The use of avatar to mean online virtual bodies was popularised by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 cyberpunk novel Snow Crash. Other early uses of the term include Lucasfilm and Chip Morningstar's 1986 online role-playing game Habitat, and the 1989 pen and paper role-playing game Shadowrun. Because of its ethically-nuanced narrative approach, he took the Hindu word associated with a deity's manifestation on earth in physical form, and applied it to a player in the game world. Due to the ethical content of his story, Garriott wanted the real player to be responsible for their character he thought only someone playing 'themselves' could be properly judged based on their in-game actions. In this game, Garriott desired the player's character to be their earth self manifested into the virtual world. The use of the term avatar for the on-screen representation of the user was coined in 1985 by Richard Garriott for the computer game Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar. You stand in a throng of multifleshed being, mind avatared in all its matter, on a broad avenue winding through a city of blue trees with bright red foliage and living buildings growing from the soil in a multitude of forms. The humans build a 'galactic receiver' that allows its users to engage in 'artificial realities'. In the story, humans receive messages from an alien galactic network that wishes to share knowledge and experience with other advanced civilizations through 'songs'. In Norman Spinrad's novel Songs from the Stars (1980), the term avatar is used in a description of a computer generated virtual experience. It was first used in a computer game by the 1979 PLATO role-playing game Avatar. The word avatar is ultimately derived from the Sanskrit word ( avatāra / ˈ æ v ə t ɑːr, ˌ æ v ə ˈ t ɑːr/) in Hinduism, it stands for the 'descent' of a deity into a terrestrial form.

Second life forums anime midieval sims