Interesting assignment. When I found out I had to put an hour into an online game, I decided I'd enlist the help of one of my friends who is an avid World of Warcraft player. I jogged to his room and kicked his door in - sure enough, he's sitting there, headphones and all, slaying some big red beastie in the Molten Core. I tell him I need to borrow an hour on his throne of glory, to do an assignment, but I had to wait about 45 minutes so he could "finish a boss". When it was my turn, I began creating a character on an RPG (role-playing) server, figuring there'd be more immersion in an environment where people were taking their characters seriously.
My avatar was "Pogger" - a little, bumpy Gnome from Dun Morogh, whose special class was that of a Mage. He was short, bald, and had a beard down to his navel. He looked like an old Buddhist monk, but had a special fire in his eyes - this gnome was pure insanity.
First thing Pogger does, when arriving in the snowy white landscape of the Newbie zone, was strip naked and march toward the city of Iron Forge. Once there, I began to take advantage of my freakish appearance and start to harass other players, asking them totally obnoxious questions like "Where's the strip club?" and "Will you be my online lover?"
My friend informed me that I was blatantly breaking the rules of the RPG server, which is to assume a character and not to disrupt the role-playing atmosphere by talking "out-of-character." In retort, I told him that my character was a total maniac gnome who runs around in a loincloth and who enjoys jumping into big fire braziers to take naps. What's more, Pogger is entirely aware that he exists in a virtual world and tries to awaken the other people in Iron Forge ... by repeatedly telling them that they are in the Matrix. I was even able to use Pogger's personality to convince over 20 other players to strip naked and begin a mass dance orgy on some big hot fire pit.
At one point, a lovely Night Elf named Mirkala offered me some clothing, but I quickly refused and suggested she allow me to try her clothes on, instead. She suddenly assumed the appearance of a panther and disappeared. Girls.
Pogger also wandered into a train station area, where he found two other characters in the midst of romance. They were having the equivalent of a WoW cyber makeout. Pogger became intrigued and sped toward the action, casting an Ice Shield spell, and told them a joke. He then danced between the two lovers and sang the words of his favorite Nine Inch Nails song, "Closer."
Obviously, this was a fun assignment, and after reading the Yee and Bailenson article, I must say that my experience confirms some of their predictions. Yee and Bailenson state that people "who have more attractive avatars [exhibit] increased self-disclosure" - while my character was certainly not very pretty looking or tall, and therefore initially attractive, he was still able to create attraction with his eccentric look and charismatic behavior. His appearance had virtually no effect on me: I simply decided I wanted to have fun with the character and goof off. One obvious symbol within the gaming world, which seemed to factor into player interactions more than avatar attractiveness, was avatar "level" and "equipment" - symbols of status and skill within the World of Warcraft. My character had none of that, and for that reason, was not taken seriously to begin with - even on a role-playing server.
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3 comments:
Very entertaining post. In a way, although we were in different online games, I think that our experiences might have been similar, because I really didn't conform to what must have been the norms. When you went up to random people and spoke in regular English, your friend told you that you were acting against the norm. Interestingly, I think you could definitely apply that to the whole concept of the Leviathan that we have discussed previously in class. Overall, great job.
I thoroughly enjoyed this recap of your experience in WoW. I found it very interesting when your friend said that you were violating the rules when you were “out of character”. This made me think how seriously the users are about thinking and acting in sync with their character. I guess this could possibly go along with Yee and Bailenson’s (2007) findings if there was a character in WoW that was attractive or tall, causing them to be more social or dominant (because it’s what is “expected” of the character).
Hey RJ,
I really enjoyed your post. I thought it was very well-written and had some great humor. It is interesting how you noted that your avatar’s level and equipment had more of an impact on the actions of the player and the impression you form on others. I think this is certainly true in online environments like World of Warcraft, where players are mostly goal-oriented and are all striving to achieve a high level. Although you were mostly fooling around with your character in the game, which a lot of players often do in WoW, I think that if you were playing the game more seriously and were actually trying to finish the quests, then your character’s appearance might have more of an effect on your in-game personality from time to time, especially when you really get immersed in the game and other players subconsciously expect a certain behavior typical of your appearance. In other words, when you are really playing the game with a goal-oriented mindset, you sometimes get into what is happening in the game world so much that you believe you are this other person, and you therefore start to think like your character would think. This is basically what Yee and Bailenson talk about in their article, and from my experiences, I found that there is a lot of truth to their description of the Proteus Effect. Anyway, thought you did a great job with your post, and you had an interesting take on the experience.
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