I logged on to AlphaWorld on a Sunday afternoon, a Wednesday afternoon and a Thursday morning and found the same thing each time: nothing. AlphaWorld is an empty and garish virtual ghost town filled with billboards, vacant buildings and teleports to other empty worlds.

Physical positions

Because of the sparsity of people in AlphaWorld, I believe one can make few interesting, statistically significant observations. Avatars of course drop into the world at a particular location, but typically stay in the central square. The few who do venture out from the square may exit the world at any time and any place and are therefore difficult to track. There seemed to be no formal position for leaving, though people usually did preface their exit from the world with a brief message to the chat screen. As users choose avatars themselves, it is also difficult to determine gender differences (I believe the Smith paper mentions that users choose avatars of their own gender less than 70% of the time).

Social positions

M u l t i p l e   M a n
Avatars are resurrected in AlphaWorld at the exact same location. Regulars know the navigation scheme and know their way around the environment and therefore disperse rapidly. Newbies, though, tend to cluster in their confusion. The result is Multiple Man (Figure 1).

F i t n e s s   G i r l
I saw that a few female avatars would wonder away from the main square and begin to "exercise" using the software's built-in avatar movements (Figure 2). Perhaps some felt the need to test out their new bodies, as it were, before they would feel comfortable interacting through them. Again, I do not believe that anything can be made of the gender difference as there's no telling who is at the keyboard.

C o n t r o l l e r s
Customs Aides and Peacekeepers tend to station themselves above congregating crowds (Figure 3). This is no surprise for the customer service agents, who use an eagle avatar, as they need to be visible and to be able to spot confounded visitors. I was surprised that the peacekeeper stood stationary atop one of the billboards, however. Why not mingle with the crowd instead of maintaining such a cold distance? Perhaps this has something to do with...

Social action: chat-only conversations

In light of what I observed in AlphaWorld, I find Smith's analysis of relative avatar angles during conversations rather ridiculous. People seem to hold conversations with others no matter how far away, nor how appropriately oriented their avatar (Figure 4). Perhaps it is easier to concentrate on either the 3D world or the chat screen but not both at once.

Social space: empty interior plazas

AlphaWorld is nearly devoid of individuals, but the few who do frequent the environment seem to avoid interior plaza spaces altogether (Figure 5). Avatars can often be seen roaming the streets and admiring buildings, but rarely mingling in an enclosed square. Why not? Perhaps because our avatars are not our bodies. Avatars do not need to sit, to play, nor even do they need to physically move to other locations for meetings or events. With the absence of a body, the phenomenological effects of the body disappear as well. The result is that avatar watching is a bland task in AlphaWorld.