The reason I hesitated to use UrbanDead for this assignment in the first place is that graphics do not have a huge role in the game. The city of Malton is basically a grid of blocks that represent different buildings and streets. Not very exciting.
The game does involve interaction between players (the 3 players controlling the 3 zombies I killed may be unpleasantly surprised when they log on). But there are no avatars to visually represent the players. The game somewhat makes up for this by having a character profile in which you can describe your character's physique, clothing, etc. But still, a written description is very different from a visual avatar.
Therefore I thought UrbanDead was unfit for this assignment. Until I remembered the group forum that I am a part of. The forum provides a more holistic experience to the game because it allows for more player interaction and role-playing. It also helps complete the premises for this assignment: every player has a signature that they display for self-presentation. The signature consists of the player's character's name, rank, activity zone and most importantly, a picture of the character. The picture shows the character's physical appearance and to a large extent, the character's personality by the props (a gun, a syringe, a cigarette, etc) he/she is holding and the posture he/she is taking (swinging an axe, running through fire, etc).
The Proteus Effect discussed in the Yee & Bailensen paper is basically behavioural confirmation except it's the self-perception instead of interactions with others that confirms the individual's behaviour. The individual may judge from the point of view of an impartial third party. For example, if my avatar is wearing black, I would think that a third party will think I’m aggressive and unfriendly, and I would subconsciously act more toward that end of the spectrum to match the behaviour I think people will expect from me. Even if I’m wearing black, people may (or may not) still think I’m friendly, but that’s not what my self-perception is telling me. The Proteus Effect tries to exclude the influence of behaviour confirmation from others and focus on the influence of self-perception.
Yee & Bailensen go on to pose the hypotheses that people with attractive avatars will be more friendly and more willing to self-disclose and walk closer to other avatars and that people with taller avatars will be more confident Due to the limitations of the game UrbanDead, I cannot really judge these in the UrbanDead virtual space, but the forum helped greatly, even though interaction in a forum is slightly different. People with clearly defined, attractive pictures in their signatures behave in a more friendly manner and are more willing to engage in role-playing that disclose their personalities. They are also more willing to answer questions others post. People with ambiguous signatures (no clearly defined pictures; face hidden in fire or smoke, etc) have more cut-and-dry posts which mostly relay combat information and contain little or no role-playing.
An interesting phenomenon occurs when people change their signatures to get new, more attractive ones. Their activities in the forum usually increase drastically. They become more open and pleasant as people compliment them on their new signatures. Some of them who have been dormant for a while can even transform into the “center of attention” in some threads.
Because signatures can come in different sizes and not in the same scale, it’s virtually impossible to compare them to determine the characters’ exact height that the players have in mind. One can of course distinguish if a character is meant to be stocky or petite. But accurate comparisons are not possible.
An important thing that Yee & Bailensen mention is choice. In their study, participants didn’t get to choose their avatars. But in real life, players do. Players usually don’t purposefully choose an avatar they perceive to be unattractive. And if they really don’t feel confident with a short avatar, they would simply choose a tall one. This is the case in the UrbanDead forum: everyone designed their own signatures so the signatures should more accurately reflect the way the players wish to self-present.
No comments:
Post a Comment