Identity in the Context of Virtual Worlds

Virtual worlds are undoubtedly a lot of fun to use and be a part of, it is very common, especially for an adolescent or young adult to come home at the end of the day and unwind by playing video games. There is a huge selection of games and worlds alike to enter and explore to your hearts content, whether it be playing a "mission" or "level" of a game, or just going around in a form of free roam world and doing whatever you want. The less common part that comes in is the cases in which virtual worlds and video games are taken to a whole other level where players actually live an alter-ego within the game. This raises some interesting questions, such as "could excessive use of virtual worlds cause any sort of problem?" or "where will this be us in 10 or 20 years?"

This screenshot is one of mine from earlier this semester, and it shows the avatar selection screen that comes up when you first download the game "Second Life". Avatars like this are the base content of virtual worlds, that meaning every user has one to control, and in some cases completely live vicariously through. As you can see, the avatars range in gender, sex, height and ethnicity, and are even further customizable from there where people can add smaller details to make the avatar be exactly what they want it to be.

So what's wrong with having a little fun playing video games? Nothing. The issue comes into play when people start to spend relentless hours in games like this, and in some cases for not very virtuous reasons. One of the articles provided for this assignment mentioned that a university professor from Korea admitted to using a virtual world in which he controlled an avatar that was a little girl. Although this instance was harmless, and the professor did not have any bad intentions, this still serves as a perfect example of how you may have no idea who is really behind the avatar you see on the screen when playing in virtual worlds. This could lead to any number of harmful encounters, such as someone using a little girl avatar just as the Korean professor did, but doing so in an attempt to make contact with younger players in the game as if they were one of them. There are endless numbers of possibilities, some harmless, but some the opposite.

As technology advances, we are lead to further potential issues. The newest age of technology, including Microsoft HoloLens and Samsung VR bring the virtual experience to a whole new level, making it seem less virtual and more like actual reality. Along with this comes new potential downfalls; for example, I mentioned in my last post the question along the lines of "will there ever come a day when people prefer to live a second life in a virtual reality headset over the real world, because any wants or desires can simply be programmed into the game instead of worked for and earned in the real world?". To me this is a scary question, because a virtual reality headset can yield a result that is incredibly close to actual reality, so much so that it would literally be like living in another world.
For example, some commonly sought after "dream cars" such as Ferrari, Lamborghini, Rolls Royce and so on are things that a strong majority of people can never attain even after years and years of work, but with a virtual reality headset, you could have all three mere seconds after you decided that you want one, and the driving experience would be shockingly realistic. My point here is that the question posed is "scary" because the answer seems obvious; why work your ass off for 20 years to buy a million dollar car when you could just have one as soon as you put a VR headset over your face? It seems to me that the answer would be the same for any desire one might have, and since a VR headset can literally produce an entire world where you can do absolutely anything you want, why be confined to the real world?

The future of technology has a lot in store for us, there is no doubt about that. My only query is the potential that technology is advancing at a faster rate than we are ready for; after all it is only within the last two decades that the internet and computer based technology has expanded to become as popular as it is today. Could we possibly be going a little too fast? These avatars that we use in games today and in virtual reality are meant to represent us, but it seems we are not far away from removing "virtual" from the equation.

Final Project: My Boston Tea Party Ship

For this assignment, I had to enter the Freedom Trail minecraft server which we use for class and build a replica of one of the ships from the Boston Tea Party. I am in another class with Prof. Walsh this semester, and in that class one of our assignments was to build a Boston Tea Party ship exactly to scale. So, for this assignment I built a second ship right next to the one that I helped build for my Collaborative Computing course, using it for scale because I know the first one is representative of the dimensions of the real ship to scale.

I added much more detail to this new ship, including a top deck and also a staircase going down to a lower deck below. Hope you guys like it! Here are some process screenshots, followed by a virtual tour of the boat.

*side note* - In some of my screenshots you will see what appears to be blue circles on the screen which get in the way sometimes. This is because on a multiplayer game server in minecraft, players are not able to use a bed and sleep through nighttime when vision is reduced, so instead I used a "potion of night vision" which lights up the screen but also causes blue potion bubbles to float all over the place. My apologies if they are at all in the way in my screenshots.

 I began by building the base outline of a ship right next to the other ship I built for my Collaborative Computing course, the dimensions are the same. I used a slightly lighter wood for the second boat so it is easier to tell which one is which.

 After building the wooden walls upward, I added the green and gold highlights which are seen on the actual "Eleanor" ship that was a part of the Boston Tea Party.

 I then added masts for the sails, which sadly is somewhat blocked by the annoying blue orb in the above picture.

 After this I added some detail below deck, including a statue of a man, which in this case we will say was a famous past captain of the ship, or maybe a statue of the King, since these were British ships in reality.

 Last was a staircase and then I began working on the top deck of the boat.

 Last, I added the sails (black on my new boat) to show some uniqueness between the two. This paragraph is the last of my process screenshots (above), below, I will start the virtual walk-through of my finished boat.

 Here we have a few pictures of the boat from the air, showing all four sides and what the boat looks like from each angle.

 Next we move to the top deck of the boat, I used the blocks that have red lines running through them to represent crates of tea cargo sitting on the deck of the ship. I placed a bunch of these in different places on the top deck

 It may be hard to see with how small the pictures in this post are, but the metal looking thing with a fence around it in the picture above represents the anchor of the ship. I used an anvil for this because it was the closest looking thing I could find to an anchor.

 Walk to the front of the ship and we see more tea cargo (above), and a staircase leading down to the lower deck of the ship (below).

 Go down the stairs and the first thing you'll see is the statue that may either represent a past Captain of the ship, or maybe a past King of England.

 Walk further toward the back of the ship and you'll see a blocked off area with a chest sitting behind it, only the Captain knows what is in this chest, but there must be a reason it is blocked off ;-)

 Walk back the other way and at the front of the ship you'll see a huge crucifix on the wall with a small area to kneel in front of it, this is where sailors could pray on their long journeys across the Atlantic that they will someday make it home safely.

 A final shot of the lower deck can be seen above, and some last pictures of the whole ship can be seen below from a few angles!

That's all, hope you guys like it!



This is a final project using Minecraft to build a replica of the Eleanor ship from the Boston Tea Party. It is a final exercise from the Immersive Education course that I am taking at Boston College. The course is called Discovering Computer Graphics. For details, visit the immersive BC portal at http://ImmersiveEducation.org/@/bc

Class 14: Examining Gender, Race, and Body Image in a Virtual World

For this assignment, I had to go into the virtual world "Second Life" which we have used for class in the past and conduct a bit of an experiment. I entered different worlds in the game and interacted with people randomly in each one by using text chat in an attempt to see if changing the look of my avatar would cause people to respond to or treat me differently. I was actually a bit surprised at times by how clear of a difference there was in some cases.

 I began by entering worlds as my default avatar, which is a plain white male dressed in casual clothes. I spent some time in two different worlds, which can be seen above and below, and would write generic conversation starting statements such as "hi everyone", "how are you?". I would usually get responded to by a few people, maybe 2 or 3, who would say hi back but not much else.

 I decided to switch my character to a different preset avatar which was a skinny blonde girl wearing a short dress, and instantly noticed a difference when entering different worlds. In a few worlds I logged into, I would immediately be greeted (they started the conversation, not me) by multiple people, typing things like "hey D403" (my username) or "hi D4", I would respond and make easy general conversation with multiple people, right away upon entering. Screenshots of the worlds I went to are seen below.

 After that, I changed my avatar to the darkest colored preset male avatar there was, which was a very tan guy wearing a baseball hat and jeans. This avatar was by far the most interesting because I got a range of responses in different worlds. In the first world I entered, I logged in and typed "hi everyone" and was greeted back but 5 seconds later a message appeared saying "you are no longer allowed here and have been ejected" and I was teleported to a different world (I made that screenshot larger in the post). After that I went into a few other worlds and had normal encounters, some people said hello, but I wasn't kicked out of anywhere again.

 The last thing that made this character the most interesting was in one world, when I logged in and asked "how is everyone?", I was responded to with "doing good baby ty[thank you] for asking", which can be seen in the larger screenshot above.

All in all this was an interesting experiment, and it was pretty shocking to see how seriously people take the name "Second Life". Some worlds contained 30-60 people all with their avatars on a dance floor or in a club, not really doing anything besides hanging out, which in turn means 30-60 people somewhere in the world would at that time prefer to virtually hangout with people instead of the same in real life. This makes me a bit weary about what could possibly happen when technology such as Microsoft HoloLens become as common to the public as laptops or iPhones. Technology like virtual reality headsets can literally mimic the outside world as if we are really there, meaning anything you want to do can be lived just as you would in a free world video game. Will people prefer to live an actual second life in a virtual reality headset, because any desire they have can simply be programmed into the world, instead of worked for and attained in the outside world?