I joined Onverse for the purpose of this project, to observe and interact with the Onverse users as well as explore all that the game has to offer. I first created my avatar, and made her look like I do in real life–green-eyed blond with fair skin. The first thing I did when I entered the Onverse world was take the tutorial and explore the four different regions. There is a lot to see, so it took me quite a while to get a grasp of just how large Onverse is, and all that there is to do in the world. One of the places I spent a lot of time at was The Hub, where the majority of socializing takes place. At first, I actually found it quite hard to find other avatars to talk to, which surprised me since one of the main aspects of the world is social networking. However, after engaging in a chat with a few users, I quickly made a few new friends. One thing I noticed was that many of the users who used the chat option were young, around 15 or 16 years. I am not sure if the majority of the users are young, or if the younger users just tend to utilize the instant messaging chat option rather than sending messages back and forth. Many of the avatars I conversed with were extremely involved with Onverse and seemed to dedicate much of their time to their avatar. I did not play any of the games in the different worlds, but based off of my discussion with many users, it seemed as if people became very involved and competitive with the games. Overall, I thought the site was pretty easy to navigate and I was quickly able to figure out how to change my avatar’s appearance, utilize various animations and emotes, how to buy things and how to jump from region to region.
This is what my avatar looked liked. This is not my actual avatar, as I was unable to take a screen shot of myself. Source: http://forum.onverse.com/showthread.php?t=2671
I was drawn to do my research on the Onverse community because of how many different aspects the virtual world has to offer. There was so much to explore, and so many different elements that bring in a diverse community. I also really liked the people using Onverse. They were clearly passionate about their involvement with Onverse, and extremely willing to help me navigate the world and become an Onverse expert.