Virtual Lives

Today I'm going to talk about something that I believe to be more fun and interesting...video games, in particular orpgs (online role-playing games) or other online games which involve the creation and use of an avatar persona. For those of you who are unaware (or just cant remember off the top of your mind) what an avatar is, it is the virtual or physical representation of the player in the virtual world of a game or other form of virtual or physical activity (such as say the table top Dungeons and Dragons).
Now, the most famous orpg (or mmorpg (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) in this case) is probably World of Warcraft. In this game like all others in which you the player create a persona, there is a set collection of potential models. It is in this creation of the character that the player first identifies with their new avatar persona as it looks, acts, and is named what they want it to be (or technically what they want it to be within the constraints of the Terms and Conditions of the game, as well as total number of letters allowed and removing, of course, names that are already taken).
Meadows (2008:51) argues that experiences create a grounding of belief. “People in virtual worlds build things, use them, sell them, trade them and discuss them. When another person confirms what I am seeing, places value on it, spends time working to pay for it, buys it, keeps it, uses it, talks about it, gets emotional about it, and then sells it – this tells me there is something real happening. The suspension of disbelief has become a grounding of belief”
Meadows raises a fair point here in that by removing or putting aside disbelief that means belief can be seen more clearly, however some people chose to belief and even see different things, in effect an illusion of reality. But whose to say that what they see is the illusion and that what we see is the reality? What if what someone else sees is the reality and all that we see is an illusion? But enough philosophical talk back to the case and point of virtual worlds. Meadows statement seems to be in reference to the newly rising game 'Second Life', where people can create and do almost anything and even earn real money through selling game items that are, in all technicality, nothing more then strings of codex on a computer system somewhere.
Personally, I disagree with Meadows statement as it is more than just the 'suspension of disbelief' that creates belief as different people believe different things. Some people believe in Christianity, some in Muslim, others in Pastafarianism and others still in Scientology. Just because someone beliefs in something different to you doesn't make it any less real to them or to you it just means that they have different things which govern them and that is fine, as what are we if not creatures of belief?