Avatars and Their Players

In terms of avatars, we are not talking about the blue people from the James Cameron film, but the characters we create to, sometimes resemble us, but mostly to REPRESENT us.

Many times people will create characters that look similar to us, or what we want to look like.

Here's me.  In the World of Warcraft world.  As you maybe can tell from the amount of gear, Sniggi is my main character. Simply put, these three characters are an embodiment of me in a virtual world. :D

The textual term for "avatar" refers to the controllable humanoid animated characters which was defined by Farmer and Morningstar.

Georg W. F. Hegel explained the relationship between a person and their avatar in three parts: Thesis (The Person), Antithesis (The Avatar) and the Synthesis (The Act of Controlling the Avatar)

http://thepopularfront.wordpress.com/tag/pedagogy-of-the-oppressed/

Next up, let's talk a little about the future of gaming research and what UMD Communication Department has planned for the end of summer.

Vorderer, P., & Bryant, J. (2006). Playing Video Games: Motives, Responses, and Consequences. New York, NY: Taylor and Francis Group.