Your avatar and your identity?
A lot of thoughts lately from various sites about the role of your avatar and your identity.
From Pixels and Policy, a great article about the attractiveness of avatars, and how it influences your popularity in virtual worlds.
From a site focusing on gender, gender equality, and other issues, a great article entitled “Real World Beauty Pressures in Second Life.”
A great article on body-concept in Second Life, with a long string of comments.
And another worry (or perhaps laugh?), Virtual Worlds Forum reports that gender swaps are common for online gaming. A tongue-in-cheek article in the Guardian claims to have a reasoning as to why men play as a female avatar in online games. As a related worrying development, it is rumored some games may have gender self-identification systems in the game, article at Destructoid; warning, probably NSFW.
Now I will probably cover these topics a little more as cases are filed, but for now it is probably someone will at some point declare that this would be none of the game publisher’s business, or some player might declare that this is “shocking, just shocking.”
Jay Moffitt is a Tennessee attorney. This blog is for entertainment and educational purposes only and does not consitute legal advice or create an attorney/client relationship. Jay Moffitt is not certified as a specialist in this area by Tennessee and Tennessee does not certify specialists in this practice area. All comments will be answered promptly and courteously as long as they are germane to the discussion and do not contain specific game names or incidents.
Tags: China, freedom of speech, gender, Linden Lab, Peer pressure, transgender, Virtual world, virtual worlds
