PERMISSION TO HUG

Francis Chang has found the secret to bringing fully consensual physical expressions of affection into an online world, and it’s contained in a see-through box that’s stuck to her butt.

“There's this big invisible cube on my ass that holds the script,” she tells me, smiling. “So as long as you wear this attachment, you can hug people.”

This script, and another script that works in tandem with it, represents the code motor that powers the choreography for two avatars who want to come together, even across a crowded room, and warmly embrace.

“The main script listens for a voice command,” Francis explains, “and then when you tell it to hug someone, it scans nearby avatars for the person you wanted to hug. Then, when it finds [you], the second script asks [you] for animation rights. If you accept, the script goes into full gear. And moves my avatar into position to hug your avatar, and then we both play the hug animation.” (The animation for the hug was created by Launa Fauna, Francis Chung’s collaborator in the effort to bring more love into the world.)

As an avatar, Francis is a slender Asian girl with full lips, so when it’s time for her to give me a hug demonstration, I slip on my Hunter S. Thompson-esque avatar. I figure that’ll make for cooler screenshots. There’s another reason for doing that, too.

“I don’t want to make a longer explanation to my real life girlfriend why I’m hugging a babe,” I tell Francis, paradoxically embarrassed.

The run-up to the embrace looks like this, in the text window:

“Francis Chung: /hug ham”
“Hug Attachment (super long): Francis would like give you a hug. Say to accept.” [And here, if you’re inclined, you click Yes in the dialog window that appears, or type Yes in chat. It’s not just a permission request, to have your avatar animated-- it’s a way or insuring mutually consensual embracing.]
“Francis gives Hamlet a big hug.”

The hug that follows is warm and full-bodied, with arms around waist and cheeks pressed into shoulders or mussed hair, as a kicker to seal the deal. No sideways, heterosexual guy half-hug, this; no from-the-shoulders-up, awkward Christmas party affair, either.

In the realm of online worlds, the hug of Francis Chung and Launa Fauna heralds something of a mini-breakthrough. For unless I’ve missed some recent innovation, this embrace of theirs is the first credible display of player-driven physical affection to appear in an online, fully 3D world. (Hand-holding, furtive avatar bumping, or sitting position clutches notwithstanding.) And by bringing real substance, so to speak, to all the flirtatious and affectionate text that players have had to settle for, up to now, it might herald a kind of mini-revolution, too. What happens to all that pent up demand to touch each other, when it’s finally met? What happens to all that sassy eloquence with which people in the online world have charmed and seduced each other, up to now?

“It's brilliant viral marketing, when you think about it,” Francis tells me. “Every person that gets hugged instantly goes, ‘I LOVE THIS! I WANT THIS!’” And as Launa Fauna tells me in instant message, sales of their hug attachment at her store have been brisk, in the week since it hit her shelves. So far, she says, “I'd guess more in the 150 range.”

“I hope it'll add to the general happiness of Second Lifers,” Francis Chung says, beaming. “Launa tells me she always does an ‘Awww’ whenever she sees people hugging. She camps her store sometimes [to watch].”