Spaight's own fascination with role-playing, avatars and gaming has been realized in the book and traveling exhibit Alter Ego: Avatars and Their Creators. construct a persona that is wildly different from your real world self.' 'In the virtual world you can be anything you want to be. 'A sociologist at MIT, Sherry Turkle, described these environments as laboratories for the construction of identity, says Spaight.

Though it's hard not to wonder what her choice of avatar says about Glasure.Ĭue the cyberanalysts and virtual ethnographers, including Tracy Spaight, who's been inquiring into human gaming behavior for as long as there have been online games. If there's a group of people standing around, I say, 'OK, everybody follow me!' And they do.

'When I play this big guy, everybody listens to me,' she says. That's the closest she could get to 'Bad Medicine' in the game, City of Heroes.Īnd with her change of avatar, her pleasure in the game changed. She called him Stygion Physic - Stygion from the River Styx, Physic for healing. 'And I picked the biggest, blackest guy I could find,' she says.

But all anyone noticed were her pixel breasts, and this despite her considerable gaming expertise. Glasure's first online game was Everquest and her avatar was female. But I feel like I'm this short person with this squeaky little Filipino voice and nobody wants to pay attention.'

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