Nick, this is great work and I have witnessed much of this myself recently as my AV, involved for some 8 months in SL's social and trading communities, has recently changed.

As part of character progression I have altered physically, now looking around 70 years old and some 2ft shorter while still the same 'character'.

While for me theere has necessarily been a noticeable change in the reactions of previous friends (though in new relationships certainly). In my own confidence and attitude with those around me, however, I have noticed a marked difference.

Essentially, while the same character and the same person sat here as observer (watching the same social relationships) my attitudes have noticeably changed. The new 'physical' AV has made my character 'feel' quieter, slightly more passive and 'isolated', and yet this new AV seems to have (and yes, I know how oddly esoteric this sounds) a greater inner strength than before (I assume due to his advanced years in appearance).

This is great work. Truly fascinating stuff. My hat is off you Nick.

/bows

I know that I often choose an avatar based upon how their appearance affects the way I think and feel. Unfortuneately, character creation often only lets me look at the character, so I often can't tell how it will feel to play the character until I'm in the game.

Great work!

The implications of this are huge.

People know that their behavior is affected by their (genetic) looks in real life. And there is a huge industry on changing your physical appearance. Now one can also play a MMOG and change his behavior.

What would be the accumulated influence of the proteus effect on an adult who played 4 hours per day since he/she was a small child?

Here is a sort of annectdotal corralary (reverse)

Unconciously wary that an avatar might effect my self perception, I can't play an ugly avatar, or a role that would be meek or secondary. Personally, even brief attempts at being a tauren or an undead gave me an alienated feeling. Obvously others can handle it.

Class roles might also be interesting. Not that jungian stuff stands up to much rigor, but it would be interesting to at least glance that way. Do extroverts play tanks, etc?

I guess there are chicken and egg arguments, and a person taking a leap into a role they werent naturally drawn to, might shape you that way.

For example, if i were to force myself to be a healer, the excercise might build mental muscles that allowed me to be less self absorbed... but of course, if you don't like doing something its difficult to neglect other affairs enough to level a toon through boring quests.

Clearly off topic... the cure to WoW "addiction" might be forcing people into roles their self image can relate to?

however, as an "outward bound" sort a of thing, if it were "work" and not "recreation" breaking people into performing unnacustemed roles might be potentially enlightening or reinforcing assertiveness as you suggest.

Great work, the motivation and drives among MMO players are hard to gauge though.

I myself started playing non-human players from the first MMO I ever played (EQ) and absolutely loved the very idea of becoming or acting as a non-human sentient being. The thought of how much differently they viewed the world intrigued me, and drove me to RP as often as possible. I've been through many race-specific guilds in all of my MMO escapades.

I was 10 at the time, believe it or not. I honestly admit that I became addicted to the social levels of MMO's and had to quit it cold turkey at my parents prodding. But I do think that it helped my English skills.

As my final point, I'd like to share that after taking a personality test in highschool, I was graded as INFP (I forget what it stands for...). Perhaps you could compare personalities with avatar preference?

I'm the opposite of the above poster. Whenever I play an MMO (I've played Ragnarok, EQ, and WoW in that order) I usually pick the most humanoid-looking characters, preferring to sport medium to long black hair. As a result, my mains are a 38 Human Shadowknight on EQ and a 42 Human Paladin on WoW (all characters are human on Ragnarok, and my play was on a private server with a 170 Assassin Cross). In tabletop RPGs that involve character race choices, I always pick a Human at first, and when I am game master my NPCs are human about 80% of the time. Is there some sort of underlying psychology behind this choice of all humans all the time?

Excellent work! A scholar and a gentleman!

The doubled edged sword of role-playing. Freedom to express anew, but at cost of becoming attached.

"Personally, even brief attempts at being a tauren or an undead gave me an alienated feeling. Obvously others can handle it."

As my two main characters are an undead mage and a tauren shaman, I need to comment on this. :)

I have never played humans, dwarves or night elves, they just don't feel right. The notion of 'handling it' seems silly, because to me they are natural choices, and the alliance races feel awkward and unnatural. I feel the choices for races made by Bliz designers have been excellent, due to nice differences in not just the abilites, but also the feel and character of the races.

No wonder the worldpvp works in WoW - you are a very natural enemy to me. Why do I kill 3X lowbies when they run across me in the wilderness? It's obvious - humans and night elves are perfect enemies. Weak, intolerant, squishy. A little disgusting, if I may. No, really. I find it a totally moral and a good action to kill human cubs - what do you call them... children? It's the right thing to do, after all - it would just feel like exterminating pests.

I most definitely could not handle playing a human character for more than 30 minutes. It would feel like wearing a really bad sheep costume to a mages' party.

These differences in players make an excellent setting for games like these. Real, fanatical Horde playes. Real, fanatical Alliance players. Many truly despise the opposing faction, what else is there to it than war?

I have my doubts on the methodoly/control of this. I feel the basic premis has merit I would like to be able to see more clearly how the same subjects act while controling characters with difering profiles that they normally use as avatars and metrics of behaviour while in 1st person mode vs. 3d person mode.
Good idea, carry on but imo not quite there yet.

Phil should not criticize methodology without spell/grammar check turned on!

Brilliant research Nick!

However, in video games that allow player versus player combat (PvP) many hardcore gamers will choose a character based solely on attributes or the ability to blend into the environment. To reify the concept here are two examples:

1) If a tall warrior gets more strength, you will see more tall warriors. If you have to change species to attain more strength (for example choosing a troll instead of a human), you will see a preponderance of inhuman characters.

2) In a standard MMORPG a huge, blue character will vividly stand out against scenery while a tiny, green character will more easily blend into the environment. As a result, aware players will choose the smaller, more naturally colored character.

I would love to see a characterization of online gamers with the aforementioned profiles.

Yes, this is great work!

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Very interesting work. I have been interested in whether avatar experiences can translate into realtime behaviour change and wonder if you looked at whether avatars used condoms or engaged in safer sex behaviours in dating relationships in Second Life?
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Peterborough AIDS Resource Network

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