Digigardener (that be me, Bruce Damer) shooting the breeze with the gang in Alphaworld version .30, summer 1995. See more early images here.
I was reminded that while standing around in the .30 version of Alphaworld in summer 1995 (see image above) a group of us were moved to come up with some new words to describe the experience of being inside a new medium. I distinctly recall commenting to the group "guys, what do we call the experience of being here, I mean, we aren't merely online, hmm... I guess we are simply inside a world or 'in-world'". In the grand tradition of other new terms being hyphenated when they are in training-wheels, in-world has now become inworld and is being used pretty widely. See Google search item #4 for "in-world" which encapsulates this shift:
Second Life Inworld Help
Activities and having fun in-world... Groups Starting, joining and managing...
Of course if you Google the term "inworld" in its unhyphenated form you get:
Did you mean: in world
...but the search does give some positive hits including the homepage of a virtual worlds design company called InWorld Studios. So... I guess the term is slowly wending its way "OutWorld" toward the Websters.
Continue on for more juicy terms and a whole goshdarned glossary...
Just the other day I was sitting with a couple of hypercharged folks who had been Second Life residents since last October and where bubbling over with creative possibilities and business ideas. It occurred to me that a good term to describe their state of mind as being "world-struck" (aww heck, lets strike the hyphen and just say "worldstruck"). I couldn't restrain my own bubbling and blurted out "hey, you guys are worldstruck!" Oops, now I had to explain myself. This was productive as I really needed to explain to them that I had seen this in many people over the years and counsel them that most of their dearest held beliefs of what worlds could deliver for a startup venture just might not pan out. I ended the discussion with "guys, don't mortgage the farm on this one, but if you wanted to do that as an art installation inworld, well you might just get somewhere."
My 1997 book "Avatars" strove to capture some of the new terminology emerging within avatar and game-spaces. For your reading pleasure you can find that glossary now online including a pretty good early set of general purpose emoticons, emoties and social acronyms as well as terms of all kinds from virtual worlds. See it all at:
Here you can find a definition for 'Avatar'
Originally the term avatar came from Hindu mythology and is the name for the temporary body a god inhabits while visiting Earth. Avatar can also denote an embodiment or concrete manifestation of an abstract concept. The ancient Sanskrit term avatara meant "a passing down". Avatar was first coined for use in describing users' visual embodiment in Cyberspace by Chip Morningstar in the early days of Habitat back in 1985. In text-based virtual communities, the term avatar is not used, users are identified instead by handles, aliases or nicknames. Avatars are also called: characters, players, virtual actors, icons, or virtual humans in other virtual communities or gaming worlds.
A term that I wanted to include but didn't was 'cadavatar', an avatar whose user has crashed out and stands there disembodied. This term harkened back to the scene in Neal Stephenson's novel Snow Crash where the user's brain has been 'snow-crashed', he dies and his avatar drifts there momentarily before a daemon comes out to sweep it away.
Anyone out there in TN-Land got any more "found words" to suggest? Should I update the glossary as a continued community resource?
One more guest column post to come (a bit late but I promise)! It will be a narrative version of part of the talk I am giving this year as part of "Digi's World Tour". For those of you who can't stand to wait, you can see the whole slide show right now here (warning, 73MB but worth it!).
More to come...
Not sure if it fits your category but MMOGs have been creating and twisting word use for years... for example http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/001313.php..
Posted by: gamer | Apr 01, 2007 at 05:18
Some of these terms, much as people would like to believe are universal, are actually quite specific to particular virtual worlds. Also, although glossaries are, on the whole, accurate, I find there are always a few weird words that the compiler has put in or is promoting in the hope that they'll gain wider acceptance (eg. Maving from the rec.games.mud FAQ).
Anyway, here's the MUDspeke dictionary, covering the idiosyncratic vocabulary used by players of MUD1 and MUD2. You'll see some words in there which have indeed become universal, but others which only really worked for one instantiation of MUD.
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Apr 01, 2007 at 05:30
I'm sorry, I couldn't find a place to comment on terranova in general, rather than an individual post, so this isn't actually relevant to your discussion. Just wondering, I'm sure a few people here have been keeping track of Acclaim's Top Secret project, and I'm curious as to why no one has mentioned it here? It's a veritable bee hive of activity at the moment, and surely worthy of some high brow analysis, whether directly related to creating an MMO racer, or the whole 'creating a game being the game' aspect. Anyway, sorry for the highjacking!
Posted by: Biggles | Apr 01, 2007 at 06:08
In the virtual worlds I frequent, people use the term "toon" instead of "avatar." When I ask why not 'avatar,' I'm told (in l33tspeak with a pedantic tone): "Avatars r the pix on a forum post, duh."
The notion that forum avatars and virtual-world avatars are the same thing is lost.
Language is built by popular use, not proper use, despite my curmudgeonly wishes.
Posted by: Moses | Apr 01, 2007 at 11:02
Moses>"Avatars r the pix on a forum post, duh."
As far as I recall, when "Avatar" first appeared in "mainstream" virtual world language it did indeed refer to the picture. The entities that players controlled within a virtual world were "characters", and a character's avatar was its visual display. This was in the days when textual worlds were at their height: some word was needed to refer to the appearance of a character on screen, and "avatar" was it. To this day, I still use "avatar" to mean the image; I'd never refer to a character in a textual world as an avatar.
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Apr 02, 2007 at 03:11
How old is toon as a term?
Most virtual environment type researchers I meet (old new school?) say avatar by the way.
Posted by: ErikC | Apr 02, 2007 at 09:34
das mit der virtuellen parallel welt wie secondlife finde ich fragwürdig, haben wir nicht genug zu kämpfen im richtigen leben ?
Posted by: marcel | Apr 02, 2007 at 18:09
ErikC>How old is toon as a term?
In a virtual world context, I first it really registered with me heard was around 2000/2001 I think, but it was probably used earlier. I noticed it because at first I thought it was to do with the upcoming Toontown, but quite how it would have jumped from there to other virtual worlds is hard to guess. I seem to recall its being a mainly Asheron's Call thing to start with (one of the people I worked with played AC and she called the characters "toons").
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Apr 03, 2007 at 04:49
Toon seemed to gain currency with those who started playing with The Realm -- that's where I first saw it, and it seems to have spread from there.
Posted by: Raph | Apr 05, 2007 at 01:26
I've always liked the word "avatar", since it was (supposedly) drawn from notion of an otheworldly being's manifestation upon this realm. But everyone I know uses "character". "Avatar" seems exclusive to academic circles.
Posted by: Michael Chui | Apr 05, 2007 at 02:50