Body and mind: a study of avatar personalization in three virtual worlds

An increasingly large number of users connect to virtual worlds on a regular basis to conduct activities ranging from gaming to business meetings. In all these worlds, users project themselves into the environment via an avatar: a 3D body which they control and whose appearance is often customizable. However, considering the prevalence of this form of embodiment, there is a surprising lack of data about how and why users customize their avatar, as well as how easy and satisfying the existing avatar creation tools are. In this paper, we report on a study investigating these issues through a questionnaire administered to more than a hundred users of three virtual worlds offering widely different avatar creation and customization systems (Maple Story, World of Warcraft, and Second Life). We illustrate the often-surprising choices users make when creating their digital representation and discuss the impact of our findings for the design of future avatar creation systems.

[1]  Marek Bell,et al.  CSCW at play: 'there' as a collaborative virtual environment , 2004, CSCW.

[2]  Sara B. Kiesler,et al.  The Ideal Elf: Identity Exploration in World of Warcraft , 2007, Cyberpsychology Behav. Soc. Netw..

[3]  Lee Humphreys,et al.  Digital Media: Transformations in Human Communication , 2006 .

[4]  A. Synnott,et al.  Shame and glory: a sociology of hair* , 1987 .

[5]  Jeffrey T. Hancock,et al.  The truth about lying in online dating profiles , 2007, CHI.

[6]  Deborah A. Fields,et al.  Your Second Selves: Avatar Designs and Identity Play in a Teen Virtual World , 2007 .

[7]  Zaheer Hussain,et al.  Gender Swapping and Socializing in Cyberspace: An Exploratory Study , 2008, Cyberpsychology Behav. Soc. Netw..

[8]  L. A. Pervin.  Handbook of Personality: Theory and Research , 1992 .

[9]  Robert J. Moore,et al.  Doing Virtually Nothing: Awareness and Accountability in Massively Multiplayer Online Worlds , 2007, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW).

[10]  Yizhou Yu,et al.  Modeling realistic virtual hairstyles , 2001, Proceedings Ninth Pacific Conference on Computer Graphics and Applications. Pacific Graphics 2001.

[11]  Bonnie A. Nardi,et al.  Strangers and friends: collaborative play in world of warcraft , 2006, CSCW '06.

[12]  J. Bailenson,et al.  Walk A Mile in Digital Shoes : The Impact of Embodied Perspective-Taking on The Reduction of Negative Stereotyping in Immersive Virtual Environments , 2006 .

[13]  Nick Yee,et al.  The Labor of Fun , 2006, Games Cult..

[14]  S. Turkle.  Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet , 1997 .

[15]  Robert J. Moore,et al.  "Alone together?": exploring the social dynamics of massively multiplayer online games , 2006, CHI.

[16]  Deborah A. Fields,et al.  Your Second Selves: Resources, Agency, and Constraints in Avatar Designs and Identity Play in a Tween Virtual World , 2007, DiGRA Conference.

[17]  Tyler Pace,et al.  Can an orc catch a cab in stormwind?: cybertype preference in the world of warcraft character creation interface , 2008, CHI Extended Abstracts.