Avatar as Player Identity and Developments By Players' Exertion

Pearce explained the relationship between players (especially TGU members) and the virtual society, and how people organized communities in virtual space such as Uru, There, and second-life. In the very beginning of Uru, technological problems occurred. If there were more players than what server could handle, the virtual society became unstable and shut down. Therefore, People started to find a place that allows players to stay in communication while the virtual world is shut down.  What they found was Koalanet forum which was community hub where people could chat on and share what they wanted to. Nonetheless, more problems happened within the Uru and thus the more people wanted to immigrate to places. There.com and Second life seemed to meet their needs. Their one of major concerns was Avatar. In the book, Pearce said

“Because the avatar served as the representation of player identity in-world, players had very strong feelings about its expressive features in each of the worlds being considered.” (Pearce, pg 96)

I agree with this because I believe that avatar is showing player identity in virtual society. Players can say whatever what want, take actions whatever they want, and move wherever they want by controlling their “avatars”.  Players also have great feeling about their avatars’ appearance in virtual society. In the MMORPG, appearance shows not only the beauty of avatar, but also abilities such as what kind of luxury things they have, and how much time they’ve spent on the game. By looking at other avatar, their ability can be assumed with what they wear.

Hacker group tried to make their own world based on Uru. Cyan supported the hackers group’s efforts, and they even attempted to instigate Until Utu, which had been in negotiation with Cyan (Pearce, Pg 110). Pearce explained how players got involved in making their own game through the sentences in the book.

“Players who may ultimately know more than developers about the worlds they create feel both inspired and empowered to add their own creative contributions to the “database” of the game’s narrative and culture. (Pearce Pg. 109)”

I strongly agree with this. When people who are talented on game technology recognize a problem within game, they are very willing to fix it if they can, and they also tend to make games in a way that meets players’ needs more perfectly. It is related to the concepts that we had in our class; Mod. Modders have the same ideas as the hacker group in Uru. They changes some features of original version of game to make it more enjoyable to players. For example, there are some servers that are created by players, not game developers. In that server, players usually can do more thing than original one.

You guys might have experience of playing in specialized server that is made by player if you had played MMORPG, FPS games. The server usually provides players with more things than the normal server made by developer. Which server do you guys prefer to play? Normal one? or mod-server?