Possessing Barbie...
Hey folks,
Good to see the blogs coming along. Just found this interesting piece which was listed in the Guardians top 10 pieces of 'new' game journalism here
The piece is about identity in games but I think it might make for a provocative read for all - examining identity and where 'play' and 'reality' merge. It's called 'Possessing Barbie'
Thoughts?
Meanwhile, a reminder of the questions that appear at the end of this weeks lecture notes:
What constitutes a community: can it be a society, group, association, nation, club, global?
Is it the types of relations between members that defines/identifies a community?
Is community linked to place or religion, common interests or shared practices, or other commonalities?
Can it be experienced and understood entirely through communication or do there also need to be concrete practices that take place – reciprocity, shared processes etc.?
Does a community need continuity/history or is it simply momentary?
posted by Anonymous @ 12:41 pm
2 comments
2 Comments:
Well, 'Possessing Barbie' certainly is an interesting read. I think the issues about children online is well made, but what I'm really interested in is the point at which people's online lives overtake their real ones.
Video Game graphics is getting better and realer all the time (Check Halflife 2 and Doom 3), and as graphics improves so too, I think, does the temptation to spend more and more time inside virtual realms. With games along the lines of 'There' there is going to be a real temptation for people whose 'real' lives are not satisfactory of fulfilling, to actually put an inordinate amount of time into their avatar, because they prefer that easily manipulable life to their actual, difficult to change, one. After all, you can choose how you look for a start, and so many people are unhappy with their real bodies. Potentially, virtual lives could far out compete real ones, at least for some people. If you read a lot of sci fi, you'll have seen this scenario projected into the future and its a little scary. That said, what fun!
Yes, 'interesting' is a good way to sum up "Possessing Barbie".
It seems to me though that the degree to which a virtual encounter might be perceived by the player/s as a 'real' encounter would depend on the level of personal involvement each had with the game. In other words, the same encounter that evokes 'real' sensations (as described by 'Posessing Barbie's' author) in one player, may be viewed very flippantly by another, if they don't share the same 'commitment' to the game.
I think this is where we unwittingly impose our own personal ethics and belief systems on the avatars we adopt - while we can assume an avatar that is 'physically' different to yourself, is it ever possible to ever be truly dishonest (or shed your true identity) in a virtual community? Sure we can lie about our names, our opinions, our genders - but we can't help but react to the actions/words of others in these virtual communities in the same way we would react to the same words or actions in a real/face-to-face environment. And surely while so ever our characters perceive and react to other characters as we ourselves do 'in the flesh', no matter how much we may portray our online character or avatar as being different from ourselves, there is always an essence of us in what we project in a virtual world.....
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