Emotions in virtual world

So far emotions in virtual worlds have been limited to text messages or so called “emoticons” or “smileys”. Users had no other way of expressing their emotions. Sure one could use capital letters to simulate screaming, but were they in fact really screaming or just forgot to turn off the “caps lock”? Same goes for various sounds and “smileys”. If someone said they were happy or posted a happy face, were they really happy or they just stated that? With advance in digital graphics faces or avatars in virtual worlds got their expression. But that expression is still controlled in a conscious way. So even though we may be looking to a happy face on monitor the user sending that signal could just as well feel sad and depressed. This masking of true emotions is often used in online dating. Where person might not turn out to be in real life what he is online.

But it seems progress has been made on this area. A company Emotiv made an affordable controller that actually uses brainwaves to control action on the screen. You feel happy? The character feels happy. You want to grab something? The character grabs something. Even though technology was available before it wasn’t affordable nor was it practical. Now it seems a breakthrough has been made. Once the prices drop even more we can expect social behaviour of people in MMORPG and in virtual worlds to change. It will be much harder to conceal emotions if you use this kind of device. So there is a question how many people will actually like that fact. After all internet gave the freedom to chat and connect juts because the people could represent themselves differently as they do in real life. As simple glimpse on their chosen nicknames will show you that - RazorBlade, Casper, Subzero and Devious just to name a few. They all show these people that use them inspire to be someone else (or at least to be known as someone else) on internet.