Avatars Need Personal Space Too

Nicola Jones writes to alert us to a study showing that avatars need their personal space. Avatars in the virtual reality of Second Life act like real people in this way: boy avatars stand further apart than female ones, and characters tend to avert their gaze from each others' eyes when standing close together. This result holds whether the avatar is being played by a man or a woman. From the article: "The authors say this means that these online gaming environments are a goldmine of social data as well as a potential experimental research platform." Obviously not all behaviours translate from the real world to the virtual one, notes UIUC computer game researcher Dmitri Williams: "There is no research on what translates and what doesn't.... People's willingness to take risks in online worlds is radically different. Death is not permanent online."

Comments

I don't read too much into this...

[AdamTrace]

First of all, the granularity for moving around seems to be about 1 meter. Getting into just the right position (conversational position, you perverts! :) can be somewhat difficult. Same with facing angle... it seems to be about 10 degrees.

Trying to draw any sort of conclusions about subtle nuances of communcation seems, frankly, rediculous.

Adman

Re:Similar observation from WOW

[Andy Dodd]

Strange, it seemed just the opposite in DAoC. On almost any raid, everyone would /stick to either the raid leader or their group leader (who would /stick to the raid leader). The result - one big massive blob.

The exception, of course, was in any situation where people expected to get AoEd. Then they would spread out. Don't want to get killed because you were too close to Leeeroy when he agroed the wrong mob. Even in realm vs. realm combat, most raids would travel in /stick formation and only spread out if they suspected a threat. The end result would be embarassing 8v150 ganks - mez, stun, AoE, AoE, AoE, 150 dead at the hands of a single group. In short, in my observation people only spread out in MMOs when there are practical reasons for doing so, such as not getting AoEd or being able to figure out which person in your group has agro from the big bad monsters. :)

Aversion of Eyes?!

[weasel5i2]

Article: Male avatars (whether created by a man or a woman) stood further apart than female avatars, for instance, and were more likely to avert their gaze. And when an avatar gets within a few metres of another, the user reduces eye contact by moving their character to face slightly to the right or the left of the other 'person'.

Now, as a semi-regular presence in Second Life, I must say that the statements above are not necessarily true. The SL avatar's gaze follows the UI mouse pointer, and considering that the average user spends a lot of time in the UI navigating through inventory/item edit/whatnot, I think it can be said that a good portion of an avatar's gaze direction is a side-effect of the real user's actions at the time. Even if they are "moving their character to face slightly to the right or the left of the other 'person'.", their eyes don't remain fixed on one location. It's just as easy to have [the virtual-world equivalent appearance of] eye-contact with the other individual(s) as if you're facing them directly.. It's all about what you're doing with the mouse at the time.

$0.02

--Weasel