RE: [-empyre-] : [-empyre-]:An Avatar Manifesto::part Two

[Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>]

On Sat, 23 Nov 2002, Gregory Little wrote:

> by "we" I refer to a the majority of the living, those who are because they
> think, those who operate under salvation myths, those who desire to lose
> touch with the exigencies of the flesh and the corporeal in favor of the
> promise of salvation in an afterlife....but, whatever you think of that, and
> I can smell problems, I am very interested in your comments toward gaming
> demographics.  I am about to teach a course in gaming, and any thoughts you
> might share, sources you can point me toward would be greatly
> appreciated....
>
Unfortunately I don't have any sources; I wish I could take the course!
But gaming and Mudding do seem the domain of particular groups of people,
mainly young mails as you know, and those who may have come out of
Nintendo & Playstations etc. I'm curious about this; online gaming for
example requires a fairly expensive machine -

> >for example D&G seem far more consum-
> >erist than otherwise, and this carries through into all of these
> >futures...
>
> Hmmm, I would love to hear an elaboration on this, especially in terms of
> D&G.  Are you suggesting that de/restratification is easier for those with
> greater means??!!
>
Yes; I was also thinking of things like desiring-machines and their
possible relationship to consumerism. To ask an irritating question
perhaps - who is to say that more is better? That disembodiment isn't any
but escapism, and at that, for the few? - think of the Fetish pages in
Wired. If there were a real and concrete possibility of evading death, for
example, I could see the use and pleasure in it; otherwise, I have my
doubts. For me, avatars are troubling, as are cyborgs - it's the troubling
aspects I tend to focus on.

> I do understand, I recently saw an essay online, didn't really say much, but
> the title struck me:  "Where have all the avatars gone?"; I think the
> initial pop framing was doomed to fail....
> Anybody have any thoughts on this issue, Where have all the avatars gone???
>
They've gone for one thing into messaging systems. I was talking to
someone a couple of years ago who had worked on ThePalace software; at
that point the Thing was running one. He talked about the failure of these
speaking 2d/3d environments - that they were replaced by the simplicity
of typing into Instant Messanger, ICQ, etc. That's what people tend to
use. And the Muds have gone towards more fuller gaming; the MOOs have
slowed in their development, just about disappeared, I think, because of
three things - the easy ability to hack into them and disrupt things (i.e.
fork bombs, playing with other characters, etc.); the difficulty and
annoyance of even saying something (difference between @ commands and
non-@ commands, using " or say to speak, etc.); and the politics of the
MOO which on one hand seemed to tend towards the democratic but on the
other really favored the wizards and programmers. And I think these
problems - these _furious_ problems show up in a lot of places. It's why I
like the book 'my tiny life' so much (Dibbell) -


Alan