She lives in the Pacific Northwest and enjoys gardening, baking, and painting. By Caroline Fox Published Nov 29, Share Share Tweet Email 0. They can draw on the experiences of the handful of pathfinding companies that have begun to explore this realm. But in the last few years, technology has expanded the possibilities. Today, a teenager will communicate in the voice of two personae—one transmitted over cell phone and the other via instant messaging—to the same friend at the same time. An unattractive, shy man will transform himself into the sexiest and most aggressive guy—or, not uncommonly, girl—on the virtual block.
A Web surfer may change her persona every time she enters one of the hundreds of three-dimensional chat rooms. The word, which originally described the worldly incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu, was popularized in its cybersense by Neal Stephenson in his cult novel Snow Crash. For example, more than 7 million people have created Yahoo avatars, simple but personalized cartoon-like characters used as pictorial signatures in activities ranging from instant messaging to fantasy sports.
The experience of living through an alternative self is the most powerful, though, in virtual worlds, sometimes called—take a breath—massively multiplayer online role-playing games.
Avatars are endowed with mannerisms, skills, and wardrobes that their users create employing a variety of software tools , purchase from in-world shops , receive as gifts from other avatars , or earn through in-game achievements. The online worlds populated by avatars come in many forms but can basically be divided into two types.
The most popular by far are combat-focused games, such as EverQuest, Lineage, and World of Warcraft: The latter alone claims more than 6 million paying subscribers. Other virtual worlds, even if they include game-like elements, primarily offer the opportunity for social interaction. In these worlds—places like Second Life and Entropia Universe, aimed at adults, and the more teen-oriented There, the Sims Online, and Habbo Hotel —users customize not only themselves but also their environments and experiences, decorating personal living spaces or running their own events.
The settings are more realistic than those in the typical sci-fi or fantasy combat game. Second Life currently has around 65, paying subscribers and another , nonpaying members with fewer in-world privileges, according to Linden Lab, the company that developed and runs that world.
In such worlds, people often have more than one avatar. Gender switching is common, as is the exaggeration of sexual characteristics. One Second Life avatar, a well-muscled and spiky-haired male named wilde Cunningham, represents a group of people who are severely physically disabled in real life.
And avatars can take on lives of their own: Because of real-world news reports about their virtual-world activities as community gadflies or wealthy entrepreneurs, avatars sometimes become better known than their creators.
Living in the skin of an avatar—looking out through its eyes and engaging with other beings, themselves avatars of flesh-and-blood individuals—can be an intense experience. The real-world marketing potential of online worlds is suggested by the active virtual commerce that already takes place within them.
In Second Life , for instance, you find services you might expect—virtual clothing and furniture design, event planning, real estate brokering. But the avatar-run businesses also include detective agencies, which keep an eye on virtual infidelity; a notary public, who guarantees the legitimacy of avatar contracts and offers mediation services if problems arise ; and an advertising agency, which designs and places ads for other avatar-operated businesses. There are in addition the inevitable sex shops, which sell not only racy garb and paraphernalia but also computer code that allows two avatars to enter into a passionate embrace and beyond.
Online virtual worlds offer untapped marketing potential for real-world products and services, particularly because of their ability to generate sustained consumer engagement with a brand. The stage for real-world marketing has been set in virtual worlds like Second Life. In this example, Dominus Motors promotes a limited Eleanor edition named after a famous s muscle car of its Shadow model that seats five avatars and can be driven through the world at speeds of up to miles an hour.
Wells Fargo bank operates a virtual world called Stagecoach Island, designed to educate teens about money matters through games and social activities. At in-world ATMs, players take a financial quiz in order to withdraw virtual cash for activities such as skydiving and games of paintball.
Coke Studios is a teen-oriented virtual world run by Coca-Cola. For example, you get five decibels for each thumbs-up from a fellow avatar for your selection of dance music in your role as virtual DJ in one of the public studios. You can use these points to buy furniture and accessories for your own studio, like the one shown here, where you can hold events for avatar friends.
Second Life residents pay for these products and services in local Linden dollars. Merchants can then exchange them, at fluctuating rates, for real-world cash on various Internet exchanges. And there are "weird floating rocks. A bit of one. There's no "avatar" technology, but a lot of the other stuff is similar.
More info over at Heavy. Dragon Hunters The similarities: A reader tipped us off to this computer-animated French film, which features a dragon called the "World-Gobbler. Not really. Floating continents are so popular, TVTropes has a huge entry devoted to them. Floating "islands" play a huge part in Crossgen Comics' series Meridian. Robin Hobb's Soldier Son Trilogy The similarities: Nevare is a soldier from an expanding colonial power, Gernia, until he's claimed by the primitive forest-dwelling Specks, who split his soul in two and cause him to go native.
He becomes the Specks' weapon in the fight against Gernian expansion. Just the "going native" thing. Fern Gully The similarities: This Australian animated film features peace-loving forest folk with special powers, whose magic trees are threatened by humans who want to chop them down.
And one human gets shrunk and joins the fairies on a wild adventure, helping them to save their forest. There's also an evil guy played by Tim Curry, who gets released from his tree prison by accident. This was a big meme a while back , resulting in the trailer mashup you see above. And a guy sort of goes native. Oh come on, stop it already. In fact, I wonder, if the Internet had existed in , if people would had made a habits of picking out every falw of StarWars.
Probably from Jake Sully, who applied it. After the woman has been chosen, the new couple are mated before Eywa. The Avatar Cycle is based on the passage of the four seasons, which coincides with the order in which Wan first learned the elements; fire related to summer, air to autumn, water to winter, and earth to spring.
When an Avatar dies, the next Avatar will be born into the next nation in the Avatar Cycle. The species was changed to look more like humans. It has vocabulary and grammar and was developed by linguist Paul Frommer. Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search.
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