Sexual inequality exposed in virtual world

• 15:25 24 June 2003
• NewScientist.com news service
• Will Knight

Female virtual characters suffer from sexual inequality in financial matters, just like their real-world counterparts, according to a new study of the online game EverQuest.

EverQuest is inhabited by tens of thousands of internet gamers at any one time. Players choose a character to represent them in the role-playing world. These avatars can be male or female and one of many fantasy races such as elf or ogre. Once a character has built up experience and skills, some players then sell them for real cash through the internet auction site eBay.

"Holding all other characteristics equal, it turns out female avatars sell for about 10 per cent less than male avatars," says Edward Castronova, an economist at California State University at Fullerton, who examined the value of characters sold on eBay.

Overall, male avatars sold for an average of $346, while the generally lower skilled female ones went for $281. The discrepancy notably mirrors differences in wages earned by men and women in the real-world, says Castronova.

"This discount may stem from a number of causes," he told New Scientist, "including discrimination in Earth society and the maleness of the EverQuest player base."

Sex swap

Although the vast majority of EverQuest players are male, around 20 per cent of players choose a female avatar to represent them online.

Jason Rutter, a computer games researcher at Manchester University, UK, adds that the difference could also reflect differences in the way male and female characters are treated in the EverQuest game.

"In EverQuest, as well as other games, people respond to you differently based on your sex," Rutter told New Scientist. "There's a growing literature about how female gamers adopt male characters to stop getting hassled."

Trading characters and items from EverQuest on eBay has grown into a profitable sideline for some players, although the game's owner Sony has sought to put a stop to the practice.

In January 2002, Castronova calculated the average wage EverQuest players could in principle earn by trading all the items obtained in the game on eBay. He found the game's per-capita gross national product would be $2266. If it were a real country, EverQuest would then be the 77^th wealthiest in the world, just behind Russia.