rootninja

Avatars are at the heart of the 3d experience. From fighting games to social games to MMORPGs, you possess an onscreen representation of yourself. Whether it’s Farmtown, or World of Warcraft, or Soulcaliber, or Modern Warfare, you interact with the game world through this Avatar. With the Project Natal controller, that Avatar will more or less “be” you, and with the abilities of the Emotiv Epoc to detect facial expressions with fairly high accuracy, that Avatar will not only move like you, but allow anyone seeing you in that Avatar to interact as naturally as they would in person. When you smile, your Avatar will smile, when you move, it will move.

But then they go on about how, “Game developers know the innate desire humans possess to look idealized despite constant complaints by a minority about how unrealistic game avatars are.” what the?

No one wants the default character or default look. They want to customize. Sure, some people want to look like superhero’s while others may prefer the villain, but I think the strive is to be unique.

Designers understand that people don’t want to look like Joe Schmoe from Idaho, but like Arnie from his Conan days, or like Pamela from her Baywatch days.

Maybe i’m one of those minorities, but just last year there was a movie that showed the darker side in the future of avatars - “Surrogates”. They mention it once, and only by name in the article. Think of the expectations you face when avatars integrate into your working life. Avatars interacting between two coworkers is one thing, but between the HR department or other organizations? That’s a whole new ball of wax. Now I’ll have to worry about being mistreated or discriminated against if I don’t choose the proper look. Guilty of vanity, unless we can be free to choose winged demons, angels, or other non-conformist characters without fear of reprisal, what is the likely outcome? Welcome to race relations 2.0. Bahhh… Anyway here, check out what the headgear currently looks like:

Check out Virtualization, The Rise of the Avatar & the Open Sim Project.

I’m Valkyrie Ice, or just Val for short. I do have another name, but for the twenty five plus years I have been online, starting with my first appearance in the Red Dragon Inn on my very first BBS, Val has been the name every one knows me by.

This story originally caught my eye because I remember the Red Dragon Inn from the BBS days! I had this ‘door’ on my own bbs!