Living digital: embodient in virtual worlds
The social life of avatars
Massively Multiplayer Game Developemnt
Massively Multiplayer Game Developemnt
Designing Virtual Worlds
Computers in Human Behavior
Beauty or realism: The dimensions of skin from cognitive sciences to computer graphics
Computers in Human Behavior
Cross-modal compensation between name and visual aspect in socially active avatars
Computers in Human Behavior
Spatial proximity to others determines how humans inhabit virtual worlds
Computers in Human Behavior
The immersive impact of meta-media in a virtual world
Computers in Human Behavior
Living in the Hutt Space: Immersive process in the Star Wars Role-Play community of Second Life
Computers in Human Behavior
Computers in Human Behavior
My avatar is pregnant! Representation of pregnancy, birth, and maternity in a virtual world
Computers in Human Behavior
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Virtual environments are inherently social spaces, in which humans interact through avatars. However, the parameters which favor inter-individual social structuring in those settings are still far to be understood. Particularly, the putative influence of anthropomorphic similarity of visual aspect on social organization of avatars is a key issue to understand the cognitive processes used to form social interactions in virtual worlds. Using the highly popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft as a model of socially-active virtual setting, we analyzed the social behavior of 11,649 avatars as a function of their visual aspect. Our results show that social structuring in virtual settings depends on proximity to human visual aspect. Social groups formed by human-like avatars display more homogeneity than what the optimal use of the interface would predict, while this effect is not observed for social groups formed by non-human avatars. Thus, immersion in virtual environments depends more on visually-triggered social dynamics (role-play) than on optimal use of the interface (game-play). Furthermore, social aspect may override the immediate reward of interface optimization, thus representing a major factor of immersion in virtual environments.