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MMO Bans Men Playing As Women
jkcity writes "In a bizarre move Aurora Technology the owners of the King of the World MMORPG has taken the unusual step of banning men who play women characters but the ban itself does not stretch to women playing men. If you want to play as a woman now in game you have to prove you are a women via web cam. This is something that people ask for in many mmorpgs I myself have seen people say people who play women in EVE online as being some kind of degenerate but how long can a policy of verification by web cam last since its so easy to get around it doesn't seem to solve much and is an insult to many."
no role playing in a Role Playing Game?
Time to become a transsexual.
If I am playing a MMORPG, I am going to be spending a lot of time looking at my avatar. Why can't my avatar be something I like looking at?
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
... for the Aurora guys to look at gamer girls on their webcams.
RichM
Data Center Knowledge
I've played male and female chars in mmo's and have had no problems. It depends on the person playing, if they are going to cause trouble they are going to cause trouble no matter what gender.
Also, no matter how hard you beg the developer, that hot elven chick just won't be that way in real life. And this step doesn't get you closer to that.
...as suddenly, the in-game populations turn to about 80% male, 20% female.
And that's a conservative guess...I bet most would skew it even more towards male players.
This is something that people ask for in many mmorpgs I myself have seen people say people who play women in EVE online as being some kind of degenerate but how long can a policy of verification by web cam last since its so easy to get around it doesn't seem to solve much and is an insult to many.
Maybe the mods are to blame for that, but wow.
If it's just a one-time webcam thing, the people who are really desperate can have their mom or sister appear on the webcam for them. Even Grandma Nana counts as a woman!
This is a role playing game. One of the attributes of a role is gender. And you get to choose. I play WoW and I have both male and female chars. This is quite normal IMO. You fond out the true gender of somebody when having them in voice chat. You can be friends with them and adventure together before/without that.
Also would this one-sided policy not directly violate anti-discrimination laws? Seems to me it does.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Yah sure, they want webcams for all the female characters to "verify their gender". What you missed in your article is the fine print:
Webcam rules:
1.) Webcam image quality must be sufficient to see subject clearly.
2.) No objects should be placed so as to obstruct at least the top half of the body.
3.) Subject should be nude.
4.) No fatties.
It's not too hard for a men to disguise as a women, specially under a webcam feed. Really motivated (and weird) dudes will certainly keep playing as women if they want to.
So can I not be a 400 year-old wise mage, when I'm neither old, nor wise?
And all of a sudden, female avatars started gathering more male players than ever before trying to get them into their multiplayer party, and harass them with guild recruitments. :-p
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
So there was something unaccepatble about me playing as Chun Li in SF2 so many years ago?
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Like, there are going to be some existing male-as-female players, and to bring them in line with the policy, you'd have to make the female avatar male. Doesn't an RPG have to have some storyline reason for this?
(If they're planning to "grandfather" ["grandmother?"] existing male-as-female avatars, that'll probably create even more problems for them.)
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
When Sexybabe88, the Night Elf Priestess, gets on vent and sounds like the guy from "Saw"... my heart breaks a little every time it happens :(
AFAIK there's not significant roleplaying in most MMORPGs.
;).
;).
So, say you're a straight guy and not into role playing. Why would you prefer looking at a male character for hours? Usually the camera position in such games would be _behind_ the character, so you'd be staring at the male character's ugly back or butt for hours
While the male characters are unlikely to be as bad as goatse.cx, given the larger numbers of males in the game developing industry - I'm sure the female characters are going to look better than the male ones
If I control an animal, robot, car or vehicle in a game, I sure don't expect it to resemble me.
A little known MMO that I have never heard of has pulled a publicity stunt and gotten some free coverage from Slashdot. What what what? Slashdot is there target demographic. Congratulations sirs PT Barnum would be proud.
Crow T. Robot: Aaaah, women. Women, women, women, women, women, women, women. Ha-ha-ha-ha. For you young fellows, fresh on the cusp of a blooming manhood, the questions are abound: What are women like? What do women want? How should I treat a women[sp!]? Perhaps the thorniest problem facing any young man is finding a woman in the first place! It turns out to be... nearly impossible! This reporter spent countless hours searching for a woman, like these pictured here:
...to no avail. The nearest we came during a tense stakeout was this fellow:
...who experts believe, is not a woman. We begin to wonder, where are all the women? The over-heated references in poetry, the images that dominate our media, is it all an elaborate fraud? This grainy photograph is the only direct evidence we have of a woman in her natural environment:
...while possibly the work of jokesters, is another piece of the puzzle! And it is hard to discount this man's terrifying story!
[clips of Hobgoblins, with Amy and Daphne in them]
Crow T. Robot:
[a clip of Mike Nelson biting into a sandwich,]
Crow T. Robot:
[A black and white, Bigfoot-like photo of a large woman in a forest]
Crow T. Robot: The longer hair, the gentle and nurturing demeanor are typical of how witnesses describe their supposed encounters with women. This footprint...
[Crow stands beside a clay model of a huge Bigfoot-sized footprint]
Crow T. Robot:
Mustachioed Crow T. Robot: Then... uh... this woman - I think it was a woman... she... uh... married me.
Crow T. Robot: [off-screen as interviewer] Did you have any children, sir?
Mustachioed Crow T. Robot: I don't remember!
Crow T. Robot: Some day perhaps, an actual woman will emerge, and they will no longer exist only in the realm of myth and maybe. Thank You.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Sex: M/F
Real-life sex: M/F
So, if you're a guy, especially with a big beard and a deep voice verify anyway.
"But you're a guy"
"How dare you sir!"
"But you have a beard"
"And I'm a little sensitive about it. I'd rather you didn't mention it"
"And a deep voice"
"Yes. A lot of people comment on that."
"I'm not convinced you're a woman"
"I'll strip naked for you to prove it if you prefer"
"Yikes! No. That won't be neccesary. Thankyou for verifying you gender. Have a nice day, maam".
"But it's kinda stupid cuz the actual females playing as females do that too."
;)
Well, that's what females do in real life; use their feminine wiles to their advantage.
But your complaint is absurd. If one is unable to resist the feminine wiles of an online-character, then it's his own fault, not fault of the the person playing the female character.
I've known many that have played characters of the player's opposite sex (both men playing as women and women playing as men), and I see no problem with it. The whole point of playing RPGs (either multi-player or single-player) is to get to assume a role you could never assume in real life. The ability to choose your character's gender, ethnicity, etc, goes along with that.
This business of requiring webcams for anyone playing as a woman is the stupidest thing I've heard of in a long time.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
Erm, what about transgendered individuals, such as your mother?
Today's weirdness is tomorrow's reason why. -- Hunter S. Thompson
Guess I can't play Metroid any more or I'll be a degenerate. Guess I had better not accept Princess Peach as a randomly generated character in Mario Kart either. Better not accept any randomly generated Wii characters either.
What a load of crap. It's fantasy - a game for goodness sake. My guess is really some loser who runs the service just wants to look at pictures of the people playing women characters.
-When going for broke, go for Ithaca!
I think it actually goes something like this:
"TITS OR GTFO"
ROFL My Waffles, I actually did a report in a college class on gender about gender selection in MMOs...
Out of about 6 or so people interviewed, the most common reasons given for playing as female were:
- Male characters are ugly in many games
- People (males) give you free stuff if you're a female character, especially a newbie
- People are more likely to help you if you're an attractive female character
- Females get better looking clothes
- Men want to look at an attractive avatar, and don't necessarily think of it as being themselves
- Females want to play an attractive character, or like the clothes a female char gets, but don't necessarily think of it as being themselves
Reasons people don't like playing female:
- Guys hit on you constantly
- Occasional stalkers
- Many female avas are overtly sexual or 'slutty'
- Female avas don't look tough or 'butch' even as warrior-types
One female gamer said that when asked her gender while playing her female char, she tells people she's a guy because that gets them to stop bothering her. WHen she plays as a male, she tells them her real gender because that also freaks them out. The people I talked to basically just want to play the game, and don't like having sexual or gendered attitudes imposed on them, so I wonder what they will think of this.
This move by the company really seems like implicitly supporting the idea of using MMOs as a hook-up site, instead of a fantasy realm, so I doubt it will be popular among the people I talked to.
If you're interested, you can read the details of Nick's research, along with an earlier study of gender switching in Everquest.
RichM
Data Center Knowledge
I myself have seen people say people who play women in EVE online as being some kind of degenerate
So the grammatically-challenged, obviously teenage and sexually-challenged writer of the summary thinks it's his inalienable, god-given right to hit on anything with pixellated boobies, and finds the very idea of people role-playing in a role-playing game to be degenerate. Perhaps he shouldn't be such a slavering mess of inadequacy that he feels the need to flirt in a role-playing game with any avatar that approximates female and then be disturbed when the controlling player isn't. Avatar. Not player. The two are distinct, and it merely shows the stupidity of a significant proportion of MMO players that they can't appreciate that fact.
Amusingly enough, my captcha for this post was 'redneck'.
Yes, that he most certainly is.
We should be able to accomplish it with a quick hack or two.
Playerauction: Selling VERIFIED female character account Have all the fun you want cybering the innocent teenager who KNOWS you're a true female sharing his love! Only $1000
I'm aging rapidly, I bought a new game and had no idea if my machine was good for it.
One time I was playing a female character in the Lineage 2 beta (terrible game, by the way) and partied with some random folk. After a bit of grinding, one of my party members said the following: Him: "Hey, are you single?" Me: "Yeah." Him: "Ohhh! Cool! Cause I need me a gaming wife." Me: "... I'm male." Him: "WHAT? YOU FAG!!" That is my story.
...choose an ugly avatar? And pretty people a pretty avatar? Because, I've noticed there's usually a huge disparity between the two. How about obese for obese? Super-obese for super-obese?
The point is to escape a crappy reality.
Camping on quad since 1996.
The first thing I thought of was the Saturday Night Live Skit with "PAT".
Looking for any old 8-bit Heathkit/Zenith software/hardware - http://heathkit.garlanger.com
Of course! They just want males that like looking at male butts to play the game. They don't care what the females like, obviously. :p
Most of the posts here are skewing condemnatory of this goofball policy, and I agree. However, maybe there's a bright side. If the playerbase actually go through this verification process (big if), it would offer a rare opportunity to observe macroscopic differences in how men and women behave in MMOs. Do women tend to tank less and heal more? Do they tend to cluster together in all-female guilds? etc.
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
Most men who play women are doing it so they can watch a females ass while they are running around.
Hence Laura Crofts fame.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This is why I hate 3rd person perspective. Most of the "scenery" is your avatar's ass. I like to see the damn game! It espeically pisses me off when your avatar gets in the way of seeing something important. Fixed camera (such as resident evil) is even worse--try and aim at a target in 3d space while viewing on a flat screen...WTF?
I can see it now...
"Ok, we're having a problem here."
'What? I thought you said my webcam is working?'
"Yeeeah. The problem is that we still can't tell if you're a woman."
This won't end well.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
I'm a guy and I play Final Fantasy XI as a male character, a Tarutaru paladin who looks absolutely adorable if I do say so myself. Of course, the cuteness factor was a big part of my decision, but in spite of how relatively androgynous Tarutaru tend to appear to the untrained eye, I still picked a male avatar, one of the ones that's more recognizably male.
Am I sexually attracted to my own avatar? No. But what I am sexually attracted to are all the female avatars (and the female players behind them) that are drawn to my male avatar. I'm so cute that I've lost track of the number of times a woman has asked me to stop so she could get a picture taken with me, and if I'm sitting around in a crowded town long enough, at least one random woman (often two or three, as they bring their friends) will come up to me, gush over how cute I am and start to tease and play with me a little.
Granted, being "cute" rather than "butch" means a higher percentage of those female avatars are controlled by female players, but in general, being a male avatar gives me a far greater opportunity to meet, talk to and flirt with women than I would otherwise, something that simply wouldn't happen if I had chosen to play as a hot chixx0rz. And if you're truly a straight guy, isn't that the most important part?
Unless, of course, you get a sexual thrill out of having to disappoint lustful guys...
I'm a female gameplay programmer, and I have played both male and female avatars, on numerous games. I'd have to say that the only "special twist" most games put in for female avatars is the very special power of not looking like a warthog's arse. Yes, game developers would like to attract more female players, but we aren't stupid. We know that a lot of the people playing female avatars are men. Why would we reward people for choosing a more attractive butt to look at while they played? There are much better ways to attract females to a game than that. Honestly.
Though, rest assured, your theory doesn't make me think any less of you. It's perfectly normal for people to imagine all manner of voodoo lurking in the gameplay mechanics of their favorite games. This is due to a combination of magical thinking and the brain's natural response to the sort of variable reward schedules you find in these games. In short, the human brain is exquisitely good at pattern matching, but is particularly prone to false positives, so we occasionally develop intense faith in patterns that just aren't there. Even knowing all this, I find myself doing the same thing, sometimes.
That said, though, your primary point should not be diminished. Demanding that people don't cross-play is every bit as silly as demanding that the players of spellcasters really be able to cast spells. It's a goddamn escapist fantasy world. So, let people escape!
However, even more important than that, the fact that many female avatars are played by men right now is actually protective, in a way. Sexual anonymity curtails a great deal of potential sexual harassment. When the genders are outed, an abusive person's targets are clear. I expect that this change will make the game completely unplayable for their real female players.
Stand-in for the web-cam? Thank goodness I've got one chained to the wall in the basement right now.
The parent company of Aurora Technology is called Shanda Entertainment. 'Shanda' is the Yiddish word for "shame or embarrassment."
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
http://bash.org/?104383
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
... suddenly, I'm thinking about how much *more* likely it would be to have the plot of The Crying Game play out in a virtual world than in the physical world.
And, if there's no law preventing a man from dressing up as a woman in real life, why should there be restrictions for them to do so in a virtual world?
For anyone whose thinking, "well in real life, at a real bar, I can tell it's a man dressed up like a woman so I won't ever talk to him -- that's the difference!", I challenge you to go see a cabaret show in Thailand and *then* say that. I saw a few performers that were way hotter than my wife who would have made me not care about the presence of a Y chromosome.
http://images.google.com/images?q=cabaret+show+thailand
Fixed cameras on Resident Evil are one of the many reasons I can't understand the popularity of the game. There's nothing like standing three feet from a zombie and not being able to see it because the camera angle won't change to help you.
I'm gonna get all ranty now because I really, really am baffled by the original success of RE ten years ago. It never should have survived...I guess it reflects the low standards console gamers had at the time versus PC gamers as adventure games and/or shooters go. What sucked about RE:
-The voice acting. Seriously, worst ever. Okay not EVER, but still horrible.
-It was the most unscary horror game I've ever played.
-Third person oddball camera angles.
-I think I could load and fire a musket faster than the 9mm Beretta in that game.
-The puzzles were repetitive and simple.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
Someone mod this up.
You're spot on. Potential sexual harassment really is a major issue that is often ignored. I've played many different games in many different ways. I play characters of both genders, with a slight bias toward females, if only because the inter-personal interactions are so much more interesting. (Read: People talk to you more, even if the reasoning is shallow in many cases)
I have played characters as female, intentionally giving the impression that I'm female in real life (a blatant deception, generally, most people who I tell later that I'm actually a guy tell me that they never would have guessed, so I assume that I 'act like a female' fairly convincingly), and female characters where I insist on being a male IRL. Both methods have lead to a great deal of harassment, though in noticably different ways. However, instances where I'm playing a female character and skirt the issue of real life gender entirely have lead to a noticably lower level of harassment.
No, the really interesting thing (and your post made me notice this after reading all the replies here), is that as long as the gender mix in a MMOG resembles real life in an approximate 50:50 gender mix seen on the screen, enough people respond to an arbitrary gender choice that it affects the game play experience. It's not magical thinking that playing a female avatar incurs an advantage but it's because of the conditioning and stereotypes people use to navigate real life, not actual programming choices. Seeing a 50:50 gender mix on the screen seems to make the brain (subconsciously perhaps) revert into normal navigation mode for real life social topography, which puts all the stereotypes about men and women into play and affects actual game play decisions.