Part Two: The Role of the Avatar

Technology extends the reach of the body into new digital spaces. In these spaces, we try to defy gravity and physicality, literally separating the mind from the body. This is a theory called post-humanism, and post-humans are often described as having fluid conceptions of reality and an ability to develop different identities based on multiple perspectives of the world around them — a notion that makes sense given the nature of the virtual environments they inhabit. Avatars, supported by technological achievement and divorced from real need, have morphed into a kaleidoscope of synthetic manifestations.

MMORPGs took cues from young, mostly male developers whose main source of character inspiration came from comic books. The results were obvious. For male avatars, strength and a supernatural build. For female avatars, an unrealistic idealism defined by the physical attributes young men would most like to see on a woman: trim figures, narrow waists, large breasts, tight and/or little clothing. Even now, when developers are careful to define the look and feel of their avatars based on game themes, physical idealism generally remains constant. Most games allow players to select and define their avatar using a set of predetermined or pre-coded possibilities. Second Life lets residents define every aspect of their avatar’s physical attributes. Residents can buy or sell clothing, jewelry, accessories, body shapes, hair, skin, tattoos, virtual gestures, and poses. And for those not interested in the human form, Second Life allows avatars to take on animal (stuffed or otherwise) forms called “furries.” Some players even settle for an avatar somewhere in between the two.

Furries

Still, physical idealism saturates the experience. These idealized interpretations of the body upset real world social orders and hierarchies by evening out disparities. For that alone, avatars transcend reality. Since appearance plays a large role in creating, sustaining, and destroying relationships, the ability to manipulate image affects interpersonal communication and relationships in both positive and negative lights. More interesting is that in post-human virtual worlds, where level playing fields can and should move players beyond the body, media stereotypes and more basic human compulsions hold sway.

With their perfect avatars in tow, the anonymity of the synthetic offers freedoms of action and expression not possible in the real world. Without being hindered by the obligations and expectations of conformity, the power of an avatar becomes apparent. The avatar is a conduit between what we are and what we wish we could be, and it’s the permission we’ve been seeking. The problem is that synthetic spaces grant permission regardless of the consequences. Terrestrial conformist and synthetic fetishist are divided by a grey zone, and the two pass back and forth between a very permeable membrane that can’t keep worlds separate. While synthetic social spaces provide needed relief from real life pressures and allow role play without the weight of human emotion, players don’t have to care about what they say or do because the repercussions are limited to a place where nothing really matters. The result is players in constant role play. Honest and sincere relationships are rare, and most connections are merely an extension of the fantasy and anonymity afforded by avatars. Even so, human emotion and real problems are constantly appearing in synthetic life and because of synthetic life.
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Part One: The Rise of the Avatar

The promise of virtual reality was built on a hardware revolution attempting to envelop individuals in three-dimensional, multi-sensorial experiences. By the mid-1960s, pioneers like Ivan Sutherland at MIT were designing head-mounted display systems and wired data gloves. In the late 1980s, a second wave of acolytes (including John Walker at Autodesk and Jaron Lanier at VPL Research) helped popularize this fascinating mix of science and science fiction. But beyond the goggles and the gloves, virtual reality never lived up to our initial expectations. When attention and capital shifted to supporting progress in networking and internet capabilities, virtual reality quietly shifted focus to educational applications, like simulations for the medical, military, and transportation industries. The dream that humans could be transported by technology into endless digital landscapes never fully evaporated: it found a strong ally with nascent computer gaming enthusiasts and game-based human proxies called avatars. Since their inception, avatars have evolved from simple line drawings to complex vector graphics imbued with much more than bits and bytes.

One of the first gamers to apply his competitive passion to the computer screen was Will Crowther. By 1973, Crowther was working for technology pioneer BBN — the company responsible for developing internet packet switching. In his spare time, Crowther enjoyed spelunking and rock climbing. He shaped these into Adventure (also known as Colossal Cave Adventure), an early computer game where a player moves through an imaginary cave using simple text commands and computer responses. In 1976 Don Woods at Stanford University’s artificial intelligence lab played the game and asked Crowther if he could enhance the experience. Together, they added code that let players pick up, use, or drop objects. They also included fantasy elements based on their shared interest in the classic role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons (D&D). By having players interact with characters like dwarves, elves, and trolls, Crowther and Woods abandoned the real world and directed players into early immersive role play.

Maze War

Maze War was developed by Steve Colley at NASA’s Ames Research Center, introduced around the same time as Adventure. A shooting game, Maze War had a three-dimensional graphic interface and, with the help of co-workers who linked two computers together, multi-player gaming capabilities. Most interesting was that on screen, players were represented as eyeballs — a rudimentary sort of avatar. Maze War spawned the development of other multi-player games, many of which were based on fantasy role play and the popularity of D&D. Inspired by these, Roy Trubshaw and Richard Bartle — students at Essex University in England — developed the first multi-user text-based game in 1978. They named it MUD — “multi-user dungeon,” another nod to fantasy role play. Bartle described MUD as, “Originally little more than a series of interconnected locations where you could move and chat.” After several rewrites, MUD1 became highly interactive, providing a social network for like-minded gamers to battle monsters and create friendships, all within the context of a virtual medieval world. MUD1 became popular with students at Essex University and eventually with a global audience who could connect to the game through ARPANet. Just over a decade later, computer scientist James Apnes built on the success of MUDs with TinyMUD, a flexible virtual world that gave players the tools to build their own objects, rooms, and puzzles — a precursor to more complex worlds like Second Life. Technology professionals saw the success and rapid growth of MUDs in the 1980s as a turning point and recognition that virtual reality, with its bulky hardware and high costs, could not deliver the social or thematic experiences that audiences craved. It marked the ascendancy of software over hardware as the vehicle taking us into a virtual dimension.
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