Close Race

As I continue to spend time in my virtual world, I am noticing that race seems to matter very little when interacting with other virtual characters.  In real life, a person’s race, class or education level may either provide an opening or barrier to opportunities but in Small Worlds, social capital seems to be extremely valuable.  The more people you know in Small Worlds, the more likely it is that other people will want to interact with you. 

With that said, Hank has had some success interacting with people in Small Worlds.  A lot of the time when Hank approaches people with conversation, he is ignored.  This is true across the board and does not seem to be dependent upon his or other characters’ races. 

Something I have noticed, however, is that the diversity in Small Worlds seems to be limited to two races.  Most characters Hank has seen are either white or black.  There does not seem to be any Asian, Hispanic or Middle Eastern avatars.  This seemed curious to me so I decided to conduct a little experiment.

When choosing your avatar, you basically have control over all of the physical features of your character.  You can choose your skin color, face shape, eye size/shape, lips and the list goes on.  Since I had not seen many (or any) avatars representing races other than white and black, I wanted to see if it was possible to create avatars that appeared to be of Hispanic, Asian or Middle Eastern decent. 

When creating the Hispanic avatar, I darkened the skin to a tanned color and also darkened the hair and eye color.  I played with the facial features a bit until I was able to come up with a fair representation of a character that appeared to be of Hispanic decent.  When I created the Asian avatar, I darkened the skin to a yellowish/tan color and adjusted the eyes so that they were slightly slanted upward.  I also heightened the cheek bones and chose a darker hair and eye color.  Again, I came up with what I thought was a fair representation of a character that was of Asian decent.  I had a little bit more trouble creating a character that fairly represented someone of Middle Eastern decent.  Sure, I could darken the hair and skin color of the avatar but these characteristics alone did not seem to create an avatar with a Middle-Eastern identity.  I think that the clothing and artifact options limited me when I was trying to create this character.  It is possible that I am still too much of a ‘noob’ that I do not have access to such clothing and artifacts.

I did not actually take these characters out into the Small Worlds experience after I created them.  I simply wanted to see if it was even possible to create avatars of different races.  In my experience, it was.  I think that the fact that I have not observed characters of diverse races speaks a lot about the users of Small Worlds.  I did try to ask a couple of other characters in Small Worlds if they had ever interacted with avatars of Asian, Hispanic or Middle Eastern decent but I did not get responses.  Although I cannot make a conclusive statement about why these races seem to be underrepresented in this virtual world, I can make a couple of predictions.  I predict that users of this virtual world are largely from American culture and therefore have created their avatar to represent what they see on television, in movies and in magazines.  With that said, white and black people in the media tend to be the more idolized than other races by the audience (it is important to note that these characters I speak of are created to be idols).  Anyway, I do find it really interesting that there seems to be a lack of diversity in Small Worlds. 

I’m wondering, has anyone else noticed a lack of diversity in their virtual world?  Maybe some virtual worlds are more diverse than others.  I’m curious to know what you all have experienced!  Please feel free to post a comment and elaborate on my observations.

Ciao!