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All the World's a Stage: If looks could kill
All the World's a Stage is a column for inquisitive minds, playing with roles every Sunday evening. The media usually portrays WoW as a "boy's game." That's not to say girls don't play too, of course -- just that the game is basically about qualities such as aggressiveness and violence, and our culture expects males to be interested in that sort of thing. Whether such a designation is true or not, the "masculine equals violent" stereotype is very pervasive, and it is natural for many male players to begin the game with a powerful and intimidating character in mind. The player may imagine that his avatar is warm and kind-hearted inside, but outwardly, his character looks as though he could rip out your throat with a flick of his pinky finger.But there are many men out there who don't like such exaggerated manliness in their characters, just as there are many women who don't want their character to look like a dainty barbie doll. Being a person isn't just about just one gender attribute, after all. Indeed, female characters in WoW can achieve a full range of human attributes in their appearance; they can look friendly and intelligent, yet lightning quick and deadly at the same time. However, the appearance of male characters is often so filled to the brim with "strength and honor" that there's not much room left for any other human quality.
Shigeru Miyamoto is a man -- and how!
True story: Shigeru Miyamoto is so manly, he doesn't sleep on a mattress like us mortals, but a specially constructed plinth, fashioned exclusively from glass shards and exposed six-inch nails. Also, when he's bored, he wrestles prides of lions. For fun. When (after several weeks) he tires and grows hungry, he chows down on some of the sharks he's killed with his bare hands. Another time, he once freed a trapped kitten from beneath an overturned tanker truck by lifting the vehicle himself with a single finger -- whilst working out.And we presume that's why AskMen.com deem our Shiggy to be the 19th manliest man of 2007. That, and a bunch of other stuff about video games.
