An avatar (अवतार, from the Sanskrit word for "a form of self", commonly used in many Indian languages) is a computer user's representation of himself/herself or alter ego, whether in the form of a three-dimensional model used in computer games, a two-dimensional icon (picture) used on Internet forums and other communities, or a text construct found on early systems such as MUDs. It is an “object” representing the embodiment of the user. The term "avatar" can also refer to the personality connected with the screen name, or handle, of an Internet user.
Origin
Originally Avatar is a Sanskrit term of the Indian Hindu belief concept of re-incarnation. An 'AVATAR' in Indian Vedas signifies the descent of Divinity into flesh. One who attains union with Spirit and then returns to earth to help mankind is called an ‘Avatar’. Divinity Incarnating down onto a lower spiritual plane. For example, Krishna is the eighth avatar (incarnation) of Vishnu the Preserver, whom many Hindus worship as The Supreme Personality of Godhead. The Dasavatara are ten incarnations of Lord Vishnu the formless source of creation. In English it is usually translated as "incarnation." The term is used primarily in Hindu texts.
Computer games
As used for a computer representation of a user, the term dates at least as far back as 1985, when it was used as the name for the player character in the Ultima series of computer games. The Ultima games started out in 1981, but it was in Ultima IV (1985), that the term "Avatar" was introduced. To become the "Avatar" was the goal of Ultima IV . The later games assumed that you were the Avatar and "Avatar" was the player's visual on-screen in-game persona. The on-screen representation could be customized in appearance. Later, the term "avatar" was used by the designers of the pen and paper role-playing game Shadowrun (1989), as well as in the online role-playing game Habitat (1987).
William Gibson
Although William Gibson's notion of cyberspace as a consensual virtual reality hallucination representing data as a 3D matrix is not remotely how users access or perceive the Internet, his cyberpunk novel Count Zero (1986) described in detail a character's representation socializing in an online world:
A square of cyberspace directly in front of him flipped sickeningly and he found himself in a pale blue graphic that seemed to represent a very spacious apartment, low shapes of furniture sketched in hair-fine lines of blue neon. A woman stood in front of him, a sort of glowing cartoon squiggle of a woman, the face a brown smudge. "I'm Slide," the figure said, hands on its hips ... gestured, a window suddenly snapping into existence behind her.
"Right," Bobby said. "What is this? I mean, if you could sort of explain." He still couldn't move. The "window" showed a blue-gray video view of palm trees and old buildings.
... "Hey, man, I paid a designer an arm and a leg to punch this up for me. This is my space, my construct. This is L.A., boy. People here don't do anything without jacking. This is where I entertain!"
Neal Stephenson
The use of Avatar to mean online virtual bodies was popularised by Neal Stephenson in his cyberpunk novel Snow Crash (1992). In Snow Crash, the term Avatar was used to describe the virtual simulation of the human form in the Metaverse , a fictional virtual-reality application on the Internet. Social status within the Metaverse was often based on the quality of a user's avatar, as a highly detailed avatar showed that the user was a skilled hacker and programmer while the less talented would buy off-the-shelf models in the same manner a beginner would today. Stephenson wrote in the "Acknowledgments" to Snow Crash :
On Internet forums
Despite the widespread use of avatars, it is unknown which Internet forums were the first to use them; the earliest forums did not include avatars as a default feature, and they were included in unofficial "hacks" before eventually being made standard. Avatars on Internet forums serve the purpose of representing users and their actions, personalizing their contributions to the forum, and may represent different parts of their persona, beliefs, interests or social status in the forum.
The traditional avatar system used on most Internet forums is a small (80x80 to 100x100 pixels, for example) square-shaped area close to the user's forum post, where the avatar is placed in order for other users to easily identify who has written the post without having to read their username. Some forums allow the user to upload an avatar image that may have been designed by the user or acquired from elsewhere. Other forums allow the user to select an avatar from a preset list or use an auto-discovery algorithm to extract one from the user's homepage.
Some avatars are animated, consisting of a sequence of multiple images played repeatedly. In such animated avatars, the number of images as well as the time in which they are replayed vary considerably.
Other avatar systems exist, such as on Gaia Online, WeeWorld, Frenzoo or Meez, where a pixelized representation of a person or creature is used, which can then be customized to the user's wishes. There are also avatar systems (e.g. Trutoon) where a representation is created using a person's face with customized characters and backgrounds.
Another avatar based system is one wherein an image is automatically generated based on the identity of the poster. Identicons are formed as visually distinct geometric images derived from a digest hash of the poster's IP address. In this way, a particular anonymous user can be uniquely identified from session to session without the need for registration or authentication. In the cases where registration has occurred, the identicon serves as a means to associate a particular user with a particular geometric representation. If an account is compromised, a dissimilar identicon will be formed as the attacker is posting from an unfamiliar IP address.
In Internet chat
Flat GIF based avatars were introduced by such programs as Virtual Places as early as 1994 along with VOIP capabilities which were later abandoned for lack of bandwidth.
In 1995, KeepTalking, a product of UNET2 Corporation, was one of the first companies to implement an avatar system into their web chat software.
In 1995, Cybertown first introduced three dimensional avatars to internet chat.
In 1996 Microsoft Comic Chat, an IRC client that used cartoon avatars for chatting, was released.
In instant-messaging programs
AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) was the first popular instant-messaging program to use avatars, picking up on the idea from PC games. Users of AIM commonly refer to avatars as buddy icons . Today, many other popular instant-messaging services support the use of avatars, including Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, and services using the XMPP protocol such as Google Talk, LJ Talk, and Gizmo5.
Instant messaging avatars are usually very small. AIM icons are 48x48 pixels, although many icons can be found online that typically measure anywhere from 50x50 pixels to 100x100 pixels in size. A wide variety of these imaged avatars can be found on web sites and popular eGroups such as Yahoo! Groups.
The latest use of avatars in instant messaging is dominated by dynamic avatars. The user chooses an avatar that represents him while chatting and, through the use of text to speech technology, enables the avatar to talk the text being used at the chat window. Another form of use for this kind of avatar is for video chats/calls. Some services, such as Skype (through some external plugins) allow users to use talking avatars during video calls, replacing the image from the user's camera with an animated, talking avatar.
AIM buddy icons have been used as an experimental form of viral marketing by some advertising firms.
In blogs
Although blog comment pages can sometimes act like Internet forums, there is no single way to provide avatar support on blogs. One solution is to link to an image file controlled by the user. Another solution is to use a service like Gravatar and resolve the user avatar from his/her mail address.
In artificial intelligence
Avatars are also used by organizations as a way of interacting with consumers. Some of these avatars are commonly known as "bots" and are powered by Natural language processing. Famous examples include Ikea's Anna, an avatar designed to guide you around the Ikea website.
Such Avatars can also be powered by a Digital conversation which provides a little more structure than those using NLP, offering the user options and clearly defined paths to an outcome. This kind of Avatar is known as a Structured Language Processing or SLP Avatar.
Both types of Avatar provide a cost effective and efficient way of engaging with consumers.
In games
Avatars in video games are essentially the player's physical representation in the game world. In most games, the player's representation is fixed, however increasingly games offer a basic character model, or template, and then a
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