Wk 2- Activity- Virtual Worlds

In a physical school you have to ability to interact with other students and faculty face to face. In Zoom although you can talk to other people it is a bit more difficult to make friends. The person that you sit next to in class can really determine how the rest of the school year will play out. Although the mediums of teaching are different, the material being taught remains the same.

In a virtual world like Animal Crossing you have to interact with other characters. On platforms such as Instagram you share your real life experiences. While you can interact with people through direct message and comments it is something that is optional. Depending on the type of content that is being viewed on social media it can be either be harmful or peaceful. It is a place where people often times compare themselves to others which can be detrimental to the person’s health, but in Virtual worlds like Animal Crossing you don’t really have that type of problem.

In Animal Crossing we have the ability to do activities that you can’t do during quarantine. Something that I have been able to do in Animal Crossing is go fishing. Although I had the ability to go fish the experience was different. I didn’t have to go through the whole process of waiting and being patient as I would have to in real life, but at least in Animal Crossing I can for sure catch a fish.

Yes, I have expanded my idea of “Place” even though we are in a pandemic there is so much more that we can do to fill that void of talking to others virtually until things get better.

In a sense you could say that Instagram is a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Paying Game. Since what we portray on Instagram is just snip bits of the “good” parts of reality. One could argue that influencers change their looks and aesthetics to what the greater masses would like to see.

I would say that MMORPG is based on real life, but an idealized version. The way we portray ourselves in real life is the visual physical representation of ourself, but in MMORPG you can portray who you really are if you are not confident expressing yourself in real life. It is the ideal version of what we want to see.