[Presentation] The becoming of avatar bodies: Dynamic affordances and embodiment in VRChat and World of Warcraft

Utilizing a theoretical framework that follows Coleman’s Becoming of Bodies, this talk examines elements of problematic design surrounding two digital platforms: World of Warcraft and VRChat. Through an understanding of avatar bodies as continuously becoming, digital scholarship can more holistically work to uncover how hateful rhetoric materializes upon the practices of user bodies through relations between the online communities these games provides.

Within WoW, players can customize avatars through a set of predefined bodies, with limited options for personalized embellishments. These bodies often become the subject of critique by Blizzard’s testers – tasked with providing developers with feedback prior to releasing a new world. This feedback often includes many complaints about “ugly” female avatars, (Rubenstein 2007), pressuring the developers to implement heteronormative, often oversexualized, avatar models. In contrast, avatar design on VRChat is not limited to developer-provided. Rather, players have the option to directly upload their own avatars built from scratch through any digital medium. Notably, this allows for more user-driven expression, not limited to the often hetero-normative expectations of developers or testers.

Through ethnographic case studies, I construct a theoretical model to show how exclusionary practices are introduced or emerge within these digital platforms through the material becoming of avatar bodies. Expanding previous work on the erasure of queer bugs in WoW (Brett 2018), I work to map how the production, maintenance, or transformations of avatar bodies are limited or extended via material implications of misogyny, transphobia, racism, and homophobia embedded in provided avatar design features and community expectations.