In games, much of the time when avatars are "idle," players actually are not. They are busy with a whole array of personal (in-game) activities, similar to those in real life, such as rummaging through backpacks, consulting maps, searching spell books or directories, reviewing skill trees, chatting privately, and more (see earlier post). So players are already engaging in embodiable activity that is appropriate to the situation. Simply animating this would go a long way in terms of making avatars appear more like living, competent beings than spaced-out zombies. Characters could actually look "busy" and do so in a way that is socially meaningful and appropriate to the situation, rather than canned.

Now animating such personal activities not only makes avatars appear more lively by enabling others to make sense of what they're doing, it also provides important cues for achieving coordination. Hiding player activity from public view, on the other hand, can cause slippage. For example, in the following excerpt, two players in Star Wars Galaxies are doing a set of missions together to gain access to Jabba the Hutt's palace. They have just completed one objective, killing a kaadu, and are about to travel by speeder to the next (note: double parentheses mark transcriber's descriptive notes).

[Star Wars Galaxies: Jabba's Missions; Atac's perspective]
01 01:38 ((Nike runs past Atac toward speeders))
02 02:44 Atac: is that it?
03 03:10 ((Atac turns around and looks in Nike's direction))
04 04:16 ((Atac begins to follow Nike))
05 09:34 ((Atac mouses over an empty slot in her toolbar))
06 12:06 ((Nike mounts his speeder and begins turning it))
07 13:46* Atac: wait
08 13:52 ((Nike stops turning speeder))
09 15:15* ((Atac opens inventory))
10 17:24 ((Atac opens backpack within inventory))
11 20:52 [GroupChat] nike: did you get it?
12 28:48 ((Nike turns speeder))
13 29:46 ((Nike begins to move forward))
14 30:24 [GroupChat] atac: get what?
15 31:56* ((Nike passes Atac on his speeder))
16 32:16 ((Atac mouses over and inspects some stimpacks))
17 37:28 ((Atac drags stimpacks))
18 38:54 ((Atac drops stimpacks onto empty slot in toolbar))
19 40:18 ((Atac closes backpack))
20 41:00 ((Atac turns around to look for Nike))
21 42:12 [GroupChat] nike: the kaadu egg...

Here Atac tries to coordinate two activities: replenishing the stimpacks in her toolbar (used for healing in combat) and traveling with Nike to their next destination. When Nike appears to be about to leave the scene on his speeder (line 06), Atac types "wait" (line 07) and then opens her inventory about 1.5 seconds later (line 09). However, there is no avatar animation or public signal to Nike that she has done so. As a result, he can't see what he's waiting for. So he takes a guess, "did you get it?" (line 11) referring to a quest item from the dead kaadu. Nike then starts to drive off (lines 12-13) as Atac requests clarification by saying "get what?" (line 14), which shows that, that was not in fact the reason for the waiting. Nike drives off (line 15) and Atac selects some stimpacks and drags them to her toolbar (lines 16-19). She thus fails to get Nike to wait for her while she rummages through her purse. This may seem like a minor slippage in coordination, but it can have more major consequences if, for example, you lag behind your group mates in a dungeon while you search for an item or a spell and a mob pops and kills you (this has happened to me on a few occasions). In general, such slippages make the avatar-interaction system feel awkward and clunky.

Now game developers are not entirely unaware of the social importance of animating personal activities. In There for example avatars don goggles when the player opens a web page or a headset when the player opens an IM window. In WoW, avatars bend over when opening a chest, showing everyone who is going for the loot. EQII does a nice job of animating the various types of harvesting: avatars bend over when "gathering," squat slightly when "trapping," chop with an axe when "foresting," and swing a pick when "mining." This not only displays publicly what a player is up to when lurking about in the bushes, but also displays to other would-be harvesters that he or she is indeed going for the insidious root, instead of the nearby lithic stone. And of course, most games have long had combat animations that show group mates that the tank is starting to pull or the healer is starting to heal. All of these avatar manifestations of player actions greatly enhance players' ability to interpret what each other is doing and tightly coordinate their actions, as well as make our virtual bodies seem more alive. Developers should expand the use of these kinds of personal animations. (Raph, please give us more!)

Imagine that whenever you type /time or click on the in-game clock, your avatar looks at his or her watch (hourglass, sundial, whatever). Now when it's 3:00am and I finally need to ditch my group, I can forecast my departure a bit more subtly than simply typing, "I gotta go to bed." Instead my group mates can draw the inference, "you gettin tired or something?" Or imagine that whenever you open your map, your character also opens and studies a map. Not only does this display to your group mates that you're not ready to start the next attack and the like, but it also enables passersby to notice what you're doing and offer assistance ("Are you lost?"). Such seemingly small mechanisms will create a more intricate texture of the social fabric in future virtual worlds.

Now players might argue that they don't want others to see that they're consulting a map ("I don't want to look like a noob!"). That may be true, but is the reduced exposure really worth sacrificing a whole layer of social life? Due to the limitations of MMOGs to date, we have become accustomed to an odd sense of public privacy in which we can hide much of what we're doing while in the virtual presence of others (e.g., we can even "talk behind someone's back" right in front of their face). But a fundamental part of human sociality is seeing others and being seen by them, incompetences and all.

Posted by Bob