character-gender
Latest
Gender in World of Warcraft
Sometimes I flail around to try and come up with a way to start talking about a subject. So this time, I'm just going to go straight to the link - this article by Slate about why people play the characters they do in World of Warcraft, especially the genders they choose, interested me. One of the reasons is because it confirms with actual research an argument I've heard a lot as I've played the game. To quote the article: Because players see their avatars from a third-person perspective from behind, men are confronted with whether they want to stare at a guy's butt or a girl's butt for 20 hours a week. Or as the study authors put it in more academic prose, gender-switching men "prefer the esthetics of watching a female avatar form." This means that gender-switching men somehow end up adopting a few female speech patterns even though they had no intention of pretending to be a woman. There's more to it, though - what I really find interesting is that when men choose to play women in game, (which they do far more often than women do - 23% of men play female characters, while only 7% of women play male characters) they tend to start talking like women, or at least, like what they believe women talk like. But the paper discussed that while the men use language that fits their stereotype of what women behave like, they can't emulate how women actually move their characters in game. Men, according to the study from Information, Communication and Society that prompted the article, tend to stand further away from groups, back up more often, and jump more often, and this behavior doesn't change when they're playing woman characters. I find the study a little limited. There's a lot more to gender and identity than it covered. But I do find it interesting that so many male WoW players play as women, for the reason that's been accepted all along, but in a way no one expected. The idea that these men, deliberately or not, emulate how they believe women communicate while playing a character that is one, whether or not they actually do communicate that way, but are betrayed by a kind of body language unique to the game world is fascinating. I'd love to see more work done on this. Why do so few women play as men? Why do those women that do play as men make that choice? What about gender identities that aren't so binary, how do the differences between cisgendered and transgendered players factor into it? In a way, World of Warcraft can serve as a distillation of the real world (remember the corrupted blood plague was used by researchers to model how virus outbreaks work in the real world) and I'd like to see more work done on it. With thanks to my nemesis Chase for the tip
The issue of gender and character creation
Earlier today, reddit user Izunai asked on /r/wow whether or not it's appropriate for someone to play a character with a gender different from their own -- more specifically, whether he, as a man, is allowed to play a woman. His question begins with, "Is this frowned upon or otherwise strange?" This is a topic that I've personally found very interesting over the many years I've been playing World of Warcraft and MMOs/RPGs in general. I've never considered it strange to play the gender opposite who you are in real life. Most of my characters in games are women. I also play men, I have male alt characters in WoW, but the majority of my characters are women. My death knight is a man. My paladin is a woman. My priest is a woman. My warrior is a woman. My rogue, who is now my main character, is also a woman.
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?
Anti-Aliased: The mailbag edition
Well hello there intrepid Massively readers! This week, instead of my usual selection of complaints crammed into the tight space of a single column, I've decided to do something different. This Monday, I opened up a call for questions on anything MMO related on the Massively Facebook fan page, the Massively Twitter, and my own personal Twitter. You guys didn't disappoint, and you certainly sent me more than a few intriguing e-mails.So, for the past three days, I've been preparing responses to some of the questions that landed in my inbox. What did intrepid readers ask me to answer? Whose e-mails did I select from the pile of text I received? What is the airspeed of an African Swallow? These and many other questions (except that swallow one, that one's been done to death, go Google it or something) shall be answered after the break! Thundercats, hoooooooooo!
