Gender switching in online role-playing games

Part One: July 23


The female Blood Elf swayed from side to side, her long blonde hair in sync wih her twitching hips. The crowd of players surrounding her urged her on, whistling and drawing hour-glass shapes with their hands (and hooves!). Seducerbabe, the dancer on display, blew kisses to her admires via the emote system. Suddenly, her gloves came off, followed by her boots. Shouting to the now rabid group clustered around her, Seducerbabe said, "If you want to see the rest, give me money!"

The name of the player behind the Seducerbabe avatar is . . . Robert, a 16-year old male from Philadelphia, PA. Bob is a normal, hormone-crazed teenager, who has a steady girlfriend and is a starter for his school's junior varsity football team.

"I easily make 5 to 10 gold a day 'dancing' for the crowds," explained Bob, when asked why he chose to play a female character. "Not only that, but my female toon gets invited to more groups, is given some really good equipment free and gets a ton load more attention than any of my male characters."

In the world of MMORPGs, the above is the rule, not the exception. In any given game, studies have shown that between 65% and 75% of the female avatars are actually played by males. The gut reaction to the fact that males are playing as female characters - something both commonly known and accepted by other gamers - is to blame it on some form of deviancy, some extension of cross-dressing or repressed sexual identity problems. Nine out of ten times, that is simply not the case.

There are myriad reasons why males play female characters and most of them are rooted in capitalism and exploitation, and there is no sexual connotation to the gender switch at all. One of the primary reasons why the sexy sorceress is being played by a tattooed dude named Mike comes down to commerce.

If a male avatar asks for money, he's scorned and hit with a barrage of nasty comments that range from the mild "Go earn it, like I did!" to the obscene (if your profanity filter isn't on). There are darn few players who will toss a coin to the MMORPG equivalent of a Chippendale dancer.

But a smokin' Druid female? Chalk it up to puberty overload or to the old male "Knight in Shinning Armor" syndrome, but there are simply a lot of guys - already buying into the fantasy world by virtue of simply playing the game in the first place - who will gladly help out a damsel in distress; especially if that damsel is dressed provocatively and is just a bit flirty.

Surprisingly, another reason frequently given by male players as to why they play females is actually a strong hetero-rationalization. More than one male gamer stated that his primary reason for playing a female was that " . . . if I'm going to be looking at my character for a couple hours every day, I'd rather look at a sexy female toon than some muscle-bound guy."



Still another justification for the gender switching by males stems from the difficulty in being invited to a group in order to do major quests, raid dungeons or take down Boss Mobs. This is especially true if the server on which you are playing is under-populated. Female avatars attract attention. It follows, then, that they will find themselves invited into groups with more frequency. Anyone who has waited hours for an invite to a warband or dungeon crawl can attest to the frustration that results.

However, two major questions arise from the practice of real-life men role-playing women in online games: (1) how far do they take the sexual deception, and (2) are there any drawbacks to the practice? Both questions will be answered in Part 2 of this article, to be published within the next few days.

Author: James Trunzo
James Trunzo is an Examiner from Pittsburgh. You can see James's articles on James's Home Page.