In written works and interviews you've cited some key influences, including lessons from the fields of psychology and game design -- but I think the most interesting connection is the influence that comic books and animation had on your design theories.  At what point did you begin thinking about comics as a design model, and what made you start thinking that way?

JB: The decision to use brightly-colored smiley heads was initially a knee-jerk decision on  my part, but I later decided it was a good one for several reasons.  My initial rationale was that I wanted to avoid offending people by using drawings.  I mean, if you’re only going to offer 16 standard avatars, you probably want to avoid drawing the standard caucasian male with short black hair parted on the side, the token black man and woman, etc.  If you take the appoach of trying to draw actual heads (or worse, using photographs) you run the risk of alienating everyone in your audience.  Microsoft's Comic Chat took this approach, but you'll notice they also included a couple more, uh, abstract figures such as an alien.  That alien is VERY important, because it allows people who are alienated by the stock avatars to pick something that they can relate to.  It says, very loudly: NONE OF THE ABOVE.  You'll notice something similar going on with the heads in Worlds Away.

So, less realism equals more flexibility.

JB: Well, the problem with making virtual worlds too realistic is that you start to focus more on the external and less on the internal.  It prevents you from exploiting the powers of the imagination to their fullest extent.  In the Palace, I can instantly turn into a helium balloon and float to the ceiling and back down.  I can do this without having to trouble the programmer or world designer to design "floating" into the things the world allows.  The Palace allows it by virtue of what it doesn't do.

Game designers face a similar problem: "realism versus playability."

JB: Yes.  Text-only chat has a huge benefit which is utterly lost when you go for too much realism.  That benefit is that it allows all of us to communicate from the insides on an equal footing - cerebrum to cerebrum, soul to soul.  The nice thing about the smiley heads is that they are universal - everyone can relate to them, because they represent what you are on the inside, not what you are on the outside.  I also liked the fact that they were connected to a piece of pop iconography (the smiley button).  Some other visual worlds I've since seen, including Worlds Chat, Habitat/Worlds Away and Alpha World use full figured humanoid Avatars with legs.  I think heads work better, since the sense organs in the head are our primary methods of communication.  Our bodies from the neck down are used primarily for interaction and locomotion in the physical (not virtual) world.  When we talk to people, we look into their faces.

What other ideas were influential in the early stages of the Palace?

JB: A few weeks after I made my first smiley heads, someone recommended I check out the book Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud.  This helped me clarify why the smiley heads worked.  The book is itself a comic book, the narrator being an abstract version of Scott McCloud with opaque glasses.  One panel I remember being strongly affected by shows a much more realistic drawing of McCloud, with a caption that says something like, "Would you have been as willing to read the book up to this point if I looked like THIS?"

I started thinking about the concept of "masking" a lot around the time I first read this book.

Thanks for bringing that up: I've noticed when you talk about the Palace and the internet in general, you often come back to the word 'masking'.  What do you mean by that, in terms of an online experience?

JB: One of the earliest references I can find to masking is in an old design document from November of 94, which can be found on my website.  In a section called "Palace Precepts" I said that the palace should be "social" and "cartoony."  Here's another quote from that document:

MASKING (Anonymity)
The Palace provides a measure of anonymity over normal social interactions. This is because each user is hidden behind a generic smiley face icon. I believe this should be maintained, as it has a definite (positive) effect on participants behavior. People tend to behave more "loosely" in this environment.  The (eventual) addition of voice communications will adversely affect the level of anonymity, and probably cause people to be more inhibited in the Palace. A suggested enhancement is to use digital signal processing to make each voice sound like a cartoon voice. In addition to being "fun", this will help maintain the anonymity level.

So, is the phenomenon of masking a byproduct, a requirement, or just another design decision?

JB: Masking is not a byproduct - it is both a design decision and a choice made by the visitors to a Palace.  You can choose to wear a mask, or you can choose to wear a photograph of yourself.  The byproduct of masking is (hopefully) less inhibited behavior, quicker bonding, and perhaps quicker addiction.  I should mention that my desire for abstract graphics and masking is also reflective of my own personality type.  My personal avatars tend to be highly abstract.  I'm one of those people who has a relatively hard shell - I don't as a rule like to let people see underneath the shell.

You're the man in the smiley mask.

JB: I'm an introvert.  There are other personality types of course, and I find that more extroverted people don't generally need masking as much.  I've observed that a lot of people feel the need for less abstraction in virtual worlds and more "realism".  For example, a recent Rolling Stone article on The Palace says that "The expressive power of avatars at ThePalace sites is limited".  In my mind, what they view as limited, I view as an asset.

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