Hamlet's 3 Faces

The points raised in the April 24 NWN started me thinking about the idea of the face you present to the SL world. I'm not very experienced in the realm of MMOG, or any of the other "social" aspects of the internet. Before SL most of my multi-user internet interaction came from first-person shooters.

Hamlet (let us know if you have a prefered tag), is interested in the idea of the user exploring their own personality in thier choice of an avatar. He suspects (and I agree) that everyone makes their own avatar appear in a manner that shows the world a part of their personality. He lists 3 catagories that most users fall into, Idealized Realistic, Idealized Unrealistic, and Non-Ideal. I don't think that people try and exhibit these personality traits one can read into a avatar on purpose. Rather, we get glimpses of what they think is "cool" or attractive, or humorous. Of course, this is true in any multi-user interaction rendered annonymous by the internet. What makes SecondLife so exciting, is that the avatar is barely a drop in the bucket when it comes to self-expression.

This is a disscussion I've had with several others in my SL tenure: The basis of SecondLife is self expression, and you can not participate in they system without revealing who you "really" are beyond anything the avatar alone can do. I am not a big blue buff guy. And anyone who plays this game realizes that. However, what I create in game, is my creation. From that, anyone can see what I can do, what I like to do. In this game, you can watch me create, you can almost see how someone thinks as an idea is born and they instantly begin making it a reality.

And perhaps even more importantly, you can create with them. The colaberation with other users is amazing. We are not forming a group to kill more orcs, we are making a world together. When you show a stranger your first house, and then they show you theirs, and you start building together. Its amazing, the reality of getting excited over what you are doing is amplified by the other person. The colaberation with other users forms freindships beyond what I have seen in my small online existance. Why? Because in this hyper-expresive enviroment, it becomes impossible to create, and not reveal who you "really" are. You could be a 44 year old man playing as Little Katie Sunshine, sure, but if you create in second life, its going to become obvious really fast if you really do have the heart of a 18 year old girl.

Or maybe I'm being airy fairy, but I do know I never made a "real" online friend until I started playing SL, and now I have a few.

So Hamlet, don't get stuck on the Avatars, remember the notecard says, you can come back and change them any time. And how you look of Prelude is a bare fraction of what makes SL so exciting.

bbc

Great thoughts, BuhbuhCuh. I think you make a good point, that I might be getting to fixated on persona appearance. I guess it's because the huge range of varieties avaiable in SL, as opposed to other MMOGs, just blew me away. This was the first game, far as I can tell, where you can actually get your persona to kinda sorta look like who you are in real life. Even more interesting, I think, is how an idealized version might even *still* look like you, even though it looks significantly different. A Linden staffer told me, for example, that when a Beta tester walked into the office recently, everyone on the team *immediately* knew who it was, just based on their SL persona, even though their were significant differences between the SL and IRL appearance-- that's pretty cool, and I wonder why that was possible. Hope to learn as I get into the game more.


(And either Hamlet or James is fine, far as how I go by.)

Haha, that is just too cool. I could just imagine walking into the office one day.

"Hey guys! What's up?"

"Dave?! Dave Zeeman?! What is up man!!"

Hahahaha that's gotta be the coolest place to work at