I invited a friend to tag along on my photography journey. You can see him on the left. Not even a moment into our adventure had gone by when a child came up to us and asked if we wanted to watch him take his limbs off.
I don’t even think we said yes before the kid started disassembling himself. This avatar is easily one of the coolest things I've ever seen. It's an action figure with ball-socket limbs!
He then attached his arms to his legs, which still followed his arm movement! This is a great example of how expressive users can get when creating avatars. There truly is no limit!
A frog playing True Capitalist Radio is told to stop using slurs by a red meat man. I should mention this place, The Black Cat, is notorious for its troublesome patrons.
My friend encountered a couple while showing me this recreation of The Circus Tent from The Amazing Digital Circus. They hit it off pretty well as they both had a shared friend on their friend list.
This small connection was enough to have the couple become a lot more open. They insisted we go to a corner of the map so they could show off a gag they liked to pull.
This is a reference to a minigame from Super Mario 64 DS, where you have to find a certain character's head in a moving sea of other character's heads. Can you find Luigi?
Again, this is all done through avatars. Here is my friend showing off an avatar of the character ENA, mainly how it's capable of moving at a limited framerate to mimic how the character is animated in her original series. Of course, you can't tell from just this picture.
The timing of this was perfect. Right when I was telling my friend that what made the digital world so unique was that anything could happen suddenly, a tiny anime girl runs by us as a scary muscle man chases after her.
Two users face off with another user over who can beat who. This is another pseudo-roleplay scenario where the users embody the avatar they wear, in this instance being two Deltarune fan-made characters and some kind of Roblox slasher.
"I'm Idk Drooling (No Joke)". Sometimes users will leave messages or artwork in virtual spaces using provided markers. These will persist even if the user leaves. Even in the digital world, graffiti is still a practiced art form.
My friend on the left hitting it off with another stranger. They were able to quickly connect by talking about the Roblox game "Dandy's World" and making very obscure jokes only Dandy's World fans would understand.
Who is this?
This little interaction sparked the next series of events. I met this guy and complimented him on his gun. He was very eager to show it off along with his avatar.
His friend joined in to this photoshoot to show off as well. At this point I had wanted to try and start doing impromptu interviews as I asked them about how they made their avatars, which they eagerly answered.
The main thing I learned from this interaction was that their avatars were “kitbashed” from various other models from video games, such as The Division and Call of Duty.
It reminds me of the fun I had as a kid mixing and matching Lego minifigure pieces together to create entirely new characters; I could hear this from the users just from the enthusiasm in their voice.
I told them I was doing a street photography project, and one user said he knew a cool place I could take pictures of. I don't think either of us picked up on the humor of him saying that. Regardless, I think this image speaks for itself.
After losing some members in the last place, we regrouped in a liminal space world, one filled with pools. Here is one user showing off his functioning FN P90 Submachine Gun. You can’t actually hurt users with it, but it's still neat that it works at all.
I should mention we were a group of five. I still find this unbelievable because I never thought I had the capacity of roping three other strangers into an adventure. I should have asked them why they wanted to come along.
I managed to glitch my camera into the wall, which allowed me to see the rest of the map. This instantly reminded me of Kristoffer Zetterstrand's work. He's the guy that made the paintings you can place in Minecraft.
Zetterstrand has a series of paintings that show various game worlds from the outside boundaries, resulting in surreal visuals like this. A common sight for seasoned gamers, but I wonder how a non-game player would interpret this.
Another fun interaction. One user insisted he knew a cool spot that I just needed to get a picture of, but the area was too high up to reach. His solution was to change his avatar's height to become a giant, then physically pick us up and put us at the high area!
Before that he tried putting on a helicopter avatar to air lift us but that didn't work out. After our ascent, though, he and his friend turned into helicopters again and flew around. They were having a lot of fun.
I'm guessing the reason why the user wanted me to take pictures here was because he wanted to show off his Jedi Temple Guard avatar. His lightsaber did light up the darkness which was neat.
My friend as Gordon Freeman confronts the Temple Guard, and they have an intense showdown. Well, it wasn't exactly intense but they did have a mock battle.
I can't say for certain if this user was performing this way because I was capturing it with my camera. I remember hearing about the concept of performing for the camera, and the strange desire to be captured by it when given the opportunity.
He had no reason to believe I was being honest about my pictures being for a capstone project, and yet he decided it was his duty to help create interesting visuals by both providing a location and the action.
Perhaps it's liberating to finally perform how you want to be, even if you'd never see the final image. To be in the moment, to live the character you dress yourself as, I think that's all he wanted out of this.
A little bit off the top. How else is Gordon Freeman supposed to keep his polygonal figure?
This kind of play is infectious, as the other members of our group started joining in with their characters. It was fun to watch and a blast to capture.
At this point chaos had broken out. They just started battling each other while I desperately tried to capture the action.
A lone soldier up against a juggernaut. Even though I was there I like to imagine what kind of story you could come up with if seeing this out of context.
More fighting. At this point my VR headset was about to die, so I had to quickly round everyone up and thank them for their help.
I also took a group photo. These guys were awesome.