Do people who spend substantial time in online virtual worlds have any experience of their avatar taking on a separate agency? Or tried to cultivate such an experience? I am active in one such world, but I experience my avatar there as being just me wearing a different body.
I used to spend 6+ hours a day (every minute I wasn’t eating/sleeping/in class) in an MMO. My avatar never had any agency; it was just an extension of my body like my hand. Occasionally I would act “in character” but it was always a conscious decision prompted by me wanting to make other people laugh or simply play along with something someone else did. I’ve never heard of avatars acquiring their own sense of agency, but it’s not like I went around asking people if that happened to them.
Do people who spend substantial time in online virtual worlds have any experience of their avatar taking on a separate agency? Or tried to cultivate such an experience? I am active in one such world, but I experience my avatar there as being just me wearing a different body.
I used to spend 6+ hours a day (every minute I wasn’t eating/sleeping/in class) in an MMO. My avatar never had any agency; it was just an extension of my body like my hand. Occasionally I would act “in character” but it was always a conscious decision prompted by me wanting to make other people laugh or simply play along with something someone else did. I’ve never heard of avatars acquiring their own sense of agency, but it’s not like I went around asking people if that happened to them.