[MUD-Dev] MEDIA: Multiplayer Gaming's Quiet Revolution

[J C Lawrence]

http://www.mindjack.com/feature/bodylanguage.html

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July 20, 2004

  Today's avatars in massively multiplayer environments like Second Life
  are giving their users the gift of expression and infusing games with
  something more, soul.

The bleachers at Stage Four in Dore are always a good place to
avatar-watch, particularly during fashion-shows. Dressed as a tree-man,
I am sandwiched between a blue, demon-winged lad and an attractive woman
sporting a revealing red jump-suit. I take a moment to appreciate her
outfit, and realize she's giving me an appraising glance. Her gaze
sweeps from my bark-covered feet to leafy noggin. "Hi, Zero," she
says. I grin. Her blue eyes lock onto my yellow ones and she blinks a
couple of times, the corners of her mouth appearing to turn up
slightly. It takes a few heartbeats before I realize I've been
staring. With a flick of the mouse, I break eye-contact. I've blushed in
real life.

Virtual environments historically haven't given players the ability to
connect in such subtle ways. Although we know what a picture is worth,
it took years before graphics supplemented typed words as a means of
communication. Today's graphics and animation technologies are poised to
irrevocably change the face of human interaction in cyberspace, allowing
us not just to share, but to create wordless, realistic and powerful
moments.

Back in the dial-up days of the early 1980s, text-based multi-user
dimensions (MUDs) relied entirely on user-typed chat, descriptions, and
acronyms to construct characters and scenes within computer-moderated
worlds. One's quality of experience was entirely contingent on the
eloquence, style, and typing abilities of fellow participants. Gestures
such as waving and laughing would remain text-exclusive for years to
come, but the medium was substantially improved when participants began
inserting "emoticons" into their chats. Still in wide use today, these
text-cobbled representations of perpendicular human facial expressions
were the first purely visual method of interpersonal communication in
multiplayer games.

The explosion of emotes across MUDs, chat spaces, and message boards
heralded the development of graphically-enhanced multi-user
environments. "Lucasfilm's Habitat," launched in 1985 on the Commodore
64, was one of the first large-scale cyberspaces to make extensive use
of 2D graphics. Players were represented by animated characters, now
known commonly as "avatars," which could be controlled via a
joystick. Habitat's user-controlled gestures were limited but
significant. In these early days of computer graphics, users saw
something almost magical in even the simplest human shapes. At a panel
discussion held in June, 2004 at the California History Museum entitled
"Graphics- Then and Now," veteran game designer Jordan Mechner, recalled
his experiences playing the single-player Commodore 64 game
"Choplifter": "I was blown away by those little guys that
waved...because they were human, because of the emotion...I actually
felt guilty when I squashed them with my rotor blades..."  [1]

In the 1990s, home computers were becoming viable for early forays into
more graphically-intense virtual realities. A slew of experimental 3D
worlds opened up new ways of thinking about how avatars might
interrelate. Microsoft was an early pioneer in facilitating human
expression in cyberspace. "V-Chat," launched in 1995, was an early
contender in the ballooning collection of larger-scope chat spaces that
encompassed both 2D and 3D graphics. V-Chat's avatars, although
primitive, were both customizable and capable of expressing a range of
emotional states. Microsoft's 2D "Comic Chat" built upon the facial
expressions Microsoft had tested with V-Chat. Comic Chat displayed text
in speech or thought bubbles, allowing users to express not only their
public, but "private" thoughts; AI-detection of user-typed acronyms
would cause one of the illustrated avatars to assume an appropriate
pose, such as waving if the user had typed "BRB" for "be right back."
While both the 2D Comic Chat and 3D V-Chat gave users more expressive
outlets, it was ultimately 3D space that would offer the greatest
potential for interpersonal dynamics. After analyzing logs from V-Chat
sessions, Microsoft Research found that "Overall, V-Chat users appear to
be using the 3D features of the program to reproduce the social
conventions of physical proxemics."[2] The opening up of chat to 3D
space allowed users to communicate nonverbally simply by establishing
location and facing relative to other participants.

Cyberspace pioneer, lecturer and author Bruce Damer knows firsthand that
position in a 3D world can speak volumes. His most memorable moment
occurred in 1999 after inviting real-life Apollo IX astronaut Rusty
Schweickart to visit a virtual lunar landscape in the versatile 3D
environment "ActiveWorlds." While a crowd of enthralled users looked on,
Schweickart helped a little girl moonwalk for herself, inadvertently
passing through her avatar in the process. Damer recalls the girl's
breathless reaction to this day: "'Oh my God, I have been touched by an
Apollo astronaut.'

"I said 'No, Julie, his avatar just passed through yours,' and she said
'No, you're wrong-I can feel it in my body, I'm shaking, I was touched
by this man, I'll never forget this.'"

Few mediums realized the creative use of "bodies" in cyberspace better
than video games. At the turn of the century, 3D game characters finally
possessed enough detail to display recognizable human gestures. Unreal
Tournament (Epic Games, 1999) featured a wide range of insulting
animated gestures, such as pelvic thrusts, enabling avatars to insult
one another from afar before locking in fierce combat. "Myth: The Wolf
Age," a multiplayer fantasy war game published in 2001 by Take Two
Interactive, allowed player-controlled troops to visibly and audibly
jeer each other into a combative lather. Innovative Mythers would even
go so far as to throw the limbs of fallen soldiers against their
enemies. While tactically-ineffective, these maneuvers stylishly
communicated intimidation, aggression, and humour between players.

As technology improved, the rich graphical detail of multiplayer games
expanded to "massively" multiplayer environments, most of which blended
social activity with group-oriented action. The least violent of these
offerings held communication in the highest esteem. "The Sims Online"
(Electronic Arts, 2002) was based on the hit seller The Sims and built
on the classic version's expressive characters by giving each user a
palette of hundreds of actions with which to control their
avatar. "There," launched the following year by There, Inc., gave even
more power to users through simple means to add emphasis to certain
emotes. Former Thereian "Cristiano Midnight" recounts his experiences:
"[S]ome interactions had their intensity changed by using one to three
apostrophes to invoke the gesture - 'love would produce a little heart,
while ''love would produce a flurry of hearts, and '''heart a bigger
heart...Overall, the gestures are nice, but after seeing custom
animations, I would be annoyed with canned animations all the time." [3]

"Second Life" (Linden Lab, 2003) one-upped other massively-multiuser
environments from the get-go, putting an inordinate amount of attention
and detail into how avatars would interact with each other and their
surrounds. Second Life's avatars were conceived in 2001 with plenty of
hidden potential, rolled out gradually after launch. Linden Lab avatar
customization and animation expert Richard Nelson recalls working with
CEO Philip Rosedale on the foundations of communication development. "We
spent a lot of time...making users' intentions visible to other people,
so we looked at things like where your avatar's head is pointing, how
your eyes move... how you could point to an object in the world and
refer to it to someone else. What we focused on was making the avatar
move realistically depending on what you're doing."

"We wanted to make the experience as immersive as we could," says Robin
Harper, Linden Lab's Senior VIP of Marketing and Community
Development. "Part of that is the ability to interact with another
individual in Second Life as if that person were physically standing
right in front of you."

Linden Lab carved out a bold new chapter in consumer virtual reality
during the summer of 2004 by taking Second Life's palette of animation
from finite to infinite. Already able to upload their own graphics,
sounds, and create their own 3D objects, Second Life users are now able
to define their own visual language by uploading custom animations
they've designed themselves. "Yesterday, we sat on the bleachers and
flapped our arms," wrote Shelle Barton, aka "Zana Feaver" on fan-blog
Second Language. "We flapped as hard as we could, but the concrete
wouldn't budge...Flapping arms in a group has a nice calming aspect that
is hard to explain to anyone..." [4]

Second Life's new canvas of creative communication was planned from day
one. "From the beginning," says Richard Nelson, "we said we'd go with a
standard file format, this motion capture BVH file format, we would use
a cheap, commonly available tool like Poser in house to create all our
animations." The character animation kit "Poser" is relatively
inexpensive, easy-to-learn software, employed not only by industry
professionals, but students and hobbyists. With a low barrier to entry,
and a wide support base, Second Life users have jumped enthusiastically
into the animation pool, playing with a growing repertoire of previously
unseen movement. The results have blazed through Second Life's social
scene.

"The dance clubs have taken full advantage of all different kinds of new
dance moves," says Harper. "There have been lots of parties and fun
being had sharing the animations they're creating."

"You're starting to see animation sections opening up in various
[user-created] stores where there used to be just clothing," Nelson
adds. "It's all branching out." With the advent of custom animation in
Second Life, no avatar has to walk the same, sit the same, or swim the
same. Performing arts are now not only possible, but completely viable,
from mime to stage acting, from burlesque to ballet. Arm-flapping and
other whimsical, nonverbal activities are blossoming across the virtual
landscape.

We naturally express ourselves through movement, bodily attitude, and
facial expressions. This primal and vital method of communication,
although universal in appeal, has historically been unrealized. The
early days of text-chatting were all about the literal. 2D graphics
changed our way of thinking about expression, offering the potential to
"show" rather than "tell." The 3D graphics found in games and virtual
reality formed a primordial ooze of potential and expanded into the
massively-multiplayer realm. Places such as The Sims Online and There
gave us a glimpse at things to come. The introduction of user-created
animation in Second Life has opened our eyes to a future cyberspace
where technology empowers rather than suppresses humanity.

  Bio:

    Tony Walsh is a Toronto-based freelance Jack of all Trades,
    practitioner of the Arts, avid gamer and renegade digital
    anthropologist. He keeps a near-daily journal at
    clickableculture.com but lives at secretlair.com.

 Footnotes:

    1 - Graphics -Then and Now (06/18/04): Hosted by the California
    History Museum and nVidia, GameSpot's Vince Broady moderates a panel
    discussion titled "Graphics: Then & Now" which features Will Wright,
    Jordan Mechner and Rand Miller as speakers.

    2 - Smith, M., Farnham, S., & Drucker S. The Social Life of Small
    Graphical Chat Spaces . In Proceedings of CHI 2000, The Hague,
    Netherlands March 2000

    3 - Cristiano Midnight, SLUniverse Proprietor, SLUniverse Forums,
    July 9, 2004,

    4 - Zana Feaver, Second Language blog, July 11, 2004.
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--
J C Lawrence
---------(*)                Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas.
claw at kanga.nu               He lived as a devil, eh?
http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/  Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.
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