The person behind the Avatar

I know I’ve gone on and on about my City of Heroes game and blaa blaa blaa but I found this earlier in the week and I finally have the time to share this with everyone. There’s this person who makes a living playing and leveling people’s characters when they’re busy, a professional game player. Now this is nothing new, people have been making money by taking the time to create powerful characters in a game and auctioning off the account on EBay for some time. What’s really interesting is that this guy is also a photographer and he did a pictorial of people and their game characters.

Personally the pic of the guy is kinda creepy. if not ….gayish. Standing on top of his desk in black pants and a black tank top, sort of looking like he’s smoking. He has that ‘I’m cultured and I’m better than you look’ but he’s still a professional DORK.

What I find interesting is how peoples characters are so different and their reasons for choosing that look and style. Bae Kyun-Eun reasoning for having a male character was something I found interesting. Her belief that male avatars project strength was something I never considered. I have a male character and a female character as well. I’ve always found that the female tends to get more attention, since I made her attractive. Then again, if I found my male character attractive, then I might be GAY!!! But since I’m not, I’ll just have to concede that my female character is a hottie, plain and simple.

Maybe it also has something to do with living in a fantasy world of your choosing as opposed to the one we live in now. City of Heroes and games like that are online communities after all.

There’s this Bill guy who transport gold for the U.S. Federal Reserve. In his pic, he looks like a macho SOB, smoking the cigar and notice the automatic weapon behind the seat. Why would this guy need to play a MMORPG when his real life has to be pretty cool? Yet he’s also a player.

I even found some pics of people who also play City of Heroes and I’ve always wondered about the lives of the other players. I’ve chatted with some of the people while playing, joking around a bit and that sort of thing.

I honestly believe that it all stems from people inability to talk to new people. People are shy and they don’t want to put themselves at risk. I play and I get to know new people, just as I was given the opportunity to meet the people on my Fav’s list. With one exception, I’ve never meet any of you and yet I consider many of them as close as family; my virtual family.

My 2 bytes.