As MMORPGs (Massively-multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games) like Second Life become ever more complex and detailed, designers and users confront issues about default settings and customization. In "Sitting Pretty," Wagner James Au surveys the intense debate surrounding the issue of how avatars seat themselves in Second Life:
Used to be, when female avatars and male avatars would sit down, in Second Life, they more or less sat the same: Hands loosely laid on the lap, legs slightly apart. (Or as one resident waggishly put it, “Sitting with your junk hanging out.”) This didn’t sit well, so to speak, with many residents, especially some women. (And one assumes, some male residents who play as women.) It just didn’t do to put on a skirt or a dress, and attend an in-world fashion show, for instance, then end up sitting more like a stevedore at a sports bar, than a society lady. Quite a few complained to the [game designer] Lindens.
As Michi Linden points out, one of the interesting things about Second Life's world is that these debates take place, and that the designers actively revise the world based on those discussions.
[via New World Notes]
Posted by johndan at September 27, 2004 07:31 AM