gender-bending
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The Guild Counsel: Gender choice and guild drama
There are many reasons for guild drama, but one of the most challenging comes from a single choice that we make before our characters even see the light of day. In MMOs, character creation can consist of full customization, or it can simply be a choice among some pre-sets, but the majority of games give you the choice to pick your gender. Even if you select a non-human race, there are usually male versions and female versions. For many players, this is a no-brainer, and they play as their own gender. But many others opt to go cross-gender, and that can lead to drama later on, even if it's unintended. In this week's Guild Counsel, let's look at the topic of gender to see why it can be so problematic and how guilds can avoid potential drama from it.
Free furry, gender-swapped DLC for Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3
Penny Arcade's On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3 is bending the rules of gender and species with a free DLC pack available now on Steam (and set to hit Xbox 360 soon). The free DLC – labeled the "Fanfiction Pack" – adds gender-swapped versions of all playable characters, turning Tycho into Tyche, Gabe into Gabbie, Moira into Manuel, and Jim into Benjamina.The pack also adds a "furry" option that makes Tycho a lion, Gabe a pony, Moira an American Red Fox and Jim a turtle. Both packs alter gameplay and cutscenes, a feat that took a bit of extra work for Zeboyd, and, as Penny Arcade notes, makes the developer "very cool."
The WoW Factor, page 2
Correct answer: d – older men Men are 4 times as likely as women to gender-bend in WoW. The older a male player is, the more likely they are to gender-bend.
The WoW Factor: How much do you know about the players behind the avatars?
How much do you think you know about your fellow WoW gamers? WoW Insider brings you this exclusive quiz designed by MMORPG researcher Nick Yee, based on actual U.S. data from the PARC PlayOn 2.0 study linking player survey data with their armory data. Think you know what players are really like? Come find out what your WoW Factor is. (Answers and conclusions following the quiz.) 1. The average age of WoW players is: a. 18 b. 24 c. 30 d. 36 2. Which of these groups of players is most likely to be gender-bending? a. younger women (<30) b. older women (>30) c. younger men (<30) d. older men (> 30)
Storyboard: Say yes to the dress
You all know her as soon as you see her, and no matter what your gender, you're inherently terrified of her. She looks like a woman on screen, and everyone roleplaying with her needs to treat her as such, or the whole idea of working in a shared universe gets shot to pieces. But you also know that she's not acting like any woman you've ever met -- and that's not a good thing. You know full well that behind that catgirl with the "waist" slider turned to minimum and the "chest" slider turned to max, there is a bearded man of frightening girth. I don't understand, for the life of me, what makes playing a technically female character so appealing to certain men. Note the use of the word "technically" there -- the character's presumed genetic makeup might be oriented toward the fairer sex, but the character's not acting like a woman. And after having seen this same thing over and over again, in a fit of pique, I've decided that it's worth examining. How do you play a female character well if you're a man, or vice versa for women playing guys?
Drama Mamas: Time to man up
Dodge the drama and become that player everyone wants in their group with the Drama Mamas. Lisa Poisso and Robin Torres are real-life mamas and experienced WoW players -- and just as we don't want our precious babies to be the ones kicking and wailing on the floor of checkout lane next to the candy, neither do we want you to become known as That Guy on your server. We're taking your questions at DramaMamas (at) WoW (dot) com. Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we pretend to be a gender we're not. When we discussed boys playing girl characters before, we all pretty much agreed that it was cool as long as there was no deception involved. Roleplaying = yay. Experimentation = good. Hiding your true identity in a non-roleplaying environment = uh oh. Unfortunately, for One Big Liar, what began as experimentation and a wee bit of roleplaying evolved into a full-scale reputation for being a "real girl." Uh oh, indeed.
The Queue: The Scantily Clad Edition
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.Hello, everybody! I'm going to jump right into things today because I'm sure at least a dozen people will want to shiv me for my answer to our first question, and I'd like to give everyone time to do that.Andrew R. asked..."Why do the females in WoW always wear such scantily clad gear? I don't see how plate armor that exposes half your upper body will do you any good when someone wants to stab you. Isn't it kind of degrading to real women who play the game?"
Character Re-Customization available for a small fee [UPDATED]
The WoW launcher was updated this morning, and just now what was behind that curtain was revealed: Character Re-Customization. What does that mean? In short, for a fee of $15, you can rebuild your character, with some restrictions. You can change your gender, face, skin, hair, and name, but not your race or class. You can do hair in-game already via the barbershop, so I imagine the ability to do those via this service is just for convenience. The real draw is the gender and face options.Don't want to play your Female Undead Warlock anymore because they move funny? It's okay, turn them into a way awesome Male Undead Warlock. Sick of looking at your Male Draenei? Try out something more... pleasing to the eyes. This is a feature people have been asking for since WoW launched, so I'm surprised it took so long for it to happen. If you're taking full advantage of the feature, it's really not a bad deal considering a paid name change is $10. For an extra $15, you can more or less have a new character. Well, sort of.
The Daily Grind: MM-oh, you're cute!
Every time the discussion of why guys play girl characters comes up, inevitably someone will chime in with the statement about playing female characters "because they get free stuff." To be honest, in 8+ years of MMO gaming, I can't think of a time when I got free stuff just for being present and incarnate as a female avatar. I would note that in the same time-frame I've seen guys and girls on female characters who were absolutely horrible flirts and often were given lots of items. So for today we'd like to ask you -- have you ever noticed that people give you stuff if you're flirty while on a female avatar? For the guys (or folks who play on male avatars) have you ever given items to folks on female avatars just because they're girls, or is it because of some other factor? Do you think that it's more likely that you'll get free stuff just because you're playing a female avatar, or do you think it's a combination of factors? Is the "get free stuff for flirting" restricted to female avatars only? Have any of you folks playing male avatars ever gotten a goodie from a female avatar for being "hot" and/or flirty?
Poll: More men play women than women play men
Perhaps brought on by the news that a Chinese MMO wants to reveal gender bending gamers, Cary posted a pretty interesting poll over on the WoW LJ, asking readers what their gender is and what sex they play as on their main character. The general consensus seems to be that most people play as their own gender, but overwhelmingly, more women play as their own gender than men. The poll itself seems a little off to me, as it's really pointless to compare the percentages given, but by crunching the numbers a bit (and please remember how bad at math I am), I get that 40% of men who answered play the game as women, while only 11% of women who answered play the game as men. Here's more data on this, that we've covered before.Very interesting. We've touched on the reasons for gender bending in game a few times before, and there are all kinds of reasons why people play as characters of the opposite sex, from staring at an attractive behind to garnering more money and attention (or less attention) from other players, to roleplaying a character.But really, none of that matters too much-- it's just a game, and for whatever reason, people are welcome to play it as they please. A better question might be how you refer to the gender of other players. I've gotten in trouble a few times here by referring to players on the forums (including CMs, way back when I started) as one gender when it turns out they're actually another, so eventually I just decided to call it how I see it: if someone plays a female character I call them "her," and a male character gets called "him." For people playing a different gender, sure, it might come off a little strange. But it comes with the territory, I guess, of pretending to be someone else for a while.
Who are the gender-benders?
Academic MMO weblog Terra Nova is looking at gender-bending in cyberspace at the moment, delving into the phenomenon by asking the simple question "Who's doing it?". While many men who play female characters use the "nice ass" line--if they're going to be staring at a pixellated posterior all day, it might as well be a pretty one--Terra Nova tries to go beyond this by looking at the personalities of gender-bending players.The comments on the post are also interesting, covering identity tourism, transgender and GLBT issues as well as adding several more accounts of gender-bending (or not) into the mix.
