Quiz
1. Gray begins her article with a story of the
harassment she experienced on Xbox live.
According to her, what are the two things
that are intersecting in this story?
a) Her experience as a woman and as an
African-American
b) 12 year old boys and the Internet
c) Black and white (hence her name, "Gray")
d) Military and gaming
Quiz
2. “Anonymity on the internet _______ people,
compelling some to say and do things that they would
not otherwise do.”
Gray goes on to say that this is expressed in two ways:
“benign” as when people show “unusual acts of kindness
and generosity”, and “toxic”, as when people harass or
berate others in ways they wouldn’t normally do offline.
a) commodifies
b) frames
c) punishes
d) disinhbits
Quiz
3. Blizzard asked a guild to remove what
proclamation about their group, arguing that it
was inappropriate because it might "incite
certain responses in other players that will
allow for discussion that we feel has no place in
our game"?
a) The guild kills other players
b) The guild is GLBT friendly
c) The guild is human-only
d) The guild is anti-Blizzard
Quiz
4. According to Cory Doctorow, quoted in the
WoW article, what is one huge advantage real
life has over gamelife?
a) In real life you can see what people look like
b) In real life you can discriminate on the basis
of sexual orientation
c) In real life you can eat real food
d) In real life you can appeal a nonsensical
interpretation of the law
Group Presentation!
Who here has been harassed or talked down to by
someone they don’t know online?
“GOLDEN DIPWAD”
Early days of “cyberspace”
(late 80s – late 90s)
LambdaMOO: “Space” was a metaphor. It was all text
Real life identities were hidden
Promises & perils of
“leaving your body behind”
“The physical world… is a place where
identity and position of the people you
communicate with are well known, fixed, and
highly visual. In cyberspace, everybody is in
the dark”
(Kitchin, “The World in Wires”, 1998)
“an incarnation, embodiment, or
manifestation of a person or
idea”
In online games the expectation is that it’s
not “you” – but who you want to play as /
Some facts/theories about
avatars…
• The more realistic the
virtual world, the
more people will
make avatars that
look like them
• The more novice
players are, the more
they’ll make avatars
that look like them
GingerJesus: Guess what he looked like in real life
The more time people spend in
online games, the less they express
themselves through the LOOK of
their avatar and the more they
express themselves through their
actions
e.g. the “Militant Misses” Xbox live
clan in Kishonna Gray’s article
vs
This is not a new tension…
GOFFMAN
Goffman:
We perform different roles
– we are different people –
based on the given social situation
Identity as what you ARE
(ie. female, 47 years old, left-handed, 5’9”, etc)
Identity as what you DO
(i.e. university student, poker player, gamer, dancer)
• Where does sexuality fit in?
• Where does gender fit in?
• Where does ethnicity fit in?
HAVING TWO
IDENTITIES FOR
YOURSELF IS AN
EXAMPLE OF A
LACK OF
INTEGRITY
“like farming”
Identity as what you are vs what you do
What matters more in....
• Facebook
• Online role-playing games
• Xbox Live
• School
What role does each play:
Design & ‘rules’ of the service
Other users