Avatar Animations and Social Interactions
I came across a great article on the PlayOn blog this morning. It’s “old”…2005! But the content is excellent and worth taking a look at. PlayOn focuses on the social dimensions of multiuser worlds, and the conference presentation highlighted in the blog is called “10 Things About Conversation in Virtual Worlds”. Bob Moore, Nic Ducheneaut and Eric Nickell gave the presentation at the Austin Game Conference two years ago. There’s a fun follow-on article describing how text chat renders avatar animations almost irrelevant.
Their point is that game designers and avatar modelers execute beautifully on scenery and objects in the 3D world, but avatars are sadly lacking when it comes to interactional realism. Here are some points they make and elaborate on:
Avatars…
1. Stand and do nothing
2. Don’t speak in real time
3. Use telepathy
4. Look the wrong way
5. Stare at each other
6. Hide the player’s gaze
7. Lack free gesticulation
8. Gesture for fixed durations
9. Don’t tightly coordinate gestures and talk
10. Lack usable facial expressionsAvatars could…
1. Display embodied actions
2. Speak in real time
3. Give IM busy signals
4. Look at the speaker
5. Look away when speaking
6. Reveal player’s gaze
7. Gesticulate freely
8. Hold gestures
9. Tightly coordinate gestures and talk
10. Have visible facial expressions (Note: Wouldn’t smiles or glares or surprise be great??)
The gap is most noticeable in the “down time” between activities in the virtual world…for example, when standing in a group in Ironforge (World of Warcraft) and sorting items or restocking supplies, or when standing around in The Pond (Second Life) discussing with others where to go next. Both platforms offer “social animations” that avatars can perform, providing the human behind them is expert enough to animate them in a timely way, but they are not integrated with the character seamlessly. In the last few years, avatars have been programmed to “twitch” when they are standing idle so they don’t look like cardboard cutouts. They shift their feet, or look to the side, or put their hands on their hips. That adds to the general “liveliness” of a “town” scene, of course, but to do anything more realistic, they have to be deliberately programmed/activated by the human behind them. A lively cheer or clapping, a broad laugh, a back flip or spontaneous dancing can be effective and expressive if timed right, however, avatars are sadly lacking in the kind of innate social development that could make immersive worlds even more realistic and expressive. Even two years later.
