[Presentation] Affective Avatar Creation: Character Customization Practices and Emotional Affordances

The interfaces of digital worlds have resonance on the lived body of the participant — whether by the creation of avatars, or the desire for certain avatar customization. To move through and interact with game worlds is a physical, multi-sensorial experience. if we limit ourselves to an understanding of a body which ends at the skin — what are we to make of the emotional engagements that emerge from digital play? As we work to understand affect as a relational experience between player and avatar bodies, we can begin to encounter the emotionally-charged responses that materialize alongside our digital bodies, through affect. This talk looks at the procedures of problematic design invested by the communities surrounding the digital world of VRchat. notably, this addresses how affective avatar bodies are discursively materialized in digital worlds, and how certain materializations of avatar bodies develop exclusionary practices through design biases