How real are we in virtual realities?

  I came across a great piece on trendwatching.com covering online gaming, metaverses and all sorts of online being spaces. There’s some cool work being done by marketers in this emerging environment, connecting with people in ways that enrich their gaming experiences.  Case studies, such as the efforts by P&G and Sprite in Habbo Hotel, led me to wonder whether or not brand trial and even preferences in metaverses could be expected to transfer to real life behavior.  Or could someone prefer Mountain Dew while his alter-ego avatar regularly drinks Sprite? And does this even matter if the avatars are paying – with a virtual currency convertible to US dollars – for the virtual product, as they apparently are for American Apparel clothing in Second Life.  Imagine this for a moment: marketing to both a real world population and a population of avatars, where both represent valuable market share to fight for…

And perhaps if people create avatars with regard to attributes they like or aspire to, might avatars be a truer expression of their creators’ desires than are their real world characters?  And might people, behind the guise of their avatars, express certain feelings in uniquely direct and truthful ways?  Research is already being done by introducing products or messages into the metaverse and seeing how the virtual population receives them.  American Apparel is planning on test marketing its first line of jeans in its Second Life store this summer, two months before they're available in actual stores.

Perhaps someday soon (why not today?), marketers will actually recruit players to participate in focus groups or at-virtual-home interviews within the game, offering them a game-related currency incentive, and engage people’s avatars in discussion - though it'd have to be done in way that doesn't violate the reality of the metaverse.  While the types of people reachable in metaverses is somewhat restricted today, I wonder if such environments may become not only a viable, but a uniquely insightful way to get in touch with what people really want and feel.

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[tina b]

On a similar note:

This week Julian Dibbell did a book signing in Second Life of his book Play Money, his latest book about making a real living by harvesting gold in Ultima Online.

Going one more meta step, Julian is also *selling* virtual copies of Play Money for Linden Dollars, the official currency of Second Life.