How real is your virtual life?

Hi everyone,

I'm a student at the Utrecht School of the Arts. At the moment I'm graduating in the Game Design & Development pathway. I'm working on a self-motivated practical project, supported by a theoretical thesis.

The subject I want to explore is the way in which virtual life can reflect on real life. I do this from a personal perspective, gathering different views on MMO, virtual communities and virtual identity.

This question occurred to me as I started to invest time in such worlds myself, which wasn’t too long ago (about a year and a half I guess). My curiosity therefore is very personally motivated.

Check this link for the full story:
http://openbrainsurgery.wordpress.com/about/

I'd like to know how other players perceive their characters in various online games. (If you also play something more conventional than SL, I'd like to hear about that too.) Personally I noticed that I put a lot of my real-life character in my avatars. In essence I behave quite similar to how I behave in real life. This post is just a reality check to see if other players feel the same way or think it's just a load of you-know-what.

So if I can steal a few minutes of your time please think about the following questions:
1) What is your favorite type of character?
2) (How) Do your virtual characters reflect your real-life personality?
3) Do you experiment with alternative identities? Acting in ways that are unfamiliar to you.

Thanks for your help.

Hi Hawk,

I played (and play) many online games. Ultima Online was my first, followed by Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, Asheron's Call, Horizons, now Everquest 2 and World of Warcraft.

In each of them i loved to play a character that was a healer or at least performed the ways ofmagic. In Ultima i was in a 'roleplay' group, was fun and although all of them stay 'in character' all the time and dont talk about their rl, a glimpse of their rl personality reflects in their character. I truly believe, no matter what character you play, if you behave like a jerk in a game there is a big chance you are one in rl too.
I am not a high elf cleric in rl, nor a gnome mage, im a mother with huge heaps of laundry and phonebills, red carpets and a white cat, in other words i could use some magic None of my characters have effected my real life, except for the fact that i dont get enough sleep.

Second Life is different because there is another way of social interaction. Where in Everquest i had to find people to go quest with me or to kill a boss mob , in SL i meet people solely for chat, hang out etc. In Everquest i will kill skeletons with John and Jane Doe, in Second Life i am more picky whom i hang out with.

Second Life doesnt change my personality, nor did any of the other games, Second Life changed my life because i have met the man of my dreams there and dragged this relationship from SL to real life. So: thanks Lindens

Hawk, I don't have a character. SL is not a game. We're not here to roleplay. Well, some small subset of people have set up their little communities, such as Caledon, Neualtenburg, Port Kar...
SL is like this giant chat room with a 3D whiteboard. You can build stuff to pass the time, or make money off of it. "5% build it, 100% enjoy it" was an early slogan of LL's, back in 2001.
Some corporations and non-profits have started to use it as a serious development platform, since it's extraordinarily easy to use and there's no setup or configuration required, it's all integrated and online and shit... plus there's a vast pool of cheap labor. Nobody in SL charges $150 / hr

Everybody roleplays constantly in real life. SL allows you to roleplay with more gusto and less consequence than real life, but with more subtlety than being a blood-drenched orc fury warrior in World of Warcraft.

It's a roleplay niche.

I wouldn't call it a small subset (nor would I call Neualtenburg "role-playing" - as recent events have shown, the government does have very real power over the sim; while the sim owner technically has the "big red button" using it would cause a mass departure from the sim).

But I agree in spirit - most people in SL, even the roleplayers, are just themselves much of the time. Roleplaying a character is one of many activities you may persue within Second Life, not the main reason for being there.

SecondLife is not a game. Your avatar is about as a "character" as is your email address or your instant messanger account.

I use SecondLife to maintain connections with friends, design, write code, and generaly goof around at.

Communications in SecondLife carry the same weight of "reality" to me as the voice you hear when using your cellphone: Its digitaly fabricated on your end, but the data and person it represents are very, very real.

That is probably the best summary you can get about Second Life.

*hugs CrystalShard*

From my (very limited) experience I see it that the avatars and personalities are extensions of their owners. In most cases, anyway. I think it's more about an ideal, or exploring parts of yourself that you can't do or be in rl. I think that's why we don't see fat balding avatars, or girls with less than model-perfect bodies very often. It's real, but it's a fantasy. It's a game, but it's not a game. I think the earlier poster was very right about the reality of the conversations and the people in sl. I find myself forgetting that I'm talking to someone in another country, state or time zone. It's like I'm in the same room with them. That's some powerful stuff.

Cheers,
Skip

I'll take your word for that... I don't buy clothes or even icons for my email address or my IM account, but whatever floats your boat.

Or, for some (many?) people, not.

My character is a roleplaying endeavor, my personality in game is night and day difference from my real self in as many ways as it is the same. I find it cathartic to roleplay aspects of life that I could never morally, physically, emotionally or spiritually accept as being part of my life. I switch gender roles as I play my significant other's character and roleplay a whole new world and experience the different values society places on gender. Second Life is a big whiteboard where you have the choice to play how, when, where and with whom you want. Sometimes I go clubbing and dance the night away, others I spend in the arms of my lover, sometimes I build, sometimes I host events and others I just socialize. When I'm feeling really wild I change to my demonic avatar and roleplay I'm an evil seductress. But as some people say you can never extinguish parts of your real personality. For instance I can't resist the urge of being a sarcastic smart ass.

To answer your questions.
1. I enjoy roleplaying things I don't find socially acceptable, but are things people actually do.
2. In many aspects my real life personality shines through for an example I have a sharp wit and can't hold my tongue.
3. Acting in ways that aren't a part of your real life personality is a great feeling. For me it is the music that soothes the savage beast, very cathartic.

Hi, bit of a newbie here.. I'm currently on a basic account as I'm probably moving house IRL soon and don't know what my internet connection is going to be like in the future..

However..

So far its been quite fun in SL..

I've kind of chosen to follow a chameleon-like path so far.. I figure that it will be fun to change my appearance and many other things and see what kind of reactions one can get from people.. after all, this is about role play as such, and I see it as being both a tool to improve my own personal social interactions, but to also explore other facets of what is our personality and character..

Last night I began testing out one "character" who I think I'll keep for a few weeks, it was interesting to firstly try and become that person and then secondly actually project that..

Have to admit I did "teleport" a couple of times at first when I really got stuck, but later it was actually becoming fun to move into the role more and realise that as long as didn't leave character nor made much reference to RL then I could become anything..

This is definitely something to be tried out more..

Hi there Hawk,
I found your website is very interesting. In one post you said,"I want to compare people's real personality with their virtual personality. The problem is that I can't look into people's living room. So I'm never sure what their real personality might be. Anyone can claim to be anything online."

If you could see the person in the living room would that be their real personality? For some people, their AV is simply an extention of their email address. For others who've been saddled in RL with a name not of their choosing and looks that don't fit societies defintion of beautiful the internet allows them to stip that away and start new, possibily making their online personality more "real" than RL. Then there are those who use their online experience to test the limits of their own social conventions with little or no RL consequence. And, of course, there are those who roleplay simply as a way to decompress and escape.

I think in order for you to understand this better, you may need to ask Why do people play MMO's?

1) What is your favorite type of character?
Other than SL, I haven't played MMO's. Playing platform games with my family like Norath, I'm the healer standing in the back or the barbarian type smashing and dashing in the front.
2) (How) Do your virtual characters reflect your real-life personality?
My SL character reflects one facet of my personality, the creative artist. I got into SL to experience and create art that simply exists as 1's and 0's.
3) Do you experiment with alternative identities? Acting in ways that are unfamiliar to you.
I haven't, but as I get more comortable with SL, I might.

Can you prove that statement with regards to anybody other than yourself?

This system dates to the 18th century, and perhaps earlier, when spirits were graded with gunpowder: a solution of water and alcohol "proved" itself when it could be poured on a pinch of gunpowder and the wet powder could still be ignited. If it didn't ignite, the solution had too much water in it and the proof was considered low or "underproof".

Or do you seek some other sort of proof?

I think a better phrased question would be: what do you mean by "Everybody roleplays constantly in real life"? I for one understood the statement to mean that we all put on a different face depending on the circumstances or the people present. Sometimes we even do this when we're alone. Its this sort of behaviour that gives birth to expressions like "I can finally relax and be myself". If you feel you've achieved this in a perpetual state in RL, then I congratulate you. I'm still working on it myself.

Or perhaps I am just off the mark in my reading.

He's right. If we're being literal, everyone roleplays. Even being yourself is roleplaying where the role is "you." As I summarized on another thread, given a personality and a set of motivations, once action is taken on those motivations one is already roleplaying.

Most people put on different faces depending on who they're meeting, be it a lover, a family member, or business partner. All roles we play, and even closer to the game meaning of roleplay.

@Hawk Horton
What I've observed in myself and among my RL friends is that while the characters we play aren't ourselves, often our characters take on characteristics of ourselves. They also become mirrors of our hidden selves and at times expose our issues.

1) It depends largely on the MMOG. There are character types that I would totally avoid in some MMOGs and play almost exlusively in others. The game system and skill sets normally influence that decision. There is one game where I play fighter types but now play a healer, and I totally avoid the ranged and sneaky type. Whereas in another game I totally eschew both and play a sneaky ranged type.

2) As I mentioned above, sometimes my issues will show up. Most people will not notice them but I can see them. They're more mirrors than billboards. What bit of my personality (good points and otherwise) will be inherited by the character varies with the job class.

3) I try. I'm the type who could be called a method-actor roleplayer that gives a character a complete personality, parts of which may not be like me at all. I do this not to experiment with things I'd like to do in reality. I do it mainly to make the character more believable in the world he inhabits.

Unfortunately it's very hard to accomplish this in an MMOG so my "acting" stays pegged to our tabletop (dice-paper-pen) game sessions instead.

As for Second Life? Though my avatar looks nothing like me, the personality is largely mine. I'm not roleplaying here ... not yet anyway. I'm more busy just having fun building and scripting.