Assignment 10: Me as an avatar?

This week we were asked to play a computer-based multi-player videogame or virtual space where more than one player plays in the same videogame space at the same time. We were to pick an avatar and play in the space. I entered the virtual space BigPond in Second Life as the avatar Lo Wrigglesworth. The online description of this space is as follows: The Pond is a uniquely Australian place run by Telstra BigPond and comprising 11 beautiful islands. Visitors can enjoy free building on our Pondex island. They can climb the Sydney Harbour Bridge and visit the Sydney Opera House and Uluru. There is dancing and car racing, glittering media events and water sports around our beautiful lagoon/ice rink. There's even an authentic Outback pub with pool, kangaroos and beer. And for BigPond customers, we make our best efforts to make the content on the BigPond islands unmetered.

My first experience as an avatar was very interesting. I was immediately anxious about picking a name because at the time I was not sure whether or not my avatar would be male or female and how big of an impact it would have on gender and my ability to interact with other avatars. I chose the name Lo because it can be seen as either male or female, and I chose Wrigglesworth from the given list because if found it to be funny. However, my anxiety diminished when I first entered the space; the first thing I saw when entering Second Life was a beach with beautiful trees and mountains behind it: a very peaceful sight. Before talking to any of the other avatars, I took the time to learn to move around the site, which took a lot longer than I had expected, because I knew that I would have difficulty multitasking…moving and talking at the same time may seem simple, but are actually difficult.

I then decided to change my avatar’s appearance before interacting with others so that I would be able to better participate in conversations as a certain personality and use Yee and Bailenson’s article to analyze my experience. Although you can change every aspect of the avatar including eyes, body shape, height, I decided to, in a way, analyze myself. I did this by trying to make the avatar look as similar to myself as possible: I am relatively taller than other girls, almond shaped eyes, curly hair…etc. I chose to do this because I wanted to see if the Proteus effect is true: that my behavior conformed to my digital self-representation independent of how others perceived me. For example, I am taller than the average girl by about four inches, so I wanted to see if Yee and Bailenson’s third hypothesis was true, that participants in taller avatars would behave in a more confident manner and negotiate more aggressively than participants in shorter avatars. I am not sure if these hypotheses are true in person or not (I am sometimes uncomfortable being so much taller than others when I wear high heels), but thought that it would be interesting to determine if it was true in online situations.

While I did not make any monetary splits with the other avatars, I did make my avatar taller than others. However, I personally found myself to be slightly antisocial as an avatar, which I do not consider myself to be in person. I was not confident in this online situation, not necessarily because of the appearance or representation of my avatar, but because of my lack of experience of these types of online situations. I am not used to interacting on these online spaces, thus changing my behavior norm (even though I attempted to make my avatar look like I do in person). The reason that I acted differently in this online space might be because I did not feel deindividuated; I did not adhere to a new identity and therefore did not conform to a new behavior that others would expect my avatar’s identity to have.

Although my first online virtual reality interaction was interesting, I did not really enjoy it. I felt overwhelmed trying to keep up with the other avatars, talking to them and moving around the space. If I were to do this another time, I think that I would change the appearance of my avatar and go on the space for a longer period of time; that way I could truly see if my observations followed the Proteus Effect and I could become more comfortable with the online space.