While reading Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, by Sherry Turkle, I had many thoughts about the nature of the real versus the virtual, about identities. Specifically, how people construct and explore and access identities. How they start fresh when they tire of old identities. And, how they combine the best parts of distinct identities.
Real v. Virtual
As more people spend more time in these virtual spaces, some go so far as to challenge the idea of giving any priority to RL at all. "After all," says one dedicated MUD player and IRC user, "why grant such superior status to the self that has the body when the selves that don't have bodies are able to have different kinds of experiences?" When people can play at having different genders and different lives, it isn't surprising that for some this play has become as real as what we conventionally think of as their lives, although for them this is no longer a valid distinction. (14)
If you can accept that real life doesn't automatically get priority, you can understand that when real-life needs pull you away from virtual lives it can be, at the very least, inconvenient. Extending these lives to connected, mobile devices can keep the prioritized life available, whichever it may be.
Turkle interviewed an interior designer:
I feel very different online. I'm a lot more outgoing, less inhibited. I would say I feel more like myself. But that's a contradiction. I feel more like who I wish I was. (179)
Who says that the self in real life is more real than the online self? Just as one group of friends can make you feel one way and another group, perhaps family, can make you feel another, an online environment can bring out certain aspects of your personality more easily than real life. As people realize they can access other sides of themselves, they will appreciate online worlds more.
We are moving toward a culture of simulation in which people are increasingly comfortable with substituting representations of reality for the real. (23)
We talk about real lives and virtual lives, but what are the differences? Is an experience or an emotion in a virtual life less real? Real life can be defined by what we do in our virtual lives. We talk about virtual currencies being tradable for real currencies and thus taking on real value. But, the experiences we have in virtual lives need not even be traded. They are real from the beginning.
Identity Accessibility
Matthew’s life on MUDs was always available to him. Matthew could play as much as he wished, all day if he wished, every day if he chose to. There were always people logged into the game. There was always someone to talk to or something to do. MUDs gave him the sense of an alternative place. They came to feel like his true home. (192)
For those people who choose to play this way, mobile access to online lives can free them from the tethers of the desktop PC.
When I want to write and don't have a computer around, I tend to wait until I do. In fact, I feel that I must wait until I do. (29)
When Turkle wrote this in 95, most computers weren't mobile. So, if a writer relied on a computer, she wouldn't write until returning to a desktop. These days, computer-bound writers can carry laptops. The same is true now of online game identities. Players must wait until they return to their desktops to resume interaction with these identities. By extending them to mobile devices, we untie identity and location.
It is hard for me to walk away from a not-yet-proofread text on the computer screen. In the electronic writing environment in which making a correction is as simple as striking a delete key, I experience a typographical error not as a mere slip of the attention, but as a moral carelessness, for who could be so slovenly as not to take the one or two seconds to make it right? (29)
This feeling may translate to accomplishment-driven online identities. Players may feel compelled to play more, because they can and therefore less powerful online identities could represent laziness to some players.
Identity Construction
The Internet has become a significant social laboratory for experimenting with the constructions and reconstructions of self that characterize postmodern life. In its virtual reality, we self-fashion and self-create. (180)
Children don't learn natural language by learning its rules, but through immersion in its cadences. Similarly, today's most popular software is designed for immersion. You learn by playful exploration. (61)
This extends to learning about yourself and who you want to be. Playful exploration of your identity leads to one you're proud of, that feels good. Traditional class systems in MMOs require players to choose a major part of who they will be when first creating a character. Perhaps experimenting with the different play styles after creating a character but before committing to a class could help players come closer to identities they're proud of. Committing to a class at any point doesn't feel playful. Should MMOs require less commitment and give more flexibility? Should players be allowed to swap roles more fluidly? They can certainly do so now by creating new characters, but this of course requires them to step away from their main identity of which they are most proud. In real life, switching careers in middle age is often rewarded, with colleagues in the new career respecting the expertise one brings from her old career. Could MMOs codify that a warrior-turned-healer brings a perspective to the role that a pure healer might not, giving credit to the player?
Sandy, an MIT faculty member, spoke to me of the many happy hours he had spent as a child of around five with a beloved broken radio.
The different patterns could help you figure out the arrangements that they needed to communicate with each other. And it was a great thrill to have thought of that. I can remember that there was this tremendous charge I got from that, and I thought I would spend the rest of my life looking for charges just like that one.
Several things happened to Sandy in the course of working on that radio. He came to see himself as the kind of person who was good at figuring things out. And he came to develop an aesthetic of exploration, categorization, and control. In other words, Sandy with his radio is Sandy the child developing the intellectual personality of Sandy the modern scientist. (78-9)
By experimenting with a new identity, that of the tinkerer, Sandy had a chance to see himself as the kind of person who was good at something. That's what MMOs can do -- give players chances to see themselves as good at something.
Since many people simply choose to play aspects of themselves, MUDs can also seem like real life. A MUD can become a context for discovering who one is and wishes to be. In this way, the games are laboratories for the construction of identity, an idea that is well captured by the player who said:
You don't have to worry about the slots other people put you in as much. It's easier to change the way people perceive you.
The anonymity of most MUDs provides ample room for individuals to express unexplored parts of themselves. Creating screen personae is thus an opportunity for self-expression, leading to her feeling more like her true self when decked out in an array of virtual masks.
MUDs can be places where people blossomed or places where they get stuck, cod and self-contained worlds where things are simpler than in real life, and where, if all else fails, you can retire your character and simply start a new life with another. (184-5)
Fresh Start
In grade school and junior high Gordon wasn't happy and he didn't fit in. He describes himself as unpopular, overweight, unathletic, and unattractive: "Two hundred and ten pounds with glasses." The summer after his sophomore year in high school Gordon went on a trip to India with a group of students from all over the world. These new people didn't know he was unpopular, and Gordon was surprised to find that he was able to make friends. He was struck by the advantages of a fresh start, of leaving old baggage behind. Two years later, as a college freshman, Gordon discovered MUDs and saw another way to have a fresh start. Since MUDs allowed him to create a new character at any time, he could always begin with a clean slate. When he changed his character he felt born again. (189-90)
It's ironic that Gordon discovered MUDs as a college freshman as a way to have a fresh start, because entering college is another way to start fresh. In fact, my own experiences starting fresh more often came from switching schools and jobs than from creating new characters in MMOs. However, I think the principles of starting fresh are similar in both real and virtual contexts.
Integrating Identities
My mother died when I was 19 and a college junior. Upset and disoriented, I dropped out of school. I traveled to Europe, ended up in Paris. While the English-speaking Sherry had little confidence that she could take care of herself, the French-speaking Sherry simply had to go on with it. On trips back home, English-speaking Sherry rediscovered old timidities. I cycled through French- and English-speaking Sherrys until the movement seemed natural; I could bend toward one and then the other with increasing flexibility. When English-speaking Sherry finally returned to college in the United States, she was never as brave as French-speaking Sherry. But she could hold her own. (209)
After creating virtual identities, players now have multiple identities, both real and virtual, presumably with some differences. Probably I'll identities could benefit from the best parts of each other, which raises the question of how to integrate them. Sherry Turkle found that frequent cycling between two identities helped her integrate them. Mobile devices could help players cycle more frequently between real and virtual identities. They have more chances throughout the day to experience all identities. Perhaps the confidence boost from slaying a hard monster and gaining a level would translate to taking more social risks minutes later in the real world. This juxtaposition of identities is less likely when the virtual is tied to a PC, but when freed by a mobile device it becomes probable.
