The Avatar “Jacques Morrisey” in Second Life: Layers within layers
Sean J. Callot
Dr. Holmevik
14 February 2008
The avatar in Second Life is a representation of everything a player wants. The avatar can do anything, make anything, and be anything. The avatar can be a vampire, a giant winged daemon, a politician, a mercenary, or a small fuzzy rabbit. Using an avatar to relate to concepts of visual communication, however, provides the user with an interesting challenge. How best to describe the inner workings of a concept in a movable anthropomorphic example?
In this example, the concept at play is adversarial and non-adversarial gaming. The image of the gamer, possibly best described by Brad Paisley in his song “Online,” is of an overweight 30-something loser who still lives with his parents. Those who embrace the gamer culture as an addiction often find themselves faced with this socially unacceptable lifestyle. For a number of gamers, this is the life they have chosen.
However, not all gamers are unsuccessful slobs. In fact, in 2004, video game sales reached $9.9 billion.[1] Sales figures increased to $12.5 billion in 2006.[2] It is obvious that these sales can not be made entirely to parents of children, nor can a population of young adults with small living expenses support this industry. There has to be a class of game enthusiasts who are much more than just casual gamers, who use games as a way to relax after a hard day’s work. It is also possible that these gamers use games in their daytime hours as stress relief in the office, but prefer some meatier, more visceral fare when they’ve returned home at the end of the day. Jacques Morrisey is one of these gamers.
Jacques Morrisey is the name given to an avatar in the online virtual community Second Life (hereafter SL). In this environment, Jacques Morrisey represents a different kind of avatar. Initially, Jacques is unassuming. He wears a dark suit of clothes, sunglasses (but only when it is sunny outside), dark shoes, a light grey shirt, and has his average length hair styled with gel and bangs. His hands are held in a default position, with no major features. He doesn’t really engage in much conversation outside of academic discussion with other serious gamers. It is very easy to imagine Jacques as a middle-level corporate executive, working in an office, sorting through reports, meeting with clients. It is also easy to imagine Jacques playing solitaire on is work desktop, or Tetris on his mobile communication device.
This is not to say that Jacques doesn’t have friends. His saved logs include several intellectual conversations with his associates and colleagues. He spends most of his time in SL shopping for clothes or creating objects at the
Despite his button-down, chic exterior, Jacques has another lifestyle he maintains. At the drop of a hat, Jacques’ form changes from a simple office jockey into a stone-cold combat operator. His clothes shift from dark modern textures into the stark pattern of desert-colored tiger stripe camouflage. His shoes are replaces with jump boots. His hair is covered with a Kevlar helmet. His sunglasses vanish, and body armor, combat belt, and a backpack appear. He even brandishes a mean-looking assault rifle, complete with a sound suppressor and red dot scope. He maintains the same, confident, cold stare that he held in his “day job” look. Jacques Morrisey looks more French Foreign Legion than Banana Republic.
In this example, the duality of the modern gamer is evident. While the understated, clean cut Jacques doesn’t turn many heads, the much more adversarial-appearing Jacques turns heads deliberately in the other direction. While Jacques would not openly brandish his weapon against someone else (the rifle is equipped with non-lethal ammunition that pushes other avatars around, but causes no harm), he does look like he means business. In a world of scantily-clad tiger-girls and giant bat-winged vampire boys, Jacques brings a level of cold lethality to the environment. It is easy to imagine Jacques stepping off a helicopter in
The gaming life of Jacques Morrisey, and his physical representations of that lifestyle, demonstrates the dualism most gamers experience in their daily lives. In a society that places a high premium on hard work, and holds leisure activities in much lower regard, the gamer has to put on their suit of “normal clothes” to go to work and support their lifestyle. Gamers who actually manage social lives, a population which is garnering a much larger percentage of the gaming culture, may even have husbands, wives, and children to provide for. Responsibilities and commitments limit the gamer’s abilities of self-expression and enjoying their favored past time.
When gaming opportunities arise, either in group encounters over a table top role-playing game, or through a video game console, true gamers embrace the opportunity to play. After all, for a gamer who had been turned into an eggplant in Kid Icarus, slain Ganon in The Legend of Zelda, or waited in sub-zero temperatures for Star Fox’s US release, it is difficult to put away the memories of a lifetime. Modern game systems, with price tags reaching $500 or more, and games retailing for $60 a piece, provide amazing graphics and immersive game play experiences. It is easy for an older, serious gamer to seize the opportunities to play these new games and relive some of their old memories in new forms.
The nature of modern games has changed, however. Where before gamers had the opportunity to step away from a game for a can of the “New Coke,” modern game systems require almost complete attention to be successful. Multiplayer games, especially PC-based Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games, passively or even actively punish gamers who do not fully dedicate themselves to the totally immersive nature of the game. While this can be destructive, serious gamers are more adept at maintaining this balance between their working life, their personal life, and their gamer life.
This balance is what Jacques Morrisey represents. He is equally comfortable and confident wearing his “normal clothes” as he is in full combat gear. Games, for him, are a means for releaing his aggression and frustration in a form that is less destructive than actually engaging his real-world adversaries in armed conflict. In the game world, shooting someone is the name of the game most of the time. In the real world, non-adversarial games are the order of the day. Actual physical violence is prohibited, for the most part, in the modern corporate world. The immersive nature of the modern combat game, additionally, is counter-productive to most business’ corporate strategies. For a gamer to have some release, or to help the lunch hour be more enjoyable, or just to waste a few minutes between assignments, non-adversarial games such as Tetris or Sudoku, both available on any computer with an internet connection or any mobile device. These games allow for distraction, but not to the point of categorical exclusion.
Jacques’s clothing and accessories represent this balance between the outside world of the corporate shill and the inner life of a serious gamer. For Jacques Morrisey, a second reality in Second Life may seem like a layer too far. For the conscientious and serious gamer, this interweaving of levels of existence is only too familiar.
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