With the explosion of technology in the past few decades, the Internet has developed its own culture and has grown quite rapidly. Millions of people from around the world have access to the Internet, and as a result the Internet has become integrated in our every day lives. Our constant use of the Internet in such a wide variety of ways is what drives the development and growth of the Internet culture. However, one important distinction to make when defining Internet culture is non-avatar based cultures and avatar based cultures.
Source: http://www.kzero.co.uk/blog/category/music/
Virtual worlds have become an increasingly popular way for people to interact with others on the internet. These avatar based virtual worlds such as Onverse or Second Life evolve over time and eventually form their own unique culture. The element that makes this type of Internet culture so intriguing is not necessarily the technology it uses, but rather the social connections and friendships it initiates. Author Sarah Kiesler further explains this notion in her book, Culture of the Internet that,
“Every day the Internet supports thousands of experiments in friendship and group formation… The Internet is a seemingly limitless resource for personal connection and exploration. Networks are always “up,” enabling 24-hour asynchronous or synchronous interactions and information exchange among individuals and groups,” (p. x-xi).
Members of the virtual world Onverse share ideas, play games with each other and live in a 3D world together and can interact with one another 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Deborah Fike, a game writer and blogger for the Garage Games blog had an interview with Sam Pierce, the CEO of Onverse LLC. In the interview Pierce explained his primary goal in the creation of this virtual world was,
“The goal of Onverse is to disrupt traditional boundries of identity,” (Fike).
In this virtual world, Fike explains that users have the option to be whatever avatar they want: from a typical human-like avatar to a horned-goat bunny. Onverse provides many options for their users, fulfilling the quest of allowing users to cross boundaries of traditional identity. Onverse has a game system for users to earn money to purchase clothing, accessories and furniture, among other things. In the Onverse world, when an avatar has elaborate clothing or accessories, it indicates that user’s success in the games. This creates a culture where individuality and uniqueness is celebrated and often envied. In addition, Onverse employs a housing system that is much more community-based than other virtual worlds. Onverse founder and creator, Steve Pierce explains,
“We think our community-style housing sets us apart. Most virtual worlds that give you a personal space or home have it in its own instance where it is separate from everyone else. Our areas all have 40+ homes or apartments in the same area. This allows you to get to know your neighbors and live next door to friends.”
Onverse is a virtual world that focuses on socializing its users, allowing a more cohesive community to form. This also causes a unique culture to emerge. As people start to socialize more within the Onverse world, their online identities start to share similar characteristics, follow a certain standard of behavior and even have their own language. A culture is defined as,
“The characteristics of a particular group of people, defined by everything from language, religion, cuisine, social habits, music and arts,” (http://www.livescience.com/21478-what-is-culture-definition-of-culture.html).
Just like there are different cultures around the world that represent distinct social and moral behaviors and values, virtual worlds have these same cultural characteristics. An onverse user who goes under the avatar, iamjerome breaks the Onverse culture down futher and discusses the two different types of players,
“You can tell what kind of Onverse players people are by where they spend most of their time. People who spend most of their time in the hub, for example, are probably playing it more for the social aspect than say someone who spends most of their time in the Enchanted Forest trying to complete quests.”
While Onverse is a culture made of up people with different interests and goals, but each user is unified through their love of the virtual world.