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.'"

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: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.

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/ [ejohn.org] (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 [ejohn.org] .

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!

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 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: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: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?

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.

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:On the other hand

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely. I'm a female player on WoW and I play all male characters because (a) no one spends time trying to figure out my gender, and (b) when someone figures out that I'm a girl they usually have some unflattering assumptions about my ability to play. I don't hide or lie about my gender, but I'd rather not have to convince players on my own side that I'm not a ditz and I'm not afraid of "monsters".

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....

I just want to be pretty

[Anonymous Coward]

So in RL, I'm a big, manly man. 6ft, 200lbs, broad shoulders, beard, the works. I'm the kind of guy who gets in conversations with bikers and marines because they feel we have a lot in common. I admire people who are cute, but for me, being cute is unattainable. Playing a female avatar is really the closest thing I can get, and I suppose that's why I've played female charaters since Q3.
    I have to admit, sometimes it comes in handy. Now, I could give a rat's ass about getting free loot (I make my own, thank you very much) but it is true that people will tend to protect female avatars better, heal them preferentially, ect. Since I play COH as a blaster, I *need* to be protected, and healed preferentially! If being a cute girl helps people remember that, then it's all good :)