A little over a month ago, an article came out about a Chinese MMO company requiring players to prove their gender via webcam or face termination. The company, Aurora Technology (a subsidiary of Shanda Entertainment), has already banned a number of accounts where male players were playing as female characters, though -- oddly enough -- they have stated that females will be allowed to continue playing as male characters.
Obviously, this has caused a minor uproar in the gaming community, as mentioned everywhere from Kotaku to Joystiq, who actually questions the veracity of this news. And while it is possible for this to be just another rumor, the fears surrounding this 'news' are worth examining. In MMOs, it isn't usual for players to create characters of the opposite gender, as I briefly mentioned in the last post, for a myriad of reasons. Some players choose this simply because the opposite gender can be more visually pleasing to stare at for hours at a time -- particularly when the models are attractive, such as the voluptuous* female Night Elves for male players (no, really, just look at their dance). Some players players choose this because they might better enjoy adopting the identity of the opposite gender; there are female players, for instance, who play as male toons to escape the (potential) harassment that they may face while playing, or male characters who play female to try and get free handouts, or even players who do so because they identity more with that gender, and have found WoW to be a safe(r) outlet. Other players yet might choose this because their intended roleplaying character/concept happens fit that gender. And, of course, there are others still who may have various and sundry reasons for opting to do this. As a result, some players will automatically assume that every player they meet is male (following the "no girls on the internets" rule), while many others use the avatar's gender to err on the safe side, or to respect the player's privacy.
Regardless of reason, the gender choice has always been available in MMOs, and players have always been aware of this when socializing with others (for better or for worse)**. Hoax or not, players have come out of the woodwork to defend the right to choose their avatar's gender.
*Debatably, since they also look anorexic.
** I'll cover how real life gender affects a player's experience within WoW in another post.
1 comment:
This is a great story about a big issue in game studies: gender and gaming, which gets at core issues about identity and play. As a blogger, this is also a great opportunity for you to do some detective work on your own, rather than just present the coverage of Joystiq and Kotaku. The big game blogs often provide links to smaller blogs and have been helpful in publicizing my own work, even if it is in academic rather than popular venues.
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