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Archive for July, 2009
I haven’t read a lot about identity, but from what I can gather, identity is currently considered a fluid entity. People move in and out of various identities throughout their life. I think that if we carefully separate the concept of identity from personality, that might be indeed be the case, especially in (computer mediated) virtual environments. "One can have as many electronic personas as one has time and energy to create." Kimble p. 5.
I know for myself, I have a smattering a various personas littering my electronic footprint. Most are related in someway; lately I have been attempting to collect all the bits and pieces into a unified perspective. (re: joyrobinson.com) although after a few conversations with some of my colleagues, perhaps that is a recipe for failure. (However, I will not let my paranoia take control here). I think a unified front is actually a deterrent to identity abuse.
Having made that minor disclaimer, what happens in gaming? Out on the internet, I have tried to collect it all – my FB, websites, wikis, blogs unified by the same name "Joy Robinson" and the single url. But what of games. In WOW I found out the other day, you can have up to 50 chars; 10 on a singe server, under 1 account. (The fact that you cant play any of them simultaneously, is a bit of a downer, but I digress again.) I have about 5 now (my new iphone app says 6…hmm must be 6). What I wonder then is this.
If each of my chars (in WOW) are different, different race, different class, different professions, different levels – are these all parts of the different me. Do these various chars say something about my identity on a whole. As I add to these characters and imbue them with "me" what of me shows to the outside world? WOW has an interesting feature "inspect". For anyone walking by you can – check them out. See what they have on, what guild they belong to, their race, their attributes, etc.
Articles talk about trust and identity in virtual teams – how does this manifest in the game? Do we start out trusting, until we are "let down". Do we believe in the identity as we see them?
Now my first char, I really felt very "invested" in. I dreamed about her, about WOW, about other chars, about the various quests regularly. She is now 59 and I dont play her much (njoying is an alliance side elf, a druid – with leatherworking and enchanting…). I have a deathknight now that I play most and I dont dream much anymore about the game. But, I have met many people in the game (most I dont know offline) and I find it difficult to remember their names – only their char names seem to stick. And when they dawn their alts (other chars), I can only relate to them by the first alt I encountered.
For example; back when I played druid, we did a few dungeons in a group with a character called Sax. Sax was a Pally, he was higher level than most of us, and helped us complete a number of dungeons where otherwise we would have not been able to. A few months later the owner of Sax sold him (He got good WOW coin for this) – and instead plays a mage. This mage, I can never remember the name, so.. we refere to her as Sax’s Alt. However, recall, Sax was a char in the first place. The 16 yr old kid who owned Sax – no one remembers his name either.
Virtual teams in the workplace, what does this mean for them? Will the FIRST impression you make with them be the only one that counts? Is this similar to the 6 seconds to make a good impression in F2F interactions?
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