players report having fallen into stereotypical demonstrations of machismo, acting protective of female-presenting avatars even when knowing their gender to be male, etc.

The third reason is the most banal of all: to entice someone into tinysex,[2] only to publicly post logs of the deed in order to embarrass them.

The curious thing about gender in cyberspace is that it is both inescapable, and oddly fluid. It is generally easy to tell who is the male playing at being female when they start out, because they are often too crude or too direct and too sexual when dealing with other players. But an experienced cross-gender role-player can and will fool players of both genders without great difficulty, precisely by acting more like the gender that they are presenting than like a panting teen in the throes of hormonal flux. The result is that while avatars are generally strongly gendered, and presented sexuality is extremely important for social interaction, it may not correspond to the gender of the actual player.

An interesting outcrop of this is the way in which female and male players choose to present their avatars. Regardless of whether they are playing across genders, the choices follow patterns. The female avatars are largely beautiful, or mysterious, or impish, or plucky, or in general appealing. You very rarely see, regardless of the gender of the player, an overweight, or dull, or unappealing female. Similarly, the male characters tend to either be noble, or roguish, or mysteriously scarred, etc. The presentations are uniformly, regardless of player gender, sexually attractive. However, within this very narrow range of actual human appearance, there is still tremendous variety presented. Certainly the appeal of presenting a beautiful female avatar to the world is likely different for the male and the female player, but nonetheless, avatars designed by each tend to be similar in that way.

A phenomenon often observed in the real world is that what we commonly term “civility” is often related to the number of members of the opposite sex present in a discussion. Interestingly, mud civility seems to be directly related to the number of female-presenting characters present in what has largely been a boy’s club. This leads to the interesting conclusion that perhaps forcing an equal balance of the sexes in your online space may well lead to a more easily administrated environment.

On many systems, a somewhat less popular third alternative to the standard genders exists: the gender-neutral character. Anecdotally, most neuter characters are played by females, presumably for reasons similar to why they would choose to play a male character; however, supposedly male characters play them far less frequently. No major commercial systems thus far have allowed gender-neutral presentation within the context of a generally gender-aware system; however, several chat spaces, such as the original incarnation of The Palace and the 3d environment WorldsChat, have offered systems wherein the avatars were much more iconic, often being symbols, smiley faces, or anthropomorphic representations of animals.

Of course, anthropomorphic representations of animals have given rise to an entire subtype of social space, commonly called “furry.” The original FurryMUCK is infamous for both its animal-based avatars and for its general acceptance of sexual activity between avatars—so much so that saying you visit a Furry game is often considered to mean that you like anonymous netsex. The sole graphical Furry world is Dr. Cat’s Furcadia, which is perhaps the most successful design for a socially oriented space thus far. In a Furry environment, players choose from a variety of animals to incarnate, with the various animals often suggesting something about the character or nature of the player behind the avatar. These critters are generally strongly gendered, rather than the animal nature of the avatar taking prominence in the depiction. Again, it is avatar as filter of experience and as mode of expression.

A similar artifact found in nearly all goal-oriented muds is the practice of having avatar “races,” which are templates based on humanoid fantastical races such as elves, dwarves, or various alien creatures. Selecting one of these generally has an impact on your tangible statistics, but also enriches the profile by carrying with is expected behavioral patterns and certain restrictions in appearance. Races tend to be extremely popular. A statistical survey at one website[3] showed not only the usual suspects in the top ten, but an astounding range of over 70 different races available in a range of different muds.

In examining descriptions (and in designing the systems that allow players to create them) the primary thing to consider is how they allow the players to express themselves. A player’s avatar is largely about wish-fulfillment in one way or another, and the range of wishes they can fulfill is directly limited by the author of the space. Much psychological hash can be made from the choices a player makes in their descriptions, but we should not forget that people are limited to the choices that the designer offers.

When interacting from behind the mask of a description, the things a player says are inevitably shaped by the mask they wear. Given that the mask itself is an expression of the player, what others perceive is not so much different from the personality of the player as it is a refinement and exaggeration—hearkening back to McCloud again, a cartoon. The natural disinhibition that occurs leads to unvarnished truths being spoken and actions taken that would not otherwise have occurred to the player. But these actions and words are still ineluctably part of the player’s expression. Players wearing a mask reveal more of themselves, not less. As Shakespeare put it, these avatars, our actors, are all spirits—and like all spirits, they in some way represent an essence, and therefore an essential part, of what we term our “selves.”