Study Claims Men Play Female Avatars to 'Win'

mytrip writes to mention a News.com article about the rationale behind male players playing female avatars in online games. The article says that, while some players are probably exploring 'gender roles, many just want free stuff. From the article: "Kathryn Wright, WomenGamers's consulting psychologist, earlier this decade found that 60 percent of male players who don female avatars, or on-screen personas, do it to gain an advantage in game play. An enthusiast with the online handle Jackpot649 nailed the zeitgeist in his response to the About.com query: 'I'm a guy, but if I gotta look at an avatar all day, I'd sooner look at a female avatar. Plus, people give you more free stuff.'"

Comments

SomethingAwful's experiments

[jpardey]

On SA, there is a column, "Art of Warcraft." Recently, one of the editors has been posing as a female character not only to get massive amounts of gold, but also for the simple pleasure of humiliating gamers.

See Part 1 and Part 2.

Re:SomethingAwful's experiments

[x2A]

If you're going to be so naive as to be taken advantage of, then expect to be taken advantage of... stupidity should have a personal price to match the price it inflicts on the rest of the world.

U need a study?

[in2mind]

They had to do a study find that men hide behind female avtars?

Its been going on in Chat for ages.
Men like to look at female avtars. Whats new?

Re:U need a study?

[Fallingcow]

I even do it on single-player games.

Why?

1. The visuals factor, which has already been discussed. I'd rather look at a chick's butt than a guy's.

2. Even single-player RPGs usually give an advantage to female characters. Everything's a little easier, and there are a few more things you can do, in, say, Fallout II, if you play as a woman. Rarely can you NOT do something that a guy can do (i.e. sleep with a woman, though the guys, notably, can almost never sleep with other guys) and often you can do things that the guys can't.

Re:U need a study?

[owlman17]

Yes, in Might and Magic I, your party had to be all-female if you wanted to survive, make it to the end. Without giving too much away, there's an important town there that drains your hitpoints per step for male characters. Not a few of my friends had to revamp their line-ups midway in the game. I started a bit later than them, so my party of six were all females right from the start.

In that game, its not just an advantage to be female. Its essential.

slash-summary

[underworld]

i for one welcome our gender bending.... *sigh* (you can fill in the rest)

-or-

1. sign up for online game
2. assume female identity
3. ??
4. profit

-or-

in soviet russia, female avatars play games as you

-or-

well... you get picture....

Re:slash-summary

[Ethan Allison]

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these things.

This is why I treat all players in the game as men

[Anonymous Coward]

I give free stuff to people occasionally, but I don't think I've ever given something to a player because of their onscreen gender. I happen to know one of the people I regularly game with is a guy who plays female avatars, and probably a good percentage of the other 'women' I game with are really men. So, I really don't give a crap about someone's gender in game, because chances are, they aren't what their character is anyhow.

My Credo - I play games to have fun, not to meet girls. Doesn't mean I'll never meet a girl in game, I just don't *try* to meet any girls in game. Put another way, I just try to treat everyone equally - all with respect, and trying to be the best teammate I can if I team with them, and I form friendships without caring the gender of the person. I suppose in the process of that, some of the people I become friends with will be female, and some male.

The reason I mention this is, from time to time you see 'articles' on the internet about people who've met wives/husbands through an online game. While I'm sure this has happened occasionally, these 'articles' seem to be more marketting vehicles for the game in question than anything else. Someone who goes into the game trying to find a girlfriend (girls looking for guys would probably have a reasonable level of success finding guys - but maybe not guys they would really like, I dunno) is probably going to open themselves up to foolishness like giving gifts to impress a girl that is really a guy.

The Internet is for Camwhores

[Sarusa]

People even do this on text based mu*s. It's got to be nearly as old as the internet.

You could almost say this is a step towards equality though it's inequality in exploiting uncomfortable (if true) gender stereotypes.

I guess the only question left is whether women playing men are more likely to give stuff to female characters.

Re:duh

[grammar fascist]

I've played a female character once, ages ago, on a MUD. I can't for the life of me remember why - probably thought it was funny. I definitely put one over on one of my best friends...

Anyway, when I first logged on, some high-level male character was in the guild. He dumped a bunch of gold on me, a nice suit of armor, a great sword, kissed me, and took off. It was weird.

And no, I didn't like it. :p Well, I did. Not the kissing part, the equipment part. But it seems like, online, men expect something sensual from you if they give you favors. I suppose it's not that unlike life in that respect.

Trying to be given in-game items?

[stonertom]

Are these people crazy, flirting with/giving gifts to those with female chars? Is there some slight chance there gonna get them to take off there Armor and /sleep with them? If you want to find rendered nudeness there's far better ways than through MMOs

It's just a matter of control.

[ScentCone]

For many in the non-stop-gaming demographic, a female avator is the closest they'll come to having any personal influence over where, and up to what, a relatively large pair of breasts will be.

Re:It's just a matter of control.

[Guppy06]

You underestimate the weight of these male players.

Don't forget closet transsexuals

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a man. I play female characters because I wish I were female, and get no other chance to express myself. I don't do raids in WoW because of Ventrilo.

Re:Don't forget closet transsexuals

[WWWWolf]

And don't forget the almost-but-not-quite transsexuals. I don't, shall we say, feel strongly enough about this to get myself operated, but if there was a widget to turn me to a woman for a day at time, I'd be first in the line. RPGs, however, are good enough a simulation. =)

I also play female characters because it helps me see the world from a different viewpoint. I write stuff. I want the fiction to have interesting characters. It helps not just to see how the world seems to treat females but experience it first-hand.

Also, I don't really know about the fantasy races - people rarely engage in roleplaying online so deeply that they'd actually treat, say, humans and elves fundamentally differently. Try playing a female character, and you see the difference right away, even in RP-light places.

Re:Don't forget closet transsexuals

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly, I think the men wearing a female avatar "to win" far outweigh those that play the female persona because they earnestly wish they were female.

I've gone through a "progression" myself (nothing has really changed, I was transsexual my whole life. Just the lies/reasons I told myself and others have progressed.) First I made a female character because, "if I'm going to stare at a butt for a long time, I may as well stare at a cute butt," then it was "I do it for the items, and the preferencial treatment." Of course, all that flies out the window when you fall in love with a guy as a girl, and are left totally heartbroken that you aren't actually female.

Although, one should never underestimate the ability of a person to deny that they're transsexual. It took me well over 2 years, and my life being a complete mess *after* that particular relationship before I could even admit to myself that it was someting serious. And that was only after yet another failed relationship. By that time the story was "it's just something that I enjoy doing, and this is who I am online, but in real life, I'm a definite man, and I would only act as a female as a fetish."

Now, of course, after having to confront these issues openlyand directly in my real life, my life has turned around, the chronic depression seemed to evaporate, and my interpersonal skills blosomed literally overnight. (Not just "I wasn't so nice, and now I'm nice" but a full "I thought I might be an arrogant, rude, spiteful, confrontational autist, but now I'm a happy, friendly, helpful social queen.") The reason I play a female in game is because "That's what I am, and as I get the opportunities to do so in real life, I will take them to become more female."

I would very deeply like to see people be more understanding of transsexuals in these video games. Stop calling us "creepy" or "freaks", just because we want to present as a female. We're generally not doing it to humiliate you (note: if someone is being exageratingly female like the SA articles above, they *are* probably looking to make you look like an idiot), or make you feel uncomfortable. Often times, just like it was for me, the only way I could truely express myself. I ended up spending all my free time playing WoW as a female, and neglecting my job, my apartment, my kittens, and even my own body because I had to be female.

As for the situation online. If you're lying to people about your gender and inventing stuff just to make it more believable, you're likely just doing it "to win." Although, if you're very much interested in not being dishonest to people about anything but your gender, and get offended if someone "in the know" is making stuff up trying to help you out, then you're very likely in the transsexual side.

Re:Don't forget closet transsexuals

[Trillian_1138]

Just wanted to chime in on the surprisingly large (to me, anyway) trans slashdot population. I'll second the GP in that while I'm off WoW now, when I was playing I didn't use in-game voice chatting software even though I *know* it makes life eaiser. I enjoyed playing not only a female avatar but a female persona - while I'm taking slow baby steps to make my physical body match my mental picture of myself, it was seductively easy to click 'female' in WoW and be in an environment where people treated you as whatever you claimed to be (not saying that always meant being treated better...)

As a side note, I'm gonna say that my understanding of 'transgendered' is different from 'transexual' in that the former is a much broader term while the latter has (to me, anyway) connotations of desiring body modification. So some of the parent posters seem to fall under my understanding of transgendered, even if they don't fall under transsexual. Although I'm also all about the importance of self-labeling, so if any of the parents disagree for their personal label they are, of course, welcome to claim or reject any title they like.
-Trillian

That's basically it

[Quiet_Desperation]

but if I gotta look at an avatar all day, I'd sooner look at a female avatar.

That's the beginning and end of it for me. I don't consider myself to be the characters I play. I'm more of a puppeteer pulling the strings.

Re:That's basically it

[Murodese]

Confirmed. Also, often female characters have had far more time put into things like animation - hoping to hook male gamers. This has the additional side-effect of making the female characters look a lot more 'smooth', and just generally makes for a more enhanced gaming experience. People read into things like this far too often for no good reason, it seems.

Yeah...

[Jesus IS the Devil]

Spin my nipple nuts and call me Sally.

No Surprise, MySpace Experiment

[otisg]

This should be no surprise. About half a year ago I went to one of the BarCamp gatherings where a couple of people presented the results of their study of MySpace, where they found similar behaviour. But they found a lot of other interesting stuff. Here is the link: http://ejohn.org/blog/tags/barcamp/ (there is some actual code there) - scroll down to "Presentation 2: Subverting Social Networks (4:45pm, Sunday)" or just hit the slides directly: http://ejohn.org/files/social.pdf .

Duh:

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what MMORPG is:

Many
Men
Online
Role
Playing
Girls

suggested tag: 'noshit'

[RLiegh]

I mean, is there anyone who wasn't already aware of this?

Re:Creepy

[grammar fascist]

So if i were to ever create a female avatar I wouldn't be running around with a frity name like daisy-sunshine, but instead I'd go for something more macho as to not deceive anyone.

You'd have the fear factor going for you then, too. Women named "Butch" are just scary.

Re:This is why I treat all players in the game as

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Sounds like someone's projecting.

Re:This is why I treat all players in the game as

[BLAG-blast]

And let's admit it, men like to control women, weather they be digital or real. Games just makes it easier for men to control beautiful women.

Nah, but the chick models in AQ2 were skinny and harder to aim at than the guy models.

Re:I feel like...

[Planesdragon]

It's always the female avatars going, "sup, wanna hunt?" and you immediately know their gender. Alternatively, "ekek ^^; brb my sis wants on the pc", you know it's female. There's really [no] question involved.

Nice to know you're so shallow.

The only women I personally know who play or have played MMORPGs are very much the "sup, wanna hunt" type. Those I met via the MMORPG who I know to be female are as good-or-better on average than the men.

Women can and do roleplay, be it tabletop or PC, on a level just as good as the men. They tend to be a bit weaker (in gross average) in some other departments of the game, but no more than a guy who's just a moron. (You know, the kind who presumes he knows how the game works, and anyone who disagrees is either a noob or a chick.)

Study Claims Men Play Female Avatars to 'Win'

[kcidybom]

That's interesting. A friend of mine and his wife switch - his avatar is female and hers male. It's funny to hear her tell her hubby "Hay hon, shake your ass a little. (he does) She giggles "Isn't that cute?"

I am a man man!

[ArcticCelt]

I played WOW until 60. My policy was exactly don't ask don't tell. That's why I hate using things like ventrilo because then you hear the big raspy voice coming out of that hot looking priest avatar. But in end game at lev 60, if you want to do raids, you have no choice (ventrilo becomes very useful) and that's when you realize how many women are not women :). I admit that instinctively I felt compelled to help and protect the chicks avatars even if I knew that there was a good chance that she was a dude. Still, personally, I would not be able to play a women. I like role playing and when I was playing it was a total immersion for me and taking the role of a girl is not my thing. No matter the reward. Why? because I am a man man!

On the other hand

[kahrytan]

  Female players have been known to play male characters to avoid being hit on. Who wants to be hit on in a game while in the middle of a battle?

I play female in WoW

[sgant]

My alliance characters are all female because quite frankly, I would rather spend my time looking at a pleasing female form. But contrast that with my horde characters, they're all male. I wonder what that means....other than I spend way too much time playing that silly game.

Re:I play female in WoW

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

You like ladies.. and cows? I've got a 60 Tauren Hunter, so I guess I like cows, too.

Re:This is why I treat all players in the game as

[springbox]

And let's admit it, men like to control women, weather they be digital or real. Games just makes it easier for men to control beautiful women.

Don't be so ignorant. There are a lot of games where you're stuck with what your character looks like for a potentially long time. Since I have a choice, I don't pick the often fugly males. I don't know where you pulled your idea out of, but basing your opinion of everyone on a stereotype can be pretty offensive.

Re:I feel like...

[Hannah E. Davis]

Interestingly, I'm a girl in real life, and since I don't act super-girly unless I'm really bored and actually want free crap for my character (which is pretty rare, especially since I can't keep the cute persona up very long), people often assume I'm male. My male friends, on the other hand, know exactly what the average gamer guy expects a girl to sound like, so they roleplay it to the max. Needless to say, they get guys fawning all over their female avatars with no questions asked.

As a rule of thumb, if a person says they're female and acts normal, they probably are. If, on the other hand, they act sickeningly cute and helpful and otherwise girly, it's typically a safe bet that you're dealing with one or more of the following: a man, a pre-teen girl, or a really fat/ugly girl who acts cute on the internet to get the attention she so desperately needs.

Re:Sounds like

[megaditto]

You are missing the point:

Females are mean, nasty, egocentric furies bent of World domination

The reason why girl-avatars get more stuff is because males are generous to females. The reason male-avatars do not get more stuff is because females are stingy and treat males like shit!

Online gaming has helped uncover the century-old conspiracy: females wish to exploit male generosity to climb to the top, giving little in return for our help.

What can we do about it?

Re:Yes, but 60% is insane

[werewolf1031]

often with some bullshit defensive story about preferring to look at female characters' backsides.

I call bullshit on your supposed bullshit. Honestly? That is exactly why I play female characters in Guild Wars. I mean, c'mon, which would YOU rather look at for hours on end? The backside of some burly male warrior, or the nicely curved backside of any of the female characters? Since there's no inherant gameplay advantage to a character being either male or female in that game (stats are identical and gender is strictly a cosmetic aspect), might as well go with whichever one finds more aesthetically pleasing. Not exactly rocket surgery here, folks. And most fellow gamers realise pretty quickly that I'm a guy, because -- shocker! -- they do exactly the same thing for exactly the same reason.

And really, have you seen the female rangers in that game? Eye candy indeed...

I don't think it's anything new

[Klaidas]

I don't think it's anything new - it's been happening all the time. Take, for example, RuneScape. Go to the most crowded server, and the center of a most crowded city. In about 5 minutes, a female(?) character will ask you something like

Hey sweety, want a gf?

Of course, those 11-year-olds (90% of Runescape) will be like "DAMN, SURE DO". And after 3 more minutes, she will say

Could I get some items? I'm a gf, remember?

Re:complete fabrication

[ultranova]

Then what am I? :)

A dude trying to pass as a lady to get free karma.

Didn't anyone tell you that...

[xiangpeng]

MMORPG = Many Men Online Role-Playing Girls?

there are even better ways to win

[dario_moreno]

Coming from the world of online poker : choose a nickname that will angry people, like "ILoveGWBush". That and a female avatar, and people will make plenty of dumb moves against you.

Or, in another reality

[Minwee]

This is World of Warcraft we're talking about. The home of the ugliest male characters in any computer game since the Sinclair ZX80 port of Dig Dug. Why do people have to trot out the old "Durrr... it's because people give girls stuff!" argument when all they have to do is look at the character creation screen to see why many people choose female characters?

Re:This is why I treat all players in the game as

[kubevubin]

I agree. Honestly, when I used to play PSO, I generally preferred using female characters, as their character models are generally more interesting to look at. The guys look like complete douchebags.

I call BS

[WapoStyle]

First of all, who gives items away in game simply because the character standing before them is female? That's just stupid. Secondly, I've leveled male and female characters to level 60 in World of Warcraft (Amazingly I still find time to work and have a family life, imagine that. Stereotype destroyed.) No one has ever given me anything based on my avatar's gender and I would never expect anyone to be stupid enough to do so.

You want free stuff? Roll a dwarf priest.

Re:Sounds like

[E 99]

Females are mean, nasty, egocentric furies bent of World domination...females wish to exploit male generosity to climb to the top, giving little in return for our help. What can we do about it?

The only workable strategy is to form an alliance with one of them.

Re:Specifically...

[glwtta]

Yeah, screw Neverwinter! That "maybe you should talk to one of our male employees" line in the brothel thing was just bullshit! It's not like I was lost; freakin' close minded faux medieval sword-and-sorcery epics...

Only 60%?

[Futaba-chan]

If the article is correct that 60% of the men who cross-play do so to get free stuff or to ogle their pretty avatar, what about the other 40%? That's a huge percentage, given how vanishingly small the trans community is as a fraction of the total population....

Re:An old axiom

[CrystalFalcon]

Wales.

Where women are women,
men are men,
and sheep are nervous.

They're warning signs, people...

[xblackstatic]

Agreed (for the most part); I too am female, and my WoW-mains are also. I've always been somewhat bemused by the whole "girls get free stuff" line because, hell, I never have. Interestingly, when I'm grouping with people I don't know personally I usually find myself being referred to as 'he'; even after I correct people they often still don't believe me. I've got no idea what people think when I'm playing my male characters and I start talking about my boyfriend (or worse, partner).

Conversley, my boyfriend plays a female toon and flirts it up whenever he thinks he can get away with it. We had a few people in our raid almost in tears once because they were so confused as to his gender (people started refering to him as 's/he' and 'his/her'). He's also humilliated several of the resident server tools by playing the 'flirting bimbo' card (for loot, raid spots, gold, anything). Said tools have only later found out they've been had by talking to one of the people in our guild. Often it's me. I hear nothing breaks a gamer's spirt more than hearing, "Oh, 'her'? Yeah, 'she's' my IRL boyfriend."

Perhaps this should be a warning for all you, er, 'hopeful' male gamers out there.

Duh

[hcdejong]

Old adage: this is the internet, where men are men, women are men and 16-yo girls are FBI agents.

pox this, Maureen Dowd

[Travoltus]

The implication is that he treats everyone the same way. Whether he sees them as men or sees them as women, he treats everyone the same way.

He's not an attorney like you.

Wishing a pox on someone over some split hairs is more of a sign of a deranged mind than anything he said.