Local Organizers

Hamburg Media School, Hans Bredow Institute for Media Research, Ilmenau University of Technology

Topic & Questions

With the rise of digital interactive media, “avatars” – computer generated visual representations of users  – have become a crucial link between users and the digital spaces they navigate. While the term “avatar” reaches back to Hinduist scriptures ca. 200 BC, and the use of player representations in games can be traced to the earliest known games played more than 4.000 years ago, it was only in 1985 that the multi-user domain Habitat introduced the term for user representations in virtual worlds. Today, avatars are used in digital games as well as e-commerce applications, social virtual environments, virtual meetings and conferences, and many more digital spaces and applications.

However, avatars are not just an interface users manipulate to access and act in digital spaces – avatars and their human users form complex relationships. For instance, avatars may represent the users’ own or created identity, users may develop an emotional attachment or parasocial relation to their avatars, or the design or activities of an avatar may infringe rights or develop an economic value.

For the pre-conference “Avatars and Humans”, we encourage submissions from all disciplinary and methodological backgrounds on the complex relations between avatars and their users. Submissions might address, but are not limited to the following topics and questions:

• Creating and using Avatars: How and why do we create avatars, what are the motives and effects of specific kinds of avatars and avatar usage? Do we create avatars similar or dissimilar to us? What kinds of in-game avatars and avatar features enhance or delimit qualities of user experience, such as presence, immersion or enjoyment?
• My Avatar and Me: How might we describe the (long-term) relationship between users and their avatars? Which factors influence the users’ identification with and emotional attachment to their avatars?
• The (Para-)Sociality of Avatars: Which social psychological factors affect our (avatar’s) interaction with other avatars, either controlled by users or an algorithm?
• Avatars and Profiles: How do avatar-based interactive spaces and the (mostly) „profile-based” spaces of social network sites and social media relate, especially in regard to matters of identity and relationship management? Can we observe a growing convergence or interdependence of the two?
• Analyzing Avatars: Exploring the user-avatar relationship also requires the description of the avatar itself. What are the relevant properties of avatars? Which analytical instruments can and should be employed for systematic descriptions, codings, analyses of avatars?
• Coding Avatars: As computer-generated representations of users, avatars have to be designed and coded, which puts important material constraints and preconditions on potential user-avatar relations. Which factors afford or constraint the customizability and variability of avatars? Which models of artifical intelligence guide the simulated behaviour of computer-controlled avatars?
• Avatar Rights and Regulations: People invest time and sometimes sizeable amounts of money in their avatars, and avatars develop reputations that might radiate on their users (or vice versa). Put differently, users develop vested interests in their avatars, and avatars develop an „avatar biography”: Do we need specific “avatar rights” to protect the histories, experiences and reputation of avatars? Which virtual as well as real-life circumstances are neccessary to govern avatars effectively?
• Behind and Beyond the Avatar: Which social and cultural processes take place between individuals, avatars and the communities they play in? How do the performances, gestures and emotions of avatars affect community building or the emergence of public communication in game worlds as well as everyday social behavior and society and vice versa? Does avatar-based interaction show the same social dynamics like face-to-face interaction (social control, negotiation, face work etc.), or does it differ – and how?
• Methodology of Avatar Research: Which paradigms and instruments might be applied to research concerning the above questions? What is the specific potential, what are possible obstacles of methodological and/or ethical nature when researching avatars?

For further details, download the

Call for paper

(pdf).

Programme

9.00–9.15 Welcome Note

Session 1: Framing the Avatar, Framing the Player
09.15–09.20 Introduction from the Chair (Jeffrey Wimmer)

09.20–11.20
Avatar Impotence: On 'User Will,' 'Avatar Agency,' and 'System Control' in Second Life (Katherine Behar, Baruch College, CUNY/Silvia Ruzanka/Ben Chang, Chicago, US)

Transformative interrelations of actors and their companion avatars:
sources of social innovation? Case studies of actors playing the game
of EverQuest and inhabiting the social world of Second Life (Sisse
Siggaard Jensen, Roskilde University, DK)

10.20-10.30 Coffee Break

10.30-11.30
Oh no, that hurt's! - Categorization of sanctions against virtual avatars (Stephan Dreyer, Hans-Bredow-Institut, DE)

Symbiosis: Masquerading avatar autonomy as player actions (Jeroen Stout, University of Portsmouth, GB)

11.30–11.45 Coffee Break

PhD thesis workshop (Chair: Sabine Trepte)
11.45–12.15
Through the eyes of the avatar: Can digital games influence how we perceive the world? (Johannes Breuer, University Hohenheim, DE)

Player Attitudes to Avatar Development: A Review of a PhD in Progress (Richard Gough, Loughborough University, GB)

12.15–13.15 Lunch

Session 2: My avatar and me: Player & Avatar Features
13.15–13.20 Introduction from the Chair (Leonard Reinecke)

13.20–14.50
Digital Identity and Creative Research Methods (Stacey Koosel, Estonian Academy of Arts, EE)

Being the avatar? - Biographies of extreme players (Emese Domahidi/Thorsten Quandt, University Hohenheim, DE)

Playing a Self: an exploration into the effect of avatar and group identification on gamer ratings of self, ideal self and avatar personality in MMORPGs (Cédric Courtois, Ghent University, BE)

14.50–15:10 Coffee Break

Session 3: Behind and beyond the avatar
15.10–15.15 Introduction from the Chair (Jan Schmidt)

15:15–16.45
Avatars in/and in-game protests: Rhetorics, practices, and ethics (Dean Chan, Edith Cowan University, AU)

Semi-Autonomous Avatars in Virtual Game Worlds (Mirjam Eladhari, Gotland University, SE)

Occupational avatars: Using a three dimensional professional identity
(Stina Bengtsson, Sodertorn University, SE)

16.45–17:00 Coffee Break

Strategy Meeting

17:00–18.00
Research on games and virtual worlds is growing exponentially in Europe. This meeting provides a platform for exchange and comparative research. The idea of a ECREA-section digital games/virtual worlds research will be presented and jointly elaborated (Chairs: Thorsten Quandt und Jeffrey Wimmer).

Timeline

• Submission of Presentations (Full Papers optional): September 30, 2010
• Early Bird Get together: October 11, 2010
• Pre-Conference: October 12, 2010

Venue

The pre-conference will take place at:

Hamburg Media School
Finkenau 35
D-22081 Hamburg

Contact