When choosing my appearance, there were not much differentiating options for avatars within my class and faction. It seemed like the only way to differentiate my avatar from the others was the color of my singular eye. The test of my individuality continued. Upon entering the game and passing the newbie tutorial, I was greeted by a NPC that told me my job was to mine for minerals. I guess I had to accept that if I was to be a specialist. After entering the mining area, I joined the mass of specialists mining like robots (albeit my faction was basically a robotic race). Soon after, I discovered my clone mining right next to me. After acquiring a couple of ores, I went to hunt some monsters. I began my journey with a pistol, but by the time I returned from grinding, I had obtained a shotgun and new armor. Just as I thought I had proven my individuality, a clone walked by me.
According to Yee and Bailenson's Proteus Effect, my behavior was expected to follow the stereotypical image of my character. When I started mining, I soon realized that all the specialists mined in the same exact spot. I was indeed acting like my role defined in the game space. After my first experience with mining, I decided to try to prove Yee and Bailenson wrong. I was going to hunt and kill instead of mine. Even while hunting and killing, I realized that my actions were akin to the stereotype associated with my avatar. After acquiring a shotgun, I spent 30 minutes doing nothing but killing lower level creatures to show off my overpowering gun. I was behaving more like the commanding image given off by my avatar. Realizing this, I decided to do something different. I returned to mining. I had forgotten that my purpose was to break out of my mining role. Hard as I tried to gain a sense of individuality, I subconsciously returned to conformity. Sigh.
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4 comments:
Hey Henry! I thought this was a really interesting post! I enjoyed your description of your conflicted actions as a miner within the virtual environment. Clearly your awareness of your avatar's appearance effect on your behavior influenced your decision to change your behavior. I'd be really interested to know what other types of characters there are within this game. Do other characters allow you to personalize your avatar to a greater specificity? How do you think that would have affected your behavior if you could have personalized your avatar more?
Interesting Post Henry. You did a good job summarizing your experience and the gamespace that you took part in for this blog. It's interesting to see that the Proteus Effect was confirmed by your experience. I would have also liked to hear about any interaction you might have had with other characters in the game. Do you think that your avatar's appearance effected how the people in the game reacted to you, and so on. Also, what kind of group dynamics are available in the game, as there are usually several set up in an MMORPG setting. You conformed to your avatars appearance, but did the other characters around you as well? Were any of the avatar selections available particularly more attractive than others?
Hey Henry,
Your post was really neat and mind boggling! Not only are these new online environments new to me, but the future is endless and therefore the combination of the two was quite a shock. Nonetheless, I thought that your points were very intriguing. The impression I got was that the Proteus effect was in full swing and the gamers seemed to know what you were going to do and how you were going to react before you did it! I also found it slightly ironic that their goal was to get you to go against what they instructed and be a rebel, when being a rebel really meant conforming to their orders and commands. Nonetheless, I find this SciFi gaming quite disheartening with the fact that you are either like everyone else or your job is to kill people below you. What does this mean about society? I will definitely be thinking about this for the next few days!
I enjoyed this post, Henry. It seems that in virtual games like this one conformity is the only option. If you really wanted to go off and do something different that option doesn't exist. In my opinion this virtual worlds are created for people who have trouble fitting in, and really will be satisfied if they can fit in. As a result, mining and killing lower level avatars, even if it is the norm, is satisfying to those players. So whether or not you tried to act as your avatar would be expected to act, the way these virtual worlds are designed basically force you to act as expected, because there is no other option.
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