Virtual Interactions

I routinely experience a state of immersion and connection when interacting with other players. However, there are many occasions on which this immersion is broken when the system seems to do the wrong thing. There is some slippage or awkwardness in the interaction that draws attention to the limitations of the system and reminds me that I'm not in a real-life conversation. The following are 10 features of avatar interaction systems that reduce interactional realism, plus 10 tips for increasing it.

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 expressions

Avatars 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

Avatars...

1. Stand and do nothing: Many ordinary activities--looking through a bag, consulting a map, reading a book, trading items, talking with a friend remotely--are hidden from the public eye. This makes avatars appear lifeless even when the player is quite active. It also makes it difficult for players to manage these private activities with joint activities (e.g., looking through a bag and leaving the scene together with another player).

2. Don't speak in real time: Text-chat systems in virtual worlds, with the exception of There, hide the composition of a turn from the public eye. As a result, players cannot predictably achieve one-speaker-at-a-time, one-topic-at-a-time, or tight coordination (minimal gap and overlap between turns).

3. Use telepathy: Players can chat with anyone in the world at anytime. At times a player can be bombarded with multiple messages at the same time ("tell hell"). There's no way for a remote "caller" to know it a recipient is already engaged in a conversation(s).

4. Look the wrong way: Some interaction systems don't enable avatars to turn their heads semi-independently of their shoulders. Consequently avatars cannot be made to use eye contact in a multiparty conversation in a natural way.

5. Stare at each other: In the better eye gaze systems (e.g., EverQuest II), avatars tend to make eye contact at the right times, but they also tend to stare at each other. (In real life, people stare at each other in order to either threaten or flirt.)

6. Hide the player's gaze: Most avatar systems enable the player to decouple her view from the avatar's. The players can zoom out and pan 360-degrees. While this helps mitigate problems with the lack of peripheral vision, it also means that you never know what another player can see or where she is looking. This can make the coordination of gestures difficult.

7. Lack free gesticulation: All avatar systems I've seen in games implement gesture by giving players a list (short or long) of pre-defined gestures from which to choose. As a result, some forms of gesture are not possible, such as, those that are used to describe objects by simulating their shape, spatial relationships, and motion ("iconics"). Also, long lists of gestures are hard for players to learn.

8. Gesture for fixed durations: All avatar systems I've seen in games limit the duration of the pre-defined gestures to a fixed period. This makes it difficult for players to coordinate gestures with other players. They cannot "hold" a gesture until they can see that the recipient has seen it and has understood.

9. Don't tightly coordinate gestures and talk: In current avatar gesture systems, most gestures and text chat must be done as separate turns. As a result, gestures cannot be precisely timed to coincide with particular keywords in the chat. While this is not a problem for gestures that can perform an action on their own ("emblems" such as waves, nods, and shrugs), it makes gestures that are dependent on talk for their meaning difficult to perform. These include gestures used for referring or pointing ("deitics"), emphasizing ("beats"), and describing ("iconics").

10. Lack usable facial expressions: Some avatar systems implement no facial expression at all. Others offer a wide array of facial animations; however, these are often too difficult to see because players tend to zoom out their view.

Yet zooming out itself is critical since it is the only way to really know what your avatar is doing.

Interactional realism in current MMOs could be increased by having avatars...

1. Display embodied actions: player opens bag, avatar looks through a bag; player opens map, avatar studies a map...

2. Speak in real time: post chat on a word-by-word or character-by-character basis (There is the model)

3. Give IM busy signals: when player is in a conversation, private messages from new speakers receive an automatic "busy" message

4. Look at the speaker: player clicks on other avatar to establish eye contact (as in Star Wars Galaxies or EverQuest II)

5. Look away when speaking: when typing, avatar looks at recipient(s) only intermittently

6. Reveal player's gaze: "not looking" indicator appears when player's view is too divergent from avatar's

7. Gesticulate freely: real-time motion capture using a camera enables players to use their own bodies to gesticulate freely

8. Hold gestures: player can 'hold' a pre-defined gesture by holding down the enter-key upon executing the gesture (user-controlled duration)

9. Tightly coordinate gestures and talk: player can tie a gesture to a particular word in the chat

10. Have visible facial expressions: a close-up view of an avatar's face appears when selected

For more on the organization of talk, gesture, eye gaze, and facial expression in real-life face-to-face interaction, see the following scholars: Paul Ekman, Charles Goodwin, Gail Jefferson, Adam Kendon, David McNeill, Harvey Sacks, and Emanuel Schegloff.