I made the assumption that most of my classmates would be using Second Life for their online game to complete this entry. So I made a choice to play a different game, Tony Hawk's American Wasteland. I had played the game before, a LOT my freshman year, but I'd never played it online, so it was a new experience for me.
What I did was I used the character that I had created for playing in the game itself, the person resembled me for the most part, male guy about 20 years old with jeans and no-shirt but a hat. That's what I look like when I skateboard.
I signed online and it was an interesting interface, a list of rooms and then a list of games currently being run. I joined a couple here and there. When you join, you sit and wait, watching other people's screens until the next game starts. The games can last between 1-10 minutes depending on how long it was supposed to be.
The very first thing I noticed, I was waaaaaay out of the norm. There were people who were devils and midgets and clowns and all sorts of characters, but not a whole lot of normal looking people. but, at the same time, the more outlandish the person looked, the better they were, many to a point that was quite disturbing.
I decided I liked my avatar and stuck with it. I do realize now however, I did not talk as much or as kindly to the people who were not normal human looking. It may have been because they were beating me in the game, or that they were more rude to me, but it is what I noticed.
Yee & Bailenson (2007) studied the effects the avatar a person uses on their own behavior, not necessarily like confirmation bias, but looking specifically at how it affects the person themselves. They found that people who were bigger or more attractive followed stereotypical behaviors like being aggressive or nicer. I think that in the skateboarding game, most of the entertainment came from playing the skateboarding game itself, so some of the importance of what the person displayed was lost. I did try to act a little more normal, but I don't think it was that effective. I think that in order for the Proteus Effect to be effective, there needs to be a stronger emphasis on social interaction than some ulterior motive. I think that the findings from people when they do their blog entries are going to confirm this. Those who played Second Life or another social game will have a stronger effect than those who played Jedi-Knights or World of Warcraft.
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2 comments:
This was an awesome idea for a blog topic. This reminded me of when I would play the Tony Hawk game. I would always create a player that resembled me and skate as if I was really that good. I guess times have changed and people don’t want to look like skaters anymore, but how can you have the mindset of a skater looking like a clown? I wouldn’t take a midget or a devil serious and especially not a clown if I was competing against them. I have to agree that we might not have the same results as the people who did Second Life, but the “new” looking avatars and the experience you had still proved Yee and Bailenson’s point.
It was good that you tried something different from Second Life. My experience of Second Life did not show the Proteus Effect, though.
It was interesting to read how you decided to stay close to your actual appearance and dress code although the majority of characters went a bit more creative. Did how you feel about your appearance affect interactions with others, especially outlandish characters?
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