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Avatars Need Personal Space Too

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the look-into-my-avatar's-eyes dept.

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."

4 of 127 comments (clear)

  1. Yeah, whatever... by Jeian · · Score: 5, Funny

    The authors say this means that these online gaming environments are a goldmine of social data

    Uh huh. I've had a lot less people ask me "R U 4 SECKS CHAT???" in real life.

    1. Re:Yeah, whatever... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Uh huh. I've had a lot less people ask me "R U 4 SECKS CHAT???" in real life.

      You don't hang out in the right bars.

  2. "Second LIfe"? by Tarlus · · Score: 5, Funny

    Why do they call it "Second Life" if it's for MMO people who don't even have a primary life?

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  3. The Actual Paper by j1m+5n0w · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Nick Yee, Jeremy N Bailenson, Mark Urbanek, Francis Chang, Dan Merget, The Unbearable Likeness of Being Digital: The Persistence of Nonverbal Social Norms in Online Virtual Environments.

    (Given that the whole article is about a particular paper, they should have given a proper citation, or at least told us what the title of the paper was.)

    My summary of their findings: on average, female characters stand closer to female characters than male characters stand to male characters. Distance between male-female pairs has larger variability than distance between same-gender pairs. This is the same as what happens in real life.