This assignment’s directive to participate in an online game for at least an hour was very easy for me. If you’ve read any of my earlier posts, you may have learned by this point that I am an avid gamer, focusing mainly on “massively multiplayer” online games (MMOGs). I’ve been playing these games for the better part of six years at this point, and over that time I’ve developed a significant self-perception of my online avatar.My avatar’s name is Rayaru. (In case you are wondering, the name is a spelling mistake on the name of the character Rauru, the sage of light from The Legend of Zelda series of role-playing games.) I first created Rayaru in 2001, towards the end of my middle school years, when I joined the MMOG Ultima Online. As you can see from the screenshot I’ve posted, he is an older character (supposedly over 120 years old in fact!) with a grey beard that varies in length depending on the limitations of the game I’m playing. If you have any degree of experience with fantasy literature, from physical appearances alone you will have already recognized Rayaru as an archetypical wizard-type character. This is consistent with the “character class” that I first selected way back at the start of my UO days (a character class in these sorts of games is a sort of role that defines the types of skills and attributes your character will develop).
This wizard archetype was very significant in Rayaru’s birth. Since I had no real character image in mind when I set out to play UO, my perception of what he should look like came primarily from what I thought a wizard (or Mage as, UO refers to them) should look like. Since there are only a handful of class choices in any game, I believe that Yee’s assertion towards the end of his paper that avatar choice in these multi-person environments is supported. More often then not, a player will first decide on playing a mage, and then think “okay, I’m a mage; what should a mage look like?” This is a form of Yee’s Proteus Effect in action; in this case, the “black uniform” is the character class.
This follows through into how I play Rayaru in-game as well. Although to a certain extent his behavior mirrors my own – reserved and quiet for the most part – there is no question that I play into the mage/wizard archetype very strongly. Wizards are supposed to be people with an almost spiritual, mystical bond to the world around them. With this in mind, Rayaru tends to be more deferent in social situations, letting conversations run their course and then offering his own conclusions at the end. Following Yee’s findings, my already-reserved self-image is made even more reserved by the identity that was imposed on my character by its class choice.
In all my experience with these “collaborative virtual environments,” I have only found reason after reason to concur with Yee’s conclusion that a definite Proteus Effect exists within the virtual world. Normal people become bombastic warriors or erudite scholars based on the appearance of the characters that they create.
PS – Nick Yee is actually a very well-known researcher into the psychology of MMOGs. I’ve been an avid follower of his Daedalus Project ever since I found out about it. If you haven’t seen Daedalus before, I highly encourage you to check it out at the provided link.
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