Help us understand how players create and customize their avatars!

Dear Second Life Resident:

The PlayOn group (http://blogs.parc.com/playon) at the Palo Alto Research Center (www.parc.com) is starting a research project on avatar personalization systems in multiplayer games, including Second Life. As part of this research we would like to invite volunteers to participate in an online survey.

The purpose of this study is to explore how users of massively multiplayer online environments customize the appearance of their virtual body (avatar). During this survey, you will be asked to upload a screenshot of your avatar's appearance to our research website and to answer survey questions related to your gaming experience. The questionnaire should be fun to answer and we estimate it takes only 15 to 20 minutes to complete it.

Volunteers will not be paid or receive any direct benefits for their participation, but your answers will help us understand how to improve user experience in massively multiplayer online worlds. You will be given full access to our research report after we have analyzed all of the response data from the survey contributors. This survey is not sponsored by a game developer and it is being conducted for research purposes only.

To participate, please follow the link below to our online survey system:

http://blogs.parc.com/limesurvey/index.php?sid=35489&lang=en

You will be asked to provide an email address, where we will send you a unique participant code. Your email address will be kept strictly confidential and will be used only used to assign you a unique identifier; we will not sell or otherwise disclose it to any third party.

About US: the PlayOn research group has been investigating the social dynamics of massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) and virtual worlds since 2004. We have looked at player behaviors in several virtual worlds including Star Wars Galaxies, EverQuest Online Adventures, Second Life, World of Warcraft, and EverQuest II for academic purpose. You can find our publications here: http://www.parc.com/nicolas/publications.html

If you have any question concerning this research project, please feel free to contact the researchers at the following phone numbers or email addresses:

Nicolas Ducheneaut, Ph.D.
Senior Member of the Research Staff, Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)
email: [email]nicolas@parc.com[/email]
phone: (650) 812-4430

Nick Yee, Ph.D.
Member of the Research Staff, Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)
email: [email]nicholas.yee@parc.com[/email]
phone: (650) 812-4818

Don Wen
Visiting Researcher, Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)
email: [email]ming-hui.wen@parc.com[/email]
phone: (650) 812-4416


We thank you in advance for your help and look forward to reading your answers!

Normally I turn my nose up at these, but ya had me at PARC.

heyas;

isn't this the same one that a few weeks ago asked for a picture of your avatar and your real self?

okay, took off the real self requirement, but still haven't addressed those of us with many shapes? maybe next survey....

;)

hi Bloodsong,

Thank you for your question.
This survey is different from the other survey that you saw before. In this survey you will be asked to evaluate some characteristics of your main avatar (the one you play most often) and asked to upload a 'picture' of your avatar. We estimate it takes only 15 to 20 minutes to complete it.

Thanks again for your feedback and for participating in our survey, we can't wait to share the results with you and the rest of our participants.

For those of you unfamiliar with PARC (formerly known as Xerox PARC), it is one of the leading Computer Science research facilities in the world. It is responsible for some of the most significant computer innovations in history, including the Ethernet (not to be confused with the Internet). Perhaps the most famous creation is the invention of the mouse-driven GUI implemented on the Xerox Alto. Xerox, being a copier company at the time, was unable to capitalize on this within their company, but they made an investment in another Silicon Valley computer company named Apple, whose Lisa team went to visit PARC. The rest, as they say, is history.

I'll ditto what Marianne said.

I recognise PARC and they do indeed have a noteworthy history; I am not entirely sure that all this "game" terminology is really suitable for SL, mind you. Still, it will be interesting to see how this survey is constructed.

Two questions bugged me.

They asked, "how much did you spend in $US to customize your avatar?"
The next question was the same, but in L$.

Can't they do a simple conversion?

Or if they meant, did I spend BOTH $US *and* L$, then I answered it wrong. I never bought any SL stuff using "real" money. Directly, anyway.

I've been following Mr. Yee's research for a number of years now, as a former Ultima Online player, and as someone who previously wrote for a couple of gaming sites along the way. My take is that he's a great source for unbiased interpretation of data, and he pulls some interesting insights from the responses as well. More than happy to jump in on this one as well.

Exactly my thought.
These guys are movers and shakers. Whenever the Windows and Mac camps start mudslinging about who stole what from whom, just point both camps to PARC.

Is this somehow related to the idea about having cross-platform avatars?

The best designed survey I have seen so far.

Here is some feedback for PARC. The survey assumes that the appearance editor is the only way to customize ones appearance. For many experienced players, the appearance editor plays a small role in what an avatar looks like. Custom skins and hair and prim attachments play the biggest roles.

That was my issue. I don't use default anything (except for shape, of course.) I have purchased skins, purchased hair, and purchased clothing, so my avatar is far different from any look that I could achieve with the available sliders. I got most of the way through the survey, when I realized that, really, 90% of the questions don't really apply, once you start buying prim hair, hand-drawn skins, etc.

*Nods* They seem to be a little out of touch with some of the aspects of SL; namely how a lot of the "standard" look of avatars is not achieved through the built-in character generation tool, and how "game money" and "real money" overlaps rather fluidly.
Also, I am a little unsure how to answer how many hours I "play". If I record the time I am logged in, the result would probably be rather scary, but a lot of that is sitting around idle while I do other things, entirely unrelated, kind of like simply having a messenging program running in the background.

We are so grateful for receiving about 50 SL residents registered in our online survey in the past few days. We still need more participants to help this research. If you'd like to help, please follow the links below:

http://blogs.parc.com/limesurvey/index.php?sid=35489&lang=en

Please feel free to contact us at anytime regarding any questions you may have.

Dear Friends,

We are so grateful for receiving about 25 SL residents completed our online survey in the past few days. We still need more participants to help this research. If you'd like to help, please follow the links below:

http://blogs.parc.com/limesurvey/index.php?sid=35489&lang=en

Please feel free to contact us at anytime regarding any questions you may have.

Thank you very much!!!

Yes, I did the survey, and felt I should answer N/A to many questions... and don't forget, many shapes are also purchased, or come with a particular skin.

Whats in it for us ?

Ex Xerox company PARC inc ?

Show us teh L$

Regards.

Dear Dongon,

Please read posts 10-14 in this thread. You might learn why you're receiving so few participants.

Dear Friends,

Thank you for all of your feedback.

In the current version of the survey, we separate the issue of avatar customization into three main parts: Part 1: Character creation interface, Part 2: Player's assessment of avatar and Part 3: Post-creation avatar customization.

Part 1 is more focused on evaluating the current SL appearance editor (interface) in terms of usability and usefulness. Part 2 asks people to evaluate their main avatar from both physical and psychological points of view. Part 3 attempts to investigate how people customize their avatar after creating it (e.g. time and money invested).

Therefore, we are not assuming that the appearance editor is the ONLY way to customize an avatar's appearance.

However, from your comments, we definitely learned that the survey questions regarding appearance customization were relatively weak. It would be interesting to know more about how people spend real money or virtual money to purchase skin, hair or clothing to customize their avatar. Thank you again, your comments will help us refine our questionnaire for future studies.


Thank you!
Don

We currently have about 30 complete responses for the Second Life survey, thanks again to all who answered. Our target is 100 total responses to ensure statistical validity in our analyses so please, do not hesitate to sign up if you have not done so already!

Nothing in it for you, it's a survey for people not goldfarming campbots, so just move on

We still need your help!!

We currently have about 37 complete responses for the Second Life survey, thanks again to all who answered. Our target is 100 total responses to ensure statistical validity in our analyses so please, do not hesitate to sign up if you have not done so already!

We still need your help!!

We currently have about 42 complete responses for the Second Life survey!!!

Thanks again to all who answered.

Our target is 100 total responses to ensure statistical validity in our analyses so please, do not hesitate to sign up if you have not done so already!

I don't think the survey takers are paying attention.
Good morning/afternoon Amaranthim hope work isn't too work like

I have completed it, and sent a reply to the mail address sending me a reminder.

I needed to clarify some of my answers, and because of that also have some comments on the survey

The strange thing at first was, that after registering, I recieved no mail.
Later I did get a reminder to that same mail address.

The spam filter does not delete anything, but would move it into my spam folder. That first mail wasn't there either.

Also at one time had a problem in resuming. It worked later again.

Perhaps more people wanted to do the survey, but had no mail?
You may want to check that