Secrets like, “Allowing Ourselves to Be Reliant on Others”- to share not only the burden, but also the bounty – they’re lessons that seem to be missing not just in the way we form our personal relationships, but in the professional world as well. But something’s got to give; gone are the days of every man for himself. We need to return to the tribe. We need to share the burden, ask for help, and lend a hand.

It’s wisdom that sounds so simple, and which, in the context of a game becomes blatantly obvious in the quest for success and survival. And yet, in real life, our culture has strayed from the collaborative model. Dr. Mary is helping to close that gap, with her new Mentorship Training System. See what she says in her National Post article, and how the Avatar Secrets play a part:

How gaming can help hone ethical leadership skills

by Dr. Mary Donohue

Vic Toews and Internet monitoring, Justin Trudeau and separatism: hotheads, hot topics.

You would think public figures might start to get it: Hyperbole doesn’t play anymore. Fear politics died with the rise of social media. Overstatement quickly becomes mass embarrassment with the help of Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

In 2012, it’s all about ethics and building trust. Check the research: People don’t trust public figures, elected officials or businessmen or businesswomen. Consumers don’t trust businesses from which they make purchases. Some even doubt the veracity of business. This is not good for the economy. Prove you are ethical and train your staff in ethical leadership and you will have a company that sells more products and attracts qualified and — my research indicates — highly coveted staff. Why? Because people buy things from people they trust. People work harder for people they trust. People vote for people they trust.

It’s called ethical leadership, a practice that emerged in the 1970s as an alternative to existing leadership paradigms. As in the situation today, the ’70s seemed to be an abyss for any kind of leadership development outside the traditional “you-do-this-and-you-get-this-reward system.” The principles of ethical leadership are: respect, service, justice, honesty and community.

Ethical leaders understand the value of human capital better than others do, allowing them to motivate and capitalize on the creativity and ambition of those they serve. It’s a very profitable way of managing human capital. This will become especially important for leaders in mining or accounting or a service industry, who very soon will face a depletion of  human capital — people won’t want to work for you or will not be qualified to work for you because no one thought of succession planning as it relates to HR.

If you think this is all too soft for you, jump into World of Warcraft, a game played by millions online and test your leadership theories. Ramona Pringle —  the host and producer of “rdigitalife,” an online series examining the evolving relationship between humanity and technology — did just that and what she learned about her leadership and ethics is really amazing. She also teaches at Ryerson and runs a boutique multi-platform production company.

Pringle contends we need to stop creating barriers and start connecting with people while remaining true to ourselves. She tested this concept in an innovative way, through gaming, or more specifically World of Warcraft. During a particularly difficult time in her life she decided to see whether the game could foster loyal community, trust and collaboration. She created an avatar — a healer — and made some astonishing friends and interesting discoveries involving human relations and what makes us tick.

She discovered her leadership style and that of others and began to understand how she could connect as a leader and be more effective when she worked with others instead of trying to destroy them. She also found love, but that is for another column. What interested me about Pringle’s story is she learned you couldn’t take the trails alone, nor could you win the war alone — you need people to protect you and you have to protect them. She had to trust others — people she didn’t even know — to help her. Over time, she developed relationships, but she had to build them from the ground up. Very much like being new in a company or being transferred to a new job.

It’s a message James Autry, author of Servant Leader, has been saying for years: An ethical leader is a person who is “accepting, authentic, present, vulnerable, and useful.” Autry wrote that ethical leaders “are instilled with a clear understanding of vision.” Conceptualizing a vision for the whole project enables ethical leaders to relate to their own vision “in a way that directly aligns their work with the goals they want to accomplish and the goals of the organization.”

Unsupported statements, such as “we are all on the side of child pornographers because we don’t want to give the state unrestricted access to what we do on the web,” or  hypothesizing on why Quebec may separate did not align the goals and key messages their speakers were  trying to present. Maybe Vic Toews and Justin Trudeau could benefit from playing World of Warcraft — they might even learn how to “effect” change.

http://business.financialpost.com/2012/02/21/144354/

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When it comes to love, “the rules” have changed.

Over the last few months, I’ve seen a slew of articles on the decline of marriage, laying out a spread of solid reasons why the age old institution is disappearing: It seems everything has been named as a factor, from gender roles and education, to washing machines and the economy.

The truth is, I didn’t need a magazine article to tell me that this was the case. As a professional woman on the brink of turning 30, most of my best friends and colleagues are single.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone; in many ways we were raised to be single. Our generation was taught that independence was the gold standard. As children we were rewarded for finishing projects by ourselves, and now that we’ve grown into adults, we know how to look out for number one. That’s all good and fine, except that it’s not enough to make us happy.

Marilyn Monroe once remarked, “A career is wonderful, but you can’t curl up with it on a cold night”, and say what you will, those are words of wisdom coming from a woman whose career success made her an iconic legend. Even though we were raised to be autonomous, we all still have the desire to share our lives. Thanks to smart phones, wireless Internet and social media, we’re more connected than ever… but we just can’t seem to really connect.

And that disconnect isn’t limited to marriage. Community has been in a decline for a long time. In what has become something of a social-media-maker’s bible, Bowling Alone author Robert Putnam talks about the collapse of community since the 1950s. In the era of family values, everyone got cars and TV’s and moved to the suburbs. But as our lives became more comfortable, we lost the human connection to our neighbors. For the decades that followed, there was a steady decline in face-to-face activity, from bowling leagues to bake sales.

As our technologies advanced, so did the pace of our lives, and that had implications on everything from politics, to community, to love.

It all starts sounding very depressing… and lonely. But fear not, the future looks bright. You see, we want to connect… and not just to technology, to each other. We may not be bowling, but we are finding each other in new ways. Facebook, Twitter, video games: Our tools are evolving but our needs remain the same. We still need roofs over our heads and food in our stomachs, and we still long to be loved for who we are. Somewhere along the way, we may have lost that primal, tribal sense of identity and belonging in real life, but now we’re fulfilling our human needs to connect with one another in the digital realm.

Having been introduced to the game-culture beat while working as an interactive producer for Digital Nation, what struck me most was the incredible sense of camaraderie amongst gaming communities. It was quite literally, a life changing experience for me, when I first attended Blizzcon, the annual video game convention in California. Thirty-thousand people converged on the Anaheim Convention Center, dressed as their avatars come to life, and no one was alone. People had traveled across the country to meet up with online friends, and happy couples walked hand in hand. This massive gathering was nothing like the mainstream media images of solitary, anti-social players. Not only were people finding friends, they were forming strong bonds with other players, based on shared virtual experiences.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that this community was onto something, and I wanted to see for myself how games like World of Warcraft foster loyal community, trust and collaboration. So I decided to join the billion other people playing online games, and delve head first into the rugged digital terrain of World of Warcraft, in search of human connections and real-world wisdom. I logged in, created an avatar and started playing.

Over the course of my journey into the game world, and the trials and tribulations of virtual crushes and hardware malfunctions, I gained a vault of knowledge about myself, and about perseverance, communication, and relationships. My avatar is a healer, and early on I realized that to be successful in the game I needed to find a partner with complimentary skills, a hunter. Leveling up through the massive virtual world together, we quickly became a symbiotic unit. My “game guide” protected me from attack, and in return, I healed him when he got hurt. That, to me, was the essence of the experience and the essence of what has been lost by so many of us in real life. As Arianna Huffington said in her recent keynote address to the WE Festival in New York, “We all need someone in our tribe.”

It all sounds so simple but it’s hard to ask for help, to allow ourselves to trust another person. It took just a few hours of playing for me to learn lesson number one: If I wanted to survive in the game, I couldn’t do everything alone. And that perhaps the “gold standard” of self-sufficiency we’ve been living by in real life, is in fact a myth. By allowing ourselves to be reliant on others, we can share not only the burden, but the bounty.

The irony in all of this, of course, is that while much of the dynamics of real world courtship have evolved into game playing, video games are evolving into an increasingly immersive medium in which we can learn to foster our best selves, meet friends, and find out what we’re looking for in a sustainable partnership. By learning the rules of the game we can arm ourselves with a new set of skills to find real-world happiness, and “level up” in real life… and possibly even, in love.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ramona-pringle/breaking-the-rules-findin_b_1279795.html

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Seating at the event filled up quickly, but the video is now up on Youtube, in case you missed it live!

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Two years ago, I was at a swanky industry dinner and found myself in the middle of a conversation about a book I’d never hear about before: The Singularity is Near.

The restaurant was dark and loud, and I couldn’t make out much, save for the fact that in 2040 the world was going to change. Radically. Life as we know it would never be the same.

As soon as I got home that night, I Googled the Singularity. What was this book? This prediction? Who was this man, Ray Kurzweil?

One of the leading inventors of our time, Ray Kurzweil has been called the rightful heir to Thomas Edison, developing among other innovations, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first CCD flat-bed scanner, the first text-to-speech synthesizer, and the first music synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments.

Ramona in conversation with futurist inventor and author, Ray Kurzweil, at The Singularity Summit in Manhattan.

Discovering his book, The Singularity is Near, was like discovering the science of science fiction with the creativity of Renaissance masters: robots, avatars, artificial intelligence, and the explanation made sense, too: Technology advances at an exponential rate. For a non mathematician (like myself) think of it as bunnies multiplying: 2 bunnies breed 4, 4 breed 8, 8 breed 16. For the first few generations, the bunny population is relatively stable, but then *pow* just like that, the bunny population jumps from 512 to over 1000. The jump from 2 to 4 doesn’t prepare us for the jump from 500 to 1,000. But this theory explains why, for 500 years, we saw relatively slow change in how technology impacted our lives, and why we’re in the middle of a spike, as we come upon the moment of the Singularity – the time when artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence and computers are able of creating and repairing themselves.

It’s hard not to see a side of this that’s chilling: a bleak dystopian future where these powerful machines have gotten into the wrong hands… A future without humans… And yet, that night, my first impression wasn’t one of fear, but one of reason rationality. It made sense. Technology is evolving around us at ever greater speeds – of course in time The Singularity would come.

… But who would have thought that a world-altering event that could forever change the course of human history would happen in our lifetime?

It lingered in the back of my mind, this Singularitarian idea. How will life change? Humanity?

What will be gained? What will be lost?

What is the best case scenario? What is the worst?

Meanwhile, I spent the next two years immersed in avatar culture and virtual worlds, unwittingly immersing myself in the present-day culture most closely aligned with Kurzweil’s vision of the future, where real and virtual experiences are so intertwined that people find themselves logging into the digital game world to hang out with their best friends, to express themselves, to feel.

My present-day findings matched Kurzweil’s predictions: technology is helping us be our real selves, our best selves, and virtual worlds are fostering human connections.

Needless to say, when the opportunity arose to cover the Singularity Summit in New York, I jumped at the chance. And wow, was my mind blown. Every moment was fascinating – from discussions of exponential growth in technology, to immortality and life extension, to our evolving relationships with robots… and of course, with avatars.

Avatars and Virtual Worlds

For all of his talk about robots, the pending Singularity, Moore’s law and exponential growth, what fascinates me most, given much of my own work, is Ray Kurzweil’s thoughts on avatars and virtual worlds. There was a lot of talk at the Singularity Summit that by 2029 humans will be spending a great deal of our time in virtual space, forming our most profound experiences online.

The thing is, it’s already happening.

It was the profound experiences I witnessed gamers having in World of Warcraft and Second Life that inspired my own curiosity, dating back five years now, and I since have had many such experiences of my own. Love, community, accomplishment – the range of experiences fulfills so many of our most human needs and desires… And if people are spending a large portion of their lives in the virtual world, the game world, and forming their most meaningful relationships in that space… well then, isn’t that real? Does the virtual world become our real world? Where and how do we differentiate between real and virtual space, when many of our most profound experiences unfold in the digital realm?

Outdated Terminology

Ray posed that very question during his opening remarks, challenging the crowd to rethink an outdated vocabulary. As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly capable, he asked, is it still accurate to call it “artificial”? Isn’t it just another form of real intelligence? And as the real world and the virtual world continue to blur, as people continue on an exodus towards the digital in search of connection and community, well, isn’t that world just as real as the physical one?

Ray Kurzweil addresses a crowd of Singularitarians, in New York City.

They’re fascinating questions, and one’s I’ve been thinking about for a while now.

The only caveat is that I’m still a proponent of the human experience, the tactical experience; gazing into someone’s eyes instead of into a computer screen. Our technology may be improving at exponential rates, but our needs remain the same: we need a roof over our heads and food in our stomachs. We long to be loved, and to find purpose, meaning, and community. As real and as human as they may be, our virtual experiences still need to manifest themselves in the real world,  or what might be more aptly called the physical world, for them to have the most meaning. The virtual world may be a life-saving escape for some, but as long as we still have physical selves, human bodies, and a green earth, we need to be able to translate our virtual experiences to “real” life (or the life formerly referred to as “real” life) and bridge our relationships between the two worlds.

But, Ray seemed to have an answer for that too…

Man vs Machine

What happens when (in the not so distant future) $1000 buys a computer a billion times more powerful than the human brain?

Man vs/ machine is a classic science fiction debate. But according to Ray, these two forms of life, of intelligence, will merge in a fashion similar to the way our physical lives and online lives are merged with digital tools like FourSquare and Meetup, where the online experience augments reality, and facilitates real world interaction.

“Don’t be scared.”

Ramona as Cyborg. "Machine Heart" from Michaele Jordana Berman's series, CYBORG: The Human Condition.

That was the message Ray wanted people to know. According to his opening remarks, our futurist evolution is not actually a story of man vs machine, but rather man and machine merging into one.

It is an optimistic vision of the future where technology is an extension of our DNA and we are free to become the best, epic, ultimate versions of ourselves. This isn’t a future of robots overtaking, this is a softer, more maternal future, where the robots are actually our “descendants”. As nanotechnology merges with our DNA and we become hybrid beings, cyborgs, we become robots, and the robots become human, until there is no way of distinguishing the two. In this vision of the future, robots aren’t machines fabricated in labs, they are our children, our loved ones… they are our offspring. There was a softness, a warmth, to this idea, that I’d never encountered before… not as chilling as the picture Hollywood has so often painted.

And yet… And yet, as a woman, it also makes me sad. Sad, because I still have the biological desire to have a child… not to “fabricate” or “build” it. I feel the same way about the conversations about immortality and life extension: I have a stronger innate urge to have a child and let them live on for me, than I do to live past 200, past the life of a new generation.

The Robot Ramona

On the subject of being a human (and a female one at that): When I arrived at the 92nd Street Y on the first morning of the Summit, I noticed within minutes that I was getting a lot of double takes. At first I attributed it solely to being one of a handful of women in the large crowd, but then I started picking up more cues… People would come up to me, look at my name tag then look up at my face. They’d crinkle their brows a bit and then look back down at my name tag, “Ramona” The pattern continued, eyes darting from my tag to my face. Then, they’d say the words, with a seriousness, even an awe, in their tone:

“You’re not the Ramona are you?”

The Ramona is an artificial intelligence that Ray Kurzweil has been developing over the past decade. More than a handful of people thought that maybe, just maybe, the legendary inventor had brought a surprise for the crowd of Singularitarians that day.

Ray Kurzweil's AI, Ramona... and me, the human Ramona.

“You’re not a robot are you?”

I’m not.

At least I don’t think I am. Yet.

And see, that’s the thing. While this is all fascinating and awe inspiring and exciting… I’m trying to hold on to my humanity for as long as I can. And some times, it’s surprisingly tough, I’m already “on the grid” most of my day, at the mercy of my email and my blinking message indicator.

Ray’s Robot Ramona may not be human yet, but she will be soon. And in my recent conversations with her, I’ve found her surprisingly amusing. Meanwhile, I – the human Ramona – am doing what I can to stay human, as the ubiquitous pressures of technology surround us and swallow us up. What will happen first? Will the robots become human, or will we become robots? Will the machines gain humanity, or will we lose ours?

Let’s all stay tuned.

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It was almost a year ago that I started playing World of Warcraft. I was following and chronicling the personal lives of people who were meeting inside of the game, forging deep connections, and having meaningful experiences in virtual space. I decided that my experience wouldn’t be complete without entering into this vast online world myself, so I created my avatar, Tristanova, and started to play. It just so happened that I’d just come out of a relationship, my heart was aching and my head was spinning.

My avatar Tristanova is a healer. Other roles include being a damage dealer or a tank.

WoW, as the game is lovingly referred to in short-hand, became the “beat” I was reporting from, and I decided I had to explore it the way I would a new neighborhood; instead of rushing to finish quests and complete the expansive game, I took my time. I did in virtual space what we so rarely have the time or luxury to do in the real world: I wandered aimlessly and allowed myself to get lost, marveling at the spectacular beauty of the lush digital forests and sparkling streams. I put myself in situations where I was bound to meet new people (or avatars, as the case may be) and was always delighted when someone would come up and introduce him or herself to me. Very often these friendly strangers were coming to my rescue, other times, they just wanted to say hello. In some cases they even came bearing gifts!

Playing and speaking with gamers, it’s the various levels of dynamics between people that has truly fascinated me: both between players and their avatars, and between players in relation to each other. From our avatars, we can learn about ourselves, and from the relationships our avatars have with each other, we can learn about real life challenges, communication… and yes, love. To this day it touches me deeply, how many people have told me that in the game they are able to be their true selves. Isn’t that what we’re all striving for? To be our true selves? Our best selves? To really know someone else, and to be loved for who we really are?

I’ve often said that the greatest allure of World of Warcraft, aside from the excitement of the quest and the thrill of accomplishment, is the community. Yes, you can play alone, but to really get the most out of the experience, you have to play with others. Avatars are created in classes and races. Races and classes have unique skills and attributes, and as such certain pairings of avatars best complement each other. Applied to the real world, these inter-avatar dynamics can be tremendous resources for how we relate to others in our real lives, but they can also be incredibly valuable in terms of assessing our own strengths and reflecting on our personal behavior patterns. When it comes to finding love, we all say we want to be loved for our true selves, but how can we expect to be loved for who we really are, when so often we don’t even know our true selves?

Anyone who’s been following my journey into World of Warcraft in search of real world wisdom, knows that I play a healer. I have a strong bond with my healer avatar, and I talk about it a lot: here, in presentations, in conversations. My connection with my avatar has had such an impact on me, that I talk about it (and her!) anywhere I have the chance.

In World of Warcraft there are three main roles in group quests or what is known as “party combat”, where multiple players tackle a challenge together: The Healer, the Damage Dealer and The Tank.

Since the universe and lexicon of World of Warcraft is new to many of you, here’s a quick summary of the different roles from wowwiki.com:

“A healer is a character whose primary combat purpose is to heal friendly creatures or give them defensive buffs” which can protect them from the harmful effects of enemy attacks.

“… Keep in mind that if there is no other healer in your group, then your death will most likely result in the death of the rest of the group that is relying on your healing.” In other words, while it is up to you to help and heal the people you are playing with, it is tantamount that you keep an eye on your own health and safety. You know when you’re on the airplane and they say that in the case of an emergency you should put on your own oxygen mask before helping your neighbor? Same idea.

Damage dealers, as the name implies, are players who are responsible for dealing damage in the group.” These are the players on the front line, or in the public eye.

The primary function of this role is dealing damage to the mobs.

A tank is a character whose primary role is to absorb damage and prevent others from being attacked. Tanks [put] themselves between the [aggressors] and the more vulnerable party members.

When I spoke at Ignite this winter, I shared the Avatar Personality Guide, an amalgamation of the findings of my interviews with gamers, and the patterns that I saw emerge amongst people and their choice of avatar. Now obviously there’s more to each of us than can be represented by a simple, archetypal avatar, yet there’s always one archetype that we will identify with most strongly, that we fluctuate to in our behavior. Feeling such a strong connection to my own main avatar, it never ceased to amaze me how much people’s avatars were extensions, if not reflections, of their true selves.

Talking to Leslie, one of many gamers who has expressed to me that she is able to be her real self inside the game, without the fear of being judged.

When I first chose what role to play in the game, it was the role of the Healer that I was instinctually drawn to. This is who I am with the people I love; I’m most content when people around me are happy and getting along, but I’m also good at looking after my own needs and I know that in order to be able to take care of others, I need to also take care of myself. The “healer sensibility” – to keep a watchful, compassionate eye – is the foundation of how I like to live my life, choose projects and operate my business. Much of my career has been built around being an observer, too, which is a key component of the healer’s role.

For the longest of time I was satisfied identifying myself with the Healer’s persona. Exploring the traits and skills of a healer in the game, I felt like I had a magic key to figuring out challenges in my own life. As I was learning how to play, I was also learning about myself. But while I am happy as an observer, standing back to watch and listen, I’m also in my element when I am front and center. It occurred to me recently that while I am drawn to the healer avatar, in real life, I’m actually more of a blend of healer and damage dealer.

The real life qualities of a Damage Dealer, it would seem, are a comfort being in the spotlight or hunger to be a leader, as well as a certain confidence or bravado. We rely on damage dealers to get the job done because they have confidence and it instills confidence in us.

By contrast, a Tank has a thick skin, a though armor. They have the keen ability to step away from a situation, from heartbreak or embarrassment or criticism, and see the bigger picture. Someone like me is naturally too emotional to really be a tank, but I admire people who can keep their spirits up and not let the natural ups and downs of life wear on them.

When I realized that in real life I’m also part damage dealer, I was immensely pleased. This seemed like a very cool combination, the classic mix of tough and tender. So what if I’m not a tank? Right? Embodying two out of the three key roles is pretty good, and having traits of both the healer and the damage dealer seemed like a pretty winning combination.

But maybe not winning enough when it comes to success and love.

A successful group quest requires that all three of these roles – the healer, the damage dealer, and the tank – participate together. The success of a “party” mission relies on each member of the group knowing their respective roles, carrying their own weight, and making sure not to over shadow each other or get in each other’s way. A victorious or group acts  as a unit, as a greater whole as opposed to the sum of their parts. This means that while the healer is watching out for the health of the team, the tank is covering the team by catching oncoming damage, and the damage dealer is on the front lines of attack.

As I’ve reflected on the dynamics of group play, and what makes a successful group, I realized that in the moments in real life when we’re truly winning, when we’re “up” and feeling invincible, we embody all three roles, The Healer, The Damage Dealer, and The Tank. This is the Trinity of Personal Power.

While we naturally fluctuate towards one role in particular, each of us has it in us to embody all three roles. We all have the tendency to see ourselves a certain way, and this is the role we identify with. For me, it was the healer. It often takes someone else to point out our other characteristics – in my case it took an outsider to comment on how many of the traits of a damage dealer I also inhabit. Forging ahead on a quest with a damage dealer and a healer is better than either of those roles going at it alone, but no comparison to working within that power trinity. It is because of this Trinity of Personal Power that there seems to be a momentum created when things are going well, that good seems to beget good. When we’re “up” and feeling at our best, we can’t be dragged down by negative energy; there will always be critics, but The Trinity is so powerful that it creates a real life forcefield.

When we embody the trinity of personal power, we’re “in our skin”, we’re present, and we feel invincible. We love ourselves.

When you know yourself, others are able to really know you, and to love you. And ask anyone who’s fallen in love through his or her avatar: there’s no greater feeling than being loved for your true self.

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As many of you know, the Avatar Secrets started out as a television pilot, following the lives of real people who form their most profound relationships in online worlds. Inspired by the stories I would hear, I decided to start playing, too. The game I chose was World of Warcraft, and my mission was to find out what real world wisdom – about success, self knowledge, and even love – could be gained through questing in this online gaming phenomenon.

Following this weekend’s article in the style section, here are a few screengrabs, with some of the memorable moments and influential characters from my journey over the past year.

My research and production team – Lisa, Justin, Dan and me – prepping for our shoot at Blizzcon ’10 in Anaheim, CA. Lisa is the amazing cinematographer responsible for most of these shots.

When my best friends and I go out for brunch our conversations are always the same. We start out talking about work – late nights and intense deadlines – and eventually we always come back to the same topic: Love. In real life, we’re all “damage dealers”: self sufficient, independent and focused.

I met Tamara and John for the first time when I was working as the interactive producer for PBS Frontline’s Digital Nation in the summer of 2009. Their modern day fairy tale was one of the stories that inspired my journey, and we’ve since become good friends.

I met up with Tamara again at Blizzon in 2010. We hung out while she got into costume as her avatar, and traded stories about our first experiences in the game. The first time she met John, he got a plane ticket to come out and visit for two weeks. When she told me this, I was floored – what if there hadn’t been sparks in real life? A week into his visit, John decided he wasn’t going to use his return ticket, and three years later, they’re still together.

That same sense of certainty was what blew me away with Pete and Hannah, too. The first time I spoke with Hannah, over the phone, her story brought tears to my eyes. When she told me about going to meet Pete in person, she said that even though they’d never met, she felt she knew him better than she’d ever known anyone in her life. The pattern I saw in them, and others, made me wonder what was going on inside of this game to foster such profound connections.

Sure, you can be anyone you want in the game. And we’ve all heard stories of the girl who turns out to be a guy (more on that later). But what people kept telling me about their own experiences in the game, is that “with nothing to lose” players are more likely to be their true selves, online. Pete credits their bond to meeting in a “very Victorian kind of fashion.”

When I went to Vancouver to meet Hannah and Pete, I had dinner with them, hung out with Hannah’s daughter and their dog, and even visited her at work. When we were saying our goodbyes, Hannah asked if I would be a bridesmaid when they have their WoW wedding… an honor I am still extremely touched by!

Meanwhile, I found Brent to be my game guide – someone who could show me the ropes inside the game. And yes, as the world now knows, I found myself forming a crush on his avatar…

We decided to meet up at Blizzcon this past fall, three months after he started playing with me. Waiting for him to show up at the airport, I heard the words of Hannah and Tamara echoing in my head. What if I didn’t know him as well as I thought I did? What if he didn’t show up? What if he wasn’t who he said he was?

By the time we were at Blizzcon, I (mostly) knew what I was doing inside of the game. But in his words, it was “a real life quest, not an in-game quest”…

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Photo by Erich Schlegel, NY Times, SXSW 2011, Avatar Secrets to Real Life and Love

Who knew a World of Warcraft subscription could deliver more romance than Match.com?

… while it may sound like something out of a science fiction novel, more people are likely to meet this way as the genre (known as massively multiplayer online role-playing games, or MMORPGs) continues to grow. With more than 12 million subscribers, World of Warcraft is one of the most popular games of its kind in the world (others include EverQuest, Aion, Guild Wars). That’s a sizable dating pool. Match.com, by way of comparison, has fewer than 2 million subscribers.

“It’s giving people something that they’re missing in the real world,” said Ramona Pringle, an interactive media producer and a professor of new media at the Ryerson School of Image Arts in Toronto. “It is a really primal experience. It’s about survival. It’s about needing someone.”

Read the full article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/24/fashion/24avatar.html?pagewanted=1

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We’ll be talking about the good stuff: life, love, relationships and identity, and discussing how you can harness the 21st century survival wisdom of the virtual game experience to help you nurture your unique strengths, form meaningful bonds, and live the epic life you deserve.

Check out the press release here, and stay tuned for news and updates!

Ramona

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The Avatar Secrets *Pocket Guide* to an Epic Life

… After all, I haven’t always been a gamer.

When I was young – 8, 10, 12 – I played video games. I had a Gameboy and a Sega Genesis… But then I outgrew them. Or so I thought. I went to highschool and then off to college, had boyfriends, lived in different cities, got a master’s degree, traveled.

Then, 10 months ago, I started playing World of Warcraft.

I’d been exploring gamer culture in my work for a few years, as a producer and in the academic setting, but there was a specific moment when my interest in avatar culture became personal. I was on a shoot for PBS Frontline’s Digital Nation, at Blizzcon, a huge gaming convention in California, and I was blown away by how many couples were there, people walking hand in hand, cuddling, pushing baby carriages. My mind was blown. These were the hard core gamers?

Meanwhile, back in New York, my closest friends and colleagues – women who are beautiful, smart and successful – couldn’t find the right guy. I was beyond intrigued. How was it that these gamers were finding true love, while women who seem to have everything going for them, just couldn’t make that connection?  I needed to get to the bottom of this phenomenon. Could it be that these games are providing digital citizens with something we’re missing in real life?

Arriving at the Austin Convention Center

With digital citizens spending a staggering 3-billion hours a week in online games, I ventured out on a mission to find out what they’re onto that the rest of us should know. How is the internet fostering our primal instincts? And how can we apply this magic to our real lives?

As I set out to answer these questions, I found myself on my own quest for self-discovery. And so as fate would have it, while some people turn to God in their quest for meaning, and others turn to therapy… I decided that I would turn to video games, challenging myself to look for wisdom about love, happiness and meaning in one of the most unlikely places: World of Warcraft.

I knew from the first moment I logged in that my journey would be epic… But as I set out to explore the rugged virtual terrain of World of Wacraft, I had no idea what I was in for, or the profound secrets I was about to uncover.

Ten months, 49 levels, and countless hours of game-play later, I headed to the (in)famous South by South West Festival in Austin, Texas, to share the trials and tribulations of heartbreak and hardware malfunctions, the sage wisdom gained in conversations over all-night dungeon runs, and the unlikely lessons about life, success, love and perseverance I’ve learned from my ongoing adventure in online worlds.

During my session at SXSW, I talked about my own journey and shared the 10 Avatar Secrets to Real Life and Love that I’ve posted here – about knowing who you are, allowing yourself to rely on someone else, and being prepared for conflict. The audience was a mix of seasoned gamers and people who had never played an online game before, and about half of the crowd was female. The response was inspiring, as people opened up and shared their own experiences, online and in the real world. 90 minutes after a one-hour presentation, I was still speaking with people who had come out to the session.

Learning to live an Epic Life

Some people wanted to tell me about the profound connections they’ve formed in online worlds, while other’s opened up about their struggles to find meaningful connections and love. That was a big one. In fact, the most common response I got was how much this pattern I’d noticed, the increasing inability to “connect” in real life, resonated with people.

Over the days that followed my presentation, it was interesting to see which themes from the Avatar Secrets kept recurring in conversation. Connection topped the list.

Here are some of the other topics that everyone, regardless of age or gender, wanted to talk about:

• People are hungry for meaningful connection.

In the days following the presentation, men and women approached me to share their own stories, from the Austin Convention Center, to the dance floors of Austin, to the Dallas airport tarmac. A woman named Andrea said, “As you were talking about how hard it’s becoming for people to connect in the real world, I thought that is me. The whole story was me. I go out, I meet people, but the relationships just never seem to go anywhere.” It’s a pattern, and a troubling one. People want to connect, but they can’t, and then they start feeling terrible about themselves. But my message to women like Andrea is that it’s not their fault. And while World of Wacraft may seem like an unlikely place to glean relationship advice, I truly believe that the lessons we can learn from online games - the Avatar Secrets - can help us forge meaningful connections in the real world.

Sharing the Avatar Secrets to Real Life & Love at SXSW

• Being connected doesn’t mean we’re connecting.

Could it be that our connective devices are part of the reason we’re not connecting? The brilliant Doug Rushkoff has talked about this at length, including in his book “Program or be Programmed”. Sitting in a session at SXSW, with hundreds of people gathered together, typing into their smartphones, it is evident just how distancing our connective devices can be. We’re physically together, but emotionally apart. Massively Multiplayer Online games enable the opposite experience – for us to be emotionally connected to each other and engaged, despite our distance. So how do we learn from these games, and re-engage in real life? That is one of the questions that has inspired my journey into online worlds.

• We’ve got it all figured out… But we still don’t have the answer.

Here’s the big question that keeps coming up: How is it that these women who seems to have everything going for them, can’t seem to find the right guy? Now, it’s not just women, it’s men too, but anytime I have this conversation with a women she either respond by saying “that’s me” or “that’s my best friend/sister/colleague.” Our society promotes independence and self-sufficiency, and a great many of us have become very good at taking care our ourselves. But to what end? Is it helping us? Is it making us happy? Is it sustainable? In the survival, quest-based realm of World of Warcraft, you quickly learn the value in relying on others. There are rarely bonus points for competing a quest by yourself.

Playing Along: The SXSW Crowd Select their Avatars

• A Quest Partner is romantic.

Life is nothing, if not an epic quest. Wouldn’t it be nice to know there was someone who had your back? Someone who could balance your weaknesses, keep an eye out for you, and come to rely on you in return? This has been a hugely valuable lesson in my own journey, and it is documented in many of the Avatar Secrets. By knowing who you are and what your strengths are, you learn who to surround yourself with to make life easier and more enjoyable. When you sign up to the game, you choose to play a “class” of avatar, like a hunter or a healer. A hunter may be able to protect a healer, but he needs the healer to keep him safe, too. Who wouldn’t find that romantic?

• We want to be a part of something bigger than ourselves.

It’s sort of counter-intuitive, but I believe that one of the things that makes World of Warcraft more appealing than Second Life is that you’re given less choice, when it comes to choosing your avatar. You can be whoever you want to be, within a set race and class. You belong somewhere. You have a lore, a history. Part of the allure of these virtual worlds is that they give us a sense of community, and by joining the legions of other night elves or taurens, you are adopting a lineage and becoming a part of a legacy, greater than yourself. That way, when you enter into the world, you are completing quests not just for yourself, but for all of those who have come before you. And we all know how good it feels to do things for others.

• Cashing in your gold.

The lessons from online games can be extremely powerful. But, to actualize that powerful force, you need to cash in your gold. What do I mean by that? It is only by applying the wisdom of game worlds to real life – and living by the Avatar Secrets – that we fully recognize the powerful potential of games. If you don’t apply that magic to your real life, the wisdom remains inside the game like gold tokens never cashed in. But if you can learn from your experiences in the game and apply that knowledge – of self, of perseverance, of balance and communication – to your life, you will be a winner.

What I’ve listed here is a sampling of some of the “hot topics” and recurring themes from my many memorable conversations at SXSW. I’ll be writing more about all of this over the coming days and weeks, and look forward to hearing your input, too!

Ramona

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Not going to SXSW? Join the conversation by posting your questions for Avatar Secrets on the Hired Guns forum!

Jacek Grebski also posted a nice shout out to the Avatar Secrets session in his f3fundit blog “Games take over at SXSW Interactive”

Thanks for all of the support! Austin is going to be Epic!

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