Idealizing avatar bodies

There is an impressive and fascinating study on avatar bodies from World of Warcraft over at the Iris Gaming Network. The main thrust of the article is how much the average avatar skews toward traditional tropes of beauty, even (or especially) the non-human races. This addresses a couple of the issues I wrote about in this post -- namely, the lack of a wide range of body shape choices other than heroic.

The article mentions the controversy surrounding the introduction of the males of the Blood Elf race, and how Blizzard changed them from their original thin forms to a more muscled shape, and how the community reacted. A great quote from the piece: "From a player's point of view, Blizzard has denied many people the ability to play a character like them, or a character they would like to be. The extreme sexual dimorphism in the races, and the way that Blizzard is quick to "fix" avatars that do not properly fit the ideal, has sent the message to those outside of that body type – not just women, but men as well – that they are not worthy of being represented, that their body types are not good enough for even one avatar in the entire game to represent them."

Have a read of the entire article, and post your thoughts.

[Via Iris Gaming Network]