July 26th, 2010 at 12:27 pm Posted by Winter

As a straight female with a male main, playing male and female alts (and whose primary female toon is a tank), I’m one of your 10% … so this is interesting. Not wholly surprising — it’s been remarked on by other players when they find I’m female — but the *degree* of female preference for female toons surprises me.

Honestly, I rolled up my main to be boytoy eyecandy originally. Yeah, srsly.

Nick, I wonder if you can determine whether guild officers and GMs who are female are more likely to “present” as males or in male roles … I ran a guild for the last four years, until we disbanded a few weeks ago.

July 26th, 2010 at 12:29 pm Posted by Nick Yee

Hi Winter,

That is a great question. Let me go run the stats on that.

Nick

July 26th, 2010 at 12:34 pm Posted by Nic Ducheneaut

Winter’s idea is great – more generally, it just struck me we have not explored the link between position in a guild’s social network and socio-demographic variables… there’s a rich vein of analyses right there, thanks for the comment.

July 26th, 2010 at 12:35 pm Posted by Sara

I wonder if this is skewed by the fact that the male models for certain WOW races are much less well done than the female characters. Of course this is subjective, and on referencing this I’m drawing just on my opinion, that of my friends, and the reoccuring discussion of model art on wow.com.

July 26th, 2010 at 12:35 pm Posted by Mr Obvious

I’m extremely surprised that this survey does not reference the obvious reason why males play female characters in MMO’s like WoW (which are significantly different from Virtual Worlds like SL):

A female character who acts cute/feminine is significantly (by a very wide margin) more likely to get invited to groups, have someone power-level her, receive nice loot from others, get gold from others, and/or be given preferential treatment when looting mobs.

The primary reason so many men gender-bend in a WoW-type MMO has everything to do with ph4t l00t and nothing to do with ‘butt syndrome’.

July 26th, 2010 at 12:39 pm Posted by Sara

This is completely anecdotal, but I don’t think that’s been my experience Capt Obv. (Although it has been on xbox live.) On WOW, preferential treatment seems given more due to nepotism- i.e. along guild lines or RL relationships. People don’t as often bestow random gifts on strangers.

July 26th, 2010 at 12:40 pm Posted by Inscrutibob

Why on earth did you swap the colors for male and female between the two charts?

July 26th, 2010 at 12:43 pm Posted by Nick Yee

@ Mr. Obvious – I don’t think those two explanations are mutually exclusive of each other. Also, check out this long-running 200+ comment thread at the Daedalus Project: http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/001369.php

The “visual appearance” comments far outnumber the “gifts” comments.

July 26th, 2010 at 12:44 pm Posted by Dharmasattva

Fascinating results, guys. I especially like the triple play of stats presenting and supporting it.

Winter’s question is excellent. I’m also in that 10% group, but my guild knows I’m female. There are a few other gender-bending, straight females in my guild so it isn’t perceived as odd.

But honestly, I do not reveal my RL gender to strangers, as life is much simpler letting everyone think the player is male as well.

July 26th, 2010 at 12:44 pm Posted by Winter

@MrObvious, I’ve played female toons enough, and seen this argument averred on other occasions, and I say baloney. In my experience, most people — male or female — are not that base and manipulative in the game or IRL. There are gold-diggers in both, to be sure, but it’s not all about teh phat lewtz.

July 26th, 2010 at 12:46 pm Posted by Winter

@Dharmasattva, I also conceal my gender with strangers but not guildies. Oddly, people typically guess I’m a male player whether I’m on a male toon or a female one (when the subject arises).

July 26th, 2010 at 12:47 pm Posted by Nick Yee

@ Inscrutibob – Sorry about the color swap. I’ve just fixed the charts to be consistent.

July 26th, 2010 at 1:50 pm Posted by Dharmasattva

@Winter, yes I’ve noticed that assumption as well, though I kind of assumed it was a matter of language. In your case, though, it might be because your toon is a tank.

Off the top of my head, I know of only two women with tanks in contrast to the several dozens of men who tank – regardless of toon gender, which is probably split 50/50.

July 26th, 2010 at 2:15 pm Posted by Winter

@Dharmasattva, actually the tank hasn’t been “crotch-checked” because she leveled to 80 inside an established guild who all knew me. Long ago, my lower-level female shammy, though, ran in a guild of strangers. I was eventually “outed” to the astonishment of everyone I’d been playing with for months, all of whom were sure I was male.

I agree that I’ve seen few female tanks. I was surprised to find I liked it. I took the role primarily because the guild was grievously short of reliable tanks. I still prefer my mage, though.

July 26th, 2010 at 2:54 pm Posted by Cheryl

This is a very interesting result which is kind of proven out by the 10 man group I ran with last Thursday. 3 females in the group, all with female toons. 7 males in the group, 3 of which had female toons. Those 3 gender-bending males were all over the age of 40.

Oh and I was tanking :p

Here’s another interesting one that you can’t get from Armory – how many female raid leaders have you come across?

July 26th, 2010 at 2:59 pm Posted by Nick Yee

@Winter – re: females presenting as males when they are guild leaders/officers.

So the stats show no significant difference. Both hover right around the overall 8%. In hindsight, this might be because character creation is a much earlier decision than guild leader/officership, rather than a concurrent decision. Players probably aren’t thinking about whether they will become a guild leader/officer when they create a character.

And while the data can’t show it precisely, this lends some support to the notion that avatar gender doesn’t really influence whether players accept someone as a guild leader/officer.

July 26th, 2010 at 3:00 pm Posted by Tweekster

My guild is 98% female, especially since we are either family or RL friends. We have plenty of females playing tanks, but now that I think about it, probably half of our tanks are male avatars.

I started playing MMO’s while undergoing cancer treatments and concentrated on healers (wishful thinking, perhaps), but as life progressed, I found that coming home to bash the crap out of monsters was MOST satisfying.

As for revealing my female gender, I don’t, since I don’t think it’s relative to the game, but I do get my sex ‘guessed’ rather often.

July 26th, 2010 at 3:12 pm Posted by Nick Yee

@Tweekster Your comment on creating healers during your cancer treatments reminded me of a recent conversation with a Jungian analyst regarding the Wounded Healer archetype: http://www.mpuuc.org/services/woundedhealer.html

If I ever have more time, I’d love to do more in-depth interviews exploring how these cultural archetypes get expressed in playing WoW.

July 26th, 2010 at 4:01 pm Posted by Rochmoninoff

Did you just add the gender preferences questions this survey? (I don’t recall query about anything but toon played in the prior ones).

I chose to answer them based on behaviors observed within my guild. My guild may be atypical but we have just as many famale (player, not toon) tanks as male. And more male healers than female.

Back in Vanilla WoW (prior to TBC and WotLK expansions) there were was an obvious bias to female players heal or ranged DPS. (But my sample was extremely small – only ~5 female players in guild)
Male players tank, DPS or PVP.
With the exception of PVP, I think these distinctions are getting smaller and smaller (and the number of female players in my guild is much bigger ~40).

July 26th, 2010 at 4:05 pm Posted by Nick Yee

@Rochmoninoff Yes. The gender preference questions were added this survey. I wanted to get some survey data on whether players think there are biases before releasing the actual data on gender preferences among character roles.

July 26th, 2010 at 4:07 pm Posted by Erica

The explanation most men who run a lot of female toons give is, “If I’m gonna spend hours staring at an electronic butt, I’d rather it be a female one.”

The females of most of the more “humanoid” races in the game do seem to be designed to fit into the current media ideas of what is attractive in women that are often bought into by both genders. They tend to have large chests, very long legs, tiny waists “doelike” eyes and soft or seductive facial expressions. Of course females of the original horde races and alliance dwarves get a lot of ridicule and less play time.

The males of the corresponding races tend to fit more with the stereotypes of what men aspire to and less with what women really like. WoW males usually have exaggerated shoulders and biceps (kind of funny looking on a male priest or mage in a dress) and facial expressions that range from dorky to constipated (I think they were aiming for fierce and determined) but never a smile to be seen, not even the “rogue-ish” grins that populate the pages of romance novels.

Women tend to like men who are tall and toned (but not exaggeratedly muscled) with expressive and cute faces. Maybe if more women were involved in the design of the male characters, more women would roll male toons for the “eye candy” appeal. But then, male players may be freaked out to encounter in game a bunch of more normally proportioned but “cute” male toons that look like young Harrison Ford, Robert Redford, Charlie Sheen, Orlando Bloom, Justin Timberlake or even an undead toon who looks like that guy from twilight.

July 26th, 2010 at 5:24 pm Posted by Grimm

Your recent survey with gender preferences seems poorly designed. The current question construction obscures the data. If I respond with a neutral response is it to indicate that both men and women have equally strong preference for that play style? Or does it mean that neither men nor women prefer it?
If I respond with one left of neutral, does it indicate that women have no preference and men have a small preference? Or does it mean that men have a very strong preference and women have a minor preference?

Alternatively the question about tank preference could have been constructed this way:

How likely is a male player to play as a tank:
Very likely ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) Not Likely

How likely is a female player to play as a tank:
Very likely ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) Not Likely

This construction allows the survey participant to answer each question independently and unambiguously.

July 26th, 2010 at 5:54 pm Posted by Grimm

As far as the “hours staring at an electronic butt” response, I have given that reason repeatedly when asked why every single one of my characters is female. That isn’t the actual reason, but it is a response that is universally accepted and hard to misconstrue.

I have used female avatars in every game where I have a choice about gender ever since I can remember. Even when playing paper/dice RPGs back when I was a teenager and eye candy wasn’t part of the equation. I don’t know exactly why I play female characters, but the visual aesthetic is definitely secondary. I identify with and feel investment in a female character much more strongly than with male characters.

I rolled a male night elf rogue in warcraft once, exclusively to play with my wife’s female night elf hunter. She didn’t stick with the game, and she quit about two weeks after first trying it. About a year later, I deleted that level 12 rogue. He didn’t stick with me either. Gender, class, maybe both just didn’t do it for me.

July 26th, 2010 at 6:15 pm Posted by Nick Yee

@Grimm Re: gender preferences survey. We constructed the scale that way because we are primarily interested in the delta between male and female preferences, regardless of their absolute values. This is meant to reflect the typical question of: “Do women prefer to play healers more than men?”

You’re correct that our question doesn’t get at the absolute measure of preference, but this wasn’t our intention. We just wanted to get player’s estimations of the deltas.

(And to those who are confused as to what we’re talking about: This is in reference to a set of questions in the monthly follow-up survey to the study participants.)

July 26th, 2010 at 9:01 pm Posted by Bonnie

I’ve found in game (both in Everquest 2 and in WoW) that males playing females is SO common, I pretty much expect the “girls” I’m grouping with to be “guys” in RL. I do spend some time analyzing their behaviors to determine which gender they might actually be (personal “hobby”) and think that most of the time I can “tell” when a player is male in a female toon. Not so in the case of women playing male toons, but then I don’t have as much interest in that aspect of the gender-bending phenomenon. Not surprised that women don’t cross gender boundaries as much. I don’t. All my characters in both “worlds” are female. I’ve never felt comfortable attempting to be male in a virtual world, but am not uncomfortable with my role in RL as a woman. I do feel somewhat uncomfortable grouping with a very strong player who then turns out to be female. Perhaps my inferiority complex rises then. The most disturbing experiences in virtual games I’ve had were situations where a male player in a female character attempted to flirt with me and develop a closer, warmer relationship than I felt was appropriate. My sense of life in a virtual world is the same as my sense of life in the “real world”. I am heterosexual, and don’t expect or appreciate provocative behaviors by other women toward me. The fact that the “reality” is virtual doesn’t change that aspect of “being” in the world. If you’re a “woman” in a virtual world, then by Golly, you’re a woman, regardless of what’s behind the screen at the keyboard. (That’s the way I see it.)

July 26th, 2010 at 10:08 pm Posted by mossy

I can’t claim to understand why guys play female toons, but I can tell you why I (straight, female, 48) always play female toons:

I perceive my toon as an extension of myself, and that connection is stronger when the toon’s gender matches my own. I try to behave in-game like a normal, civilized human being for much the same reason.

Of course, that only goes so far – I’m short IRL, and I avoid short races like the plague in-game.

July 26th, 2010 at 10:22 pm Posted by Winter

@Nick re guild officers and toon gender — it occurred to me later that some women GMs I’ve known “mother” their guilds while others model “captain of the guard” leading “a band of brothers” (never mind the gender, only the ability to fight and win).

Not being able to discern behavior and management style from Armory information would, I think, obscure that distinction. Thank you for looking into it.

July 26th, 2010 at 11:00 pm Posted by LadyGamer

I am a 55 year old female player and I have tried to play male toons but it just feels “funny” to me. I do have one blood elf male toon that I just like to look at, lol. Fascinating to read the results and the comments. Thanks!

July 27th, 2010 at 6:34 am Posted by michael

I play female characters in WoW because the anatomical proportions on the male models is awful and annoys me (specifically the neck and forearms of male models).
In LOTRO, the distribution of genders across my characters is about even (my main there is female, but my main in WoW is a recreation of the same character, so that kinda skews it).
In COH, my characters are predominantly male.

Across MMOs and MUDs, over the last 20 years, I have known exactly one male player who played a female character in order to get free stuff from other players.

July 27th, 2010 at 6:44 am Posted by Winter

@Cheryl, I’ve also wondered about player gender as raid leaders. After reading your comment, I thought about the raids I’ve led or participated in over the last year as I’ve been raiding hard. The repeating groups — often with allied guilds more than PuGs — have 5/7 female raid leaders. All are “casual raiders” (is 3-4 nights a week “casual”??) and that, of course, opens the whole discussion of how hardcore are you.

July 27th, 2010 at 7:18 am Posted by Swifteye

I am also female, and my only male toon is a Blood Elf paladin. I agree with LadyGamer, they’re nice to look at… and they have awesome voices; I’ve adored Cam Clarke’s voice acting since the first time I played Tales of Symphonia.

Primarily though, I only made this male toon because I wanted to play a paladin, I needed it to be on Horde side, only Blood Elves can be paladins and I HATE the way female Blood Elves look (excuse me, Miss Stick Figure, but perhaps you should be eating a sammich rather than trying to shield anyone as a prot pally, considering a stiff breeze could knock you over”…. you know?

So, just wanted to clarify that I’m generally not a “gender-bender”, but I had my reasons… *shrugs*

July 27th, 2010 at 8:21 am Posted by Josh

@Mr Obvious

That theory only appears “obvious” because most of us have heard of it at one time or another, and it stands out as a strikingly extreme example of role play. That does not, by necessity, mean this is frequently practiced by all or even the majority of males playing female characters.

You postulate that many of the 33% of men who play some female characters engage in a rather in depth cross-gender role play. Moreover, this would be a real life role deception, not just a character role play. In a game where close relationships (Ie. with players who may favor you for being a female) often involve voice communication in addition to in-game written communication, it would require major efforts to continue to deceive players into believing you are a girl.

Also, look to your subjective experiences for some evidence. How many instances of this have you encountered? Do more than 25% of all players (approximately the number of male players who gender-bend) you meet appear to do this? In my 7 years of MMO experience (4.5 in WoW, some FF, some UO, some Aion), I have only encountered this behavior 4 times, once in WoW. Granted I don’t play on RP realms, which is where perhaps another distinction should be drawn for the purposes of this study. On non-RP realms, VERY little RP occurs. Relationships where players may gain something from another player are almost always on the guild level and almost always involve verbal communication.

July 27th, 2010 at 8:32 am Posted by Josh

@Sara

Speaking for myself, I know I seriously struggled with WoW’s artistic style and almost all of its character models in the beginning. I’m a gamer who strongly prefers realism to cartoony. I initially rolled alliance with friends. I tend to, but don’t exclusively, play human characters early on in my MMO experiences. I simply couldn’t stand (and still cannot stand) human models in WoW. I have never made one. I decided I wanted to play a druid first. Again, it fell to the models. Male NEs were nothing like I had envisioned (majestic, graceful, and dark.) Instead I found them crude, gangly, and…well, dark. The female models leaned slightly more toward majestic and graceful qualities.

Also, I believe the intro CG video to WoW played a large part in my initial decisions. I was awestruck by the female night elf dashing through the forest, then, mid leap, shapeshifting into a cat. I wanted to be that. I also loved the male dwarf with the polar bear as a pet. That was to be my 2nd toon.

July 27th, 2010 at 8:41 am Posted by Astralic

Thanks for the article! It is Facinating. Thank you for posting it!
I am one of the fmales playing a male charchter. I am also on an RP server.
What I would be curious about, is the relation between gender bending and the type of server the player is on. I can think of a few hypothesis, but I am just very curious

July 27th, 2010 at 9:03 am Posted by Rosz

Interesting and pretty much in line with my observations. I mostly assume other players are male regardless of the gender of their toon.

A mid-aged woman, I have about 40 alts of which 5-6 are male. My main is female but one of my “top three” is male.

I often *facepalm* when I realize that I, the male Draenei warrior tank with shoulders out to there, have just typed *giggle* or some such. I am very bad at gender bending. My texting is typically female with more emotes and smilies than most males use.

July 27th, 2010 at 9:08 am Posted by Josh

Another interesting point just occurred to me. In today’s WoW environment, almost every serious player has several alts. Every single person in my close-knit 10 man guild has at least 6 level 80 toons. Many of them have every class at level 80. I believe most of the players have a variety of male and female characters.

The key words there are “I believe,” as in, I think but i’m not really sure. I can name every single one of their 70+ level 80 characters, and give you their name, class, and spec(s), but I couldn’t give you their character gender. We all just address each other, regardless of which toon we are playing, by our real life first names (or occasionally real life last names). When I look at any character that belongs to a particular player, I only see that *person’s* gender. I don’t even pay attention to the “character’s* gender, to the point where I am oblivious as to which character is which gender.

I believe the implementation of Real ID will increase this phenomenon. I also believe the necessity of playing with your camera on max zoom-out in raids has made me less aware of my fellow players’ exact character models. Because I bind my mouse wheel to key reactive spells, I don’t have a quick and easy way to zoom in/out, so I often stay zoomed way out everywhere, even in cities. Playing on a rather poor computer has probably influenced this as well.

Overall now, I don’t think I pay much attention to the gender of characters. Or, if I do, I don’t give it much credibility outside of RPing, which I don’t really participate in. Instead, I view each player as a to-be-deteremined-gendered individual. Once I know the gender of the *person*, I associate all of his/her characters with that gender, regardless of the gender of the characters, of which I tend to be oblivious.

July 27th, 2010 at 10:35 am Posted by Nick Yee

@Astralic Great question. I’ll look into that.

July 27th, 2010 at 10:40 am Posted by Brian

I have to agree with Josh.

Given, I’ve been at the MMO thing for awhile, as have most of my friends online. Call it a learned behavior if you will, but no one I know looks at a player’s character and decides the player is male or female. The MMO market has grown too much for that, and the amount of people sitting there drooling at the thought of meeting a woman – yeah, it’s not the case anymore, and probably wasn’t much of the case to begin with.

Again, in support of Josh, I can’t name the genders of the characters in our guild with as much certainty as I can tell you their name, class, spec, dual spec, maybe some of their alts, their class, their spec(s), their levels – it goes on. I know their gender, either from Ventrilo or just from talking, and that’s what they get associated with. If I don’t know someone’s gender, the last thing I do is act on an assumption that the player is male or female.

On an issue further up about male characters being more what males want and not females … it’s a solid theory, but WoW is not the only MMO out there. FFXI’s elvaan and humes are, more or less, what was described as attractive to females. Tarutaru are the epitome of a cute race in a MMO.

Those three races saw no shortage of players, both male and female. Tarutaru males actually edged out recently to be the most popular race/gender combination, which is not what I would have expeacted.

Race selection in games with significantly different races is always so intriguing.

July 27th, 2010 at 9:57 pm Posted by Caroline

Thanks for the article! It, along with the comments, is a fascinating read.

I am 36, straight, and female. I started MMO gaming with EverQuest and have played almost every major pay to play MMO since then. (And some F2P ones.) Up until WoW, I ALWAYS rolled males. Since MMO gaming allows me to be something that I’m not, I always felt that being a strong, male character was the most fun. I could rescue people, be a hero, etc. When WoW came out, my first toon was male, but he was so ugly that I was compelled to create a female. My friends were shocked. Soon, every time I rolled an alt, I would roll a female because I couldn’t stand the way the male models looked. When we got Blood Elves, I was finally able to roll a male again, but I didn’t want to play any of the classes available to him.

As for revealing my actual gender in game… More often than not, even if I tell someone I’m female, they usually don’t believe me. Weird.

July 30th, 2010 at 12:01 am Posted by rednight

My preference is for lithe/graceful type of character; finesse and cunning over brawn. I strongly dislike being brutish or hugely dis-proportionate. Other than the obvious gender, my female elf looks more like me than any fat, or over muscled brute ever will. I will select male characters when the definition of masculinity in the video game world is not defined as a Neanderthal.

I also don’t want to play short, fat, or cute characters.

m/33/hetro

August 3rd, 2010 at 1:22 pm Posted by Abe

I’m totally guilty of rolling females because of the *ahem* better view. I’ve been curious to read some of these other comments about the depth to which some people consider their character’s gender. For me, the alternate world of WoW is so ephemeral it doesn’t really matter. I don’t feel strong identification with any of my characters; to me, it’s just a game.

August 13th, 2010 at 1:08 pm Posted by Michael

I’d be curious to know if there’s any significance to the class, race or faction chosen for gender bending. In the experience of one friend of mine, men do not roll female alliance priest characters. Is this just anecdotal or has he spotted a real trend?

Is there more to the story than just a character’s gender presentation? Female gnome rogues are an interesting case to me since gnomes in general are a maligned (“gnome punting”) and have lower sex appeal (females are cute but not sexy). Rogues, likewise, are widely despised for their play style which might mean they are viewed less favorably and thus perceived as less likely to be treated better. There’s also less of a “view” if you’re stealthed most of the time.

August 15th, 2010 at 3:41 am Posted by Andrew B

I find myself fascinated with the project in a general sense – it’s very informative and entertaining.

With regard to the gender bending, I would like to add to Michael’s comment and query. There is a common supposition among players that certain race and gender combinations are far more likely to be played by women than men.

Anecdotal observations shared by myself and several acquaintances (a large bipedal race closely resembling a cow) are such that it seems a female tauren is nearly always female, and female orcs are almost certainly male.

It would be fascinating to me to find out if these suppositions have any truth to them.

August 16th, 2010 at 4:32 pm Posted by Nick Yee

@Andrew Good question. We’ll take a look into the gender-bending x race stats.

August 18th, 2010 at 9:43 am Posted by Winter

Re @Michael’s “There’s also less of a “view” if you’re stealthed most of the time.” … I wonder how the seriously-feral druids fare since they tend to wear their cat/bear forms a great deal. I hardly know what my two druids (one Horde, one Alliance) look like in their humanoid forms.

August 20th, 2010 at 2:30 pm Posted by Claudia Hoag

It’s funny to look at the data and find I’m different, wonder why. I have a bunch of characters, I try to get to know each race and each class in each faction, try different roles, and have their professions complement. I can’t say which one would be the “main”! Of course I like some better than others. Anyway, I am a female and I like my female characters better for some reason. Well, I don’t think I convince much when playing a guy. Plus I want to tell the world that women play WoW, too.

Though most of my toons are females, some are not (just to try it out, I think) – and some I created as male just to be able to use a funny name like ChuckNorris (a Tauren) or KeithRichards (an Undead, of course).
f/42/hetero

August 20th, 2010 at 2:31 pm Posted by Claudia Hoag

BTW, when I said I was different, I meant about the number of characters other players have.

August 20th, 2010 at 2:33 pm Posted by Claudia Hoag

Hey, my female orc is one of my favs!!!

August 20th, 2010 at 2:46 pm Posted by Claudia Hoag

@rednight,
The whole idea (for Blizzard and for makers of other similar games) is to create something bigger than life, exaggerated, intense, something that has an impact. Perfect human anatomy, when seen in that game scenery, especially with the “camera” being at some distance, is weak and unimpressive.
Perhaps you should try Second Life?

August 22nd, 2010 at 6:04 am Posted by rednight

Second Life is awful. I am not a social gamer, I play to raid and PvP.

No I don’t want character to look anything like exaggerated foot ball players, wrestlers, body builders, or any of such ilk. They don’t look physically impressive to me at all to me, they look like cave men. I would play male characters if the option to choose one that looked like a speed skater, pro skier, swimmer, or any other sport that promoted agility existed.

I am not the only male that strongly dislikes that there is no agile male character option. Nor am I only male that strongly dislikes playing as a bulked up cave man.

If anything a triathlon athlete would be the best example of perfect human anatomy, as it is sport that requires exceptional endurance, agility, and strength. They don’t look anything at all like over muscled brutes. And they certainly don’t look weak.

August 25th, 2010 at 3:53 pm Posted by Claudia Hoag

Yeah, I don’t particularly like the way the characters look in WoW, but I was just quoting them. I heard this from a speaker from Blizzard, on game graphical design. They explicitly avoid “natural” human anatomy. An arm cannot look like a “normal” human arm. And there is an array of guidelines, colors to be used etc.
Their offline artwork is great, but doesn’t translate all that well to the actual game graphics IMHO.

August 26th, 2010 at 7:03 am Posted by Gealach

I, too, am a girl playing a female tank. I’ve never been assumed to be a girl IRL – I’m always referred to with male pronouns in pugs. I’ve always assumed two reasons: the higher proportion of male players and the plate armor. Being undead might have something to do with it too – we’re not that pretty. I’d love to see a study though on girls playing tanks.

August 26th, 2010 at 10:55 am Posted by Rat

I’m a consistent genderbender–female IRL, always play male characters. My two mains are both blood elves–a death knight tank and a mage. Yes, I’m a female tank. I just main-swapped to my tank for purposes of our progression raid, because I discovered just how much I enjoy tanking. I have to admit that as a tomboy (I’m straight but you’d never know it to look at me) I enjoy taking on traditionally “male” roles and doing them well. My current guildies know I’m female IRL, though in my previous guild I managed to fool every one of them for over a year by never talking on Vent (I had to once I became an officer, so at that point I “outed” myself–only two people in the guild knew beforehand, and that was because I told them). I just find that I’m more comfortable presenting myself to the world as a male in a virtual sense. I’m also a writer, and my main characters there are all guys as well. It’s just the way I am. And the bonus is that I don’t get the usual kind of treatment that a lot of women complain about. If nobody can figure it out, they just assume I’m male and I don’t disabuse them of that notion.

August 26th, 2010 at 12:54 pm Posted by Vajarra

I’m another female who spends a lot of time gender-bending. My druid (whom I consider a main) is male, as well as about half of my alts. Initially I made a female, but I didn’t like the idle animation (the infamous bounce) or the way she casted, so I ended up remaking a male. I also agree with Rat’s comments above; I like the fact that nobody knows (or seems to care) about my RL gender when I’m on one of my guys. I’m a writer and RPer as well, I don’t see it as strange to play a male when the character is already divorced from my RL personality.

August 26th, 2010 at 1:09 pm Posted by Claudia Hoag

LOL many females commenting here!
I create both male and female toons, I’m a toon-a-holic and have more than 20 active characters (in both factions). My husband plays with me sometimes and at first he felt a bit awkward when a bearded gnome would blow him a kiss! heh

Sometimes I wish I could impersonate a male at work. Seriously.

August 26th, 2010 at 3:22 pm Posted by Steve B.

I noticed that many males who play female characters also give them sexually charged and/or derogatory names. To me that is one of the aspects I look at when trying to determine the actual gender of the player.

August 26th, 2010 at 3:27 pm Posted by Alexandra Erenhart

Hehe I agree with almost all the females who posted here. I’m also a female-player-with-male-toons (Several of them. All of them male NE or male BE haha). Whenever I’m asked why do I roll male toons, I answer, well, why do guys roll female toons? I’m not into boobs!

My experience with gender bending is that I get more respect and less questioning at the moment of suggesting tactics (in a PuG or among strangers) if everybody thinks I’m male. Specially if I’m grouping up with younger male players. With older players that usually doesn’t happen, and they actually welcome an experienced female player for a change. I also get less of the “cute” talk (“hello baby”, “hey hun” and such) if I pass by male, which I really enjoy because I just hate that kind of talk. The worst part comes when I talk in vent, because I have a spanish accent, so they always, ALWAYS, start wondering about where I come from and telling me have a sexy voice. It gets old really fast haha. So I avoid it as much as I can.

Once guys get past the childish attitudes of “girls play worse” or similar, then it just doesn’t matter.

August 26th, 2010 at 5:01 pm Posted by Winter

Have to agree heartily with @Rat and @Alexandra’s points. Strat recommendations and requests get handled more smoothly when it’s given by an assumed-to-be-male player — and that pugs call my toons “dude” and I’ve even gotten “sir.” Like @Gealach, I’d love to see a closer examination of females playing tanks.

@Rat’s comment about being a writer — I wonder how much of that could be looked into. I’m a published pro in fiction and non-fiction, am as likely to write a male protagonist as a female, depending on what the story needs, and I know many many WoW players write as fan or pro. Educators are using WoW to promote writing (and other) skills http://scr.bi/a7fJSc.

August 26th, 2010 at 10:14 pm Posted by 77IM

You could test the “butt theory” using the aforementioned race x gender x player gender statistic, although then you may also need to do a survey to measure which races people consider attractive…

August 26th, 2010 at 11:24 pm Posted by Starfox

I am in the 33% gender-bending male segment. I started out on the butt theory, and that is still valid for me. But over time I also find it is simply easier to play a female toon. It helps you dodge many quarrels and testosterone-ridden troublemakers. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that (presumably males playing) male avatars sometimes stretch so far from RL male behavior that they kind of gender-bend into some mythical macho role that only exists in the game. This way, playing a female avatar becomes a way to show you are not conflict prone. (Of course, on a female AV you sometimes get harassed by said asshats, but since they know more than half of female AVs are really men, this is rare.)

In other words, 90% of all the asshats you meet have male avatars, and it pays to play female just to avoid becoming mistaken for a jerk. Even if the proportion of jerks among male AVs is as low as 5% (out-of-thin-air number), there is still a correlation as the number of female AVs played this way is way smaller (perhaps 0.1%, by the same method).

Regardless of the gender of the player, a female AV is likely to be one avoiding conflict. As pure conjecture, I’d guess that there is a correlation between males playing female avatars trying to avoid conflict, while I’d hazard that there is no such correlation among female players. A male choosing to be female in the game is making a choice, a female doing the same is just being herself and doesn’t choose her characters gender based on such things But this might just be my prejudices talking.

Maybe you could do a run on people being kicked from teams and kicking others from teams, correlating this with real and in-game gender. This could be a measurable quality for how conflict-prone you are.

August 26th, 2010 at 11:27 pm Posted by LassLisa

Interesting how it keeps coming out so that the game world has nearly 50-50 men and women. Is that constant across servers? Because I can imagine if I went to play a game and everyone else had a female avatar, I’d be rolling up a male one ASAP (perhaps not even consciously). Are there servers where the in-game gender ratio is more skewed?

August 27th, 2010 at 6:04 am Posted by KrisAtTiac

I’m not in a WoW guild – I play only sporadically. Anecdote — I have not asked any reasons for choices.

The folks with whom I most commonly group are members of the same guild (75 members, of unknown gender mix): average age=52; 1st raid leader, age 67, female, two-boxes, both characters are male – one tank & one hybrid; 2nd raid leader is male, age 13, one male character, tank; guild leader, age 62, female, main character is male mage secondary is male healer, teriary is male tank. (I’m female and my 1st WoW character was a Tauran male shaman, still the character I play most often, but the charater that I spend most time playing, when I play her, is a female Night Elf druid. After reading the previous posts I think I’ll try to figure out whay that is.)

None of us had not shared our genders until there were internal problems and I talked with some of them on Skype. At which point the numerical dominance of females was obvious – of eight officers, only one is male. I know the genders of only two of the other guild members, one male & one female, both known to me personally, both play both male and female characters. I may know the gender of one other member; based on what has been said in chat that member is female and plays only female characters.

August 27th, 2010 at 7:55 am Posted by Susan

Men tell me they play women for 2 reasons…1) If they got to look at something all day it has to be a woman, and 2) they take up less space on the screen. Both make sense, I made a man once, but it was too big and felt wierd. Anyway, if you talk to any toon for any period of time you know the gender by how they speak. Men and women don’t really speak the same. (There are always exceptions)

August 27th, 2010 at 8:50 am Posted by Tyler

@ Susan

Sometimes I feel like explanation #1 is a bit shallow when it comes from players. My intuition always seems to suggest that something more complicated is at play in addition to voyeuristic pleasure. I don’t quite know that other thing is though.

However, #2 definitely rings true and even more so for races. In my 40 person raid days, my guild basically banned anyone but the tanks from playing male taurens (cow-people) because their models were just simply too big. If you had a handful of male taurens in raid it really became more difficult to see various environmental queues.

August 27th, 2010 at 9:14 am Posted by Gealach

A fascinating topic and the comments alone have shown that there are several different motivations for playing a particular gender. For some the eye candy issue is important – some people don’t want to look at a gender they’re not attracted to irl. Some people don’t like the artwork of a certain gender in the game. Some people want to be treated differently.

I’ll add my 2c to the mix. I feel like the avatar is an extension of myself. Yeah, I’m not a rotting undead, but I am female irl. I have an aversion to Tauren and Trolls too because they seem too other. Whenever I play one of my husband’s characters (all male) I feel really uncomfortable. It’s not my skin. And I’ve never wanted to create a male character of my own. If you want to go into psychological issues, it may be interesting to note that I am attracted to both genders irl, so if eye candy were a thing for me, I should be able to play both. But it’s more that I feel like my avatar is a representation of me if only in that one way. I’m obviously not alone because people like @mossy and @Grimm expressed similar feelings, but I’ve heard more often sentiments like @Abe’s, that it’s just a game. Be interesting to explore the whys of gender bending vs. not.

August 27th, 2010 at 12:49 pm Posted by Dharmasattva

Interesting, somewhat-related thread going on over at http://www.wow.com/2010/08/27/breakfast-topic-does-gender-influence-class-choice/

August 30th, 2010 at 6:20 pm Posted by Alexandra Erenhart

@Tyler

You’re overanalizing it. Reason #1 IS a valid reason for several players!

@Gealach

My first toon was made with the same reason you stated: I wanted it to be a reflect of how I am IRL. So that toon looks like me, or as close as it can look like me in WoW. But after 5 years of playing, I really don’t care anymore, and I prefer playing toons I like to look at instead. I’ve learnt to deattach myself from the toons because then, silly insults that go on in game don’t matter much. Specially in arena. When my toon looks like me, insults and criticism hurts more because they feel like they’re directed at the real me. But when my toon doesn’t look like me, it just doesn’t matter. Funny huh.

September 1st, 2010 at 8:17 am Posted by Rat

@Susan: “Anyway, if you talk to any toon for any period of time you know the gender by how they speak. Men and women don’t really speak the same. (There are always exceptions)”

To some extent I believe this, but I am definitely an exception. When I mentioned in my post above that I fooled my entire guild for over a year (and this was not a guild full of kids–all of them were over 18 and most were professionals) it wasn’t because I told them I was male. I never told them one way or the other. But after I “outed” myself to become an officer, several of them (including the GL, a very sharp guy) told me that they had no idea. Of the ones who knew, one I had told early on (he was my class leader) and the other one said he suspected because he got along with me too well–but he thought I was a gay man (he said that, despite being straight himself, he tended to get along better with gay men). Oddly, the only person to ever figure it out on his own *was* a gay man, who was himself closeted.

I think the whole topic of gender and its manifestations is fascinating, and I’ve really been enjoying this whole interchange.

September 9th, 2010 at 3:44 pm Posted by David

In regards to the electronic butt theory, Blizzard was keenly aware of the sexual aesthetic when designing the Horde races.
http://www.wired.com/underwire/2007/05/sexual_dimorphi
Granted, it was the face and postures, but they were paying attention to the pleasantries of staring at an at least semi-attractive avatar.
It’s also worth noting that Blizz has kept the models of the female worgen on a tight leash (wolf-people, get it?) Currently, they are not options for beta character creation. I believe someone noted that it was because of “problems” with the models, but they may as well have just said, “we don’t want the furry chicks out yet.”

And some data regarding which males and females of which races would clear a lot of this up. If we were to find that most of the gender bending males were rolling gnomes and dwarves, that would remove the idea of sex appeal from the topic (or would it?) Likewise, if female benders were more likely to play blood elves (the most reasonably proportioned males above 5 ft), that would be evidence suggesting fantasy musculature is actually a turn off.

September 10th, 2010 at 8:54 am Posted by Claudia Hoag

@David
“Likewise, if female benders were more likely to play blood elves (the most reasonably proportioned males above 5 ft), that would be evidence suggesting fantasy musculature is actually a turn off.”
Now you’re going too far on your inference. Although I do think that too much muscle is not attractive, that’s my personal opinion/preference, and what you said does not follow a clear logic path – how do you know if all (or most) the female benders that chose blood elves (or any male character) did that for the eye candy? Some girls already said they prefer male characters so they’re treated equally or left alone, and I think that happens a lot.

BTW, the blood elves are too “model perfect” – a bit too gay for my taste (again, that’s my personal opinion). I can’t find any physically attractive character in WoW, but that’s not what I’m looking for in that game anyway.

September 13th, 2010 at 12:48 pm Posted by Dharmasattva

I’ve been spending a lot of time on my human male paladin lately, getting him to 80 and then gearing him up to raid. I also finally found a guild where I can be nutty and to my own surprise, outed myself right away over Vent. I LOL’d over the “OMG Z*** is a GIRL!!!”

September 27th, 2010 at 8:41 am Posted by TheTian

“This means that in WoW, we’ll see:
* 505 male characters
* 495 female characters”

Its interesting that this results in an almost even distribution of female and male characters.
Perhaps this is part of a bigger equilibrium which results in a balance of sexes i.e. if the ratio between female and male players was more skewed towards female players, there’d be more female gender bending in order to create a balanced ratio between female and male characters.
A potential way to test this theory would be to see how often gender bending occured in a character that was made after the original character had been created as opposed to the original character.

Alternatively, I assert that due to the women’s lib movement, women are more free to express their emotions. Males could therefore see female characters as ‘desireable’.

Of course, as already suggested, because of the patriachal nature of society, the developer’s (presumably mostly male) would have portrayed both female and male characters as attractive (from the male view point) and this would explain why males are more likely to gender bend.

October 5th, 2010 at 1:09 am Posted by Alexandra Erenhart

@Claudia Hoag

Well, at least in *my* case, I rolled male BE because of the eyecandy. From ALL the male models in wow, BEs are by far the best looking. And I don’t care if they look “gay”. I have to say that there are a LOT of gay men IRL who are extremely hot. You know they’re gay, but you don’t mind because it’s all eyecandy

December 8th, 2010 at 4:02 pm Posted by Character Race When Gender-Bending | PARC PlayOn 2.0

[...] our posts on gender-bending and character races, some commenters had asked about what races players select when gender-bending. [...]

December 22nd, 2010 at 1:34 pm Posted by Anonymous

I for one would like to see how much faction association plays a part in character’s gender; I personally favor female toons Alliance side, but male toons Horde side.

February 19th, 2011 at 5:04 pm Posted by Tidbits from research results | WoW and Other Musings

[...] including some really fun stuff from Nic and Nick over at PARC like this: did you know that about 33% of men have female avatars they use regularly in WoW – and they use those female toons about for 30% of their gameplay? [...]

February 28th, 2011 at 2:47 pm Posted by How can you tell if that sexy blood elf femme is really a girl? | WoW and Other Musings

[...] still we wonder…. if most of the people (~79%) who play are guys, and so many guys use female toons, how do you know that sexy blood elf female ‘toon really is being played by a [...]

March 16th, 2011 at 3:41 pm Posted by Pictures Have Stories: City of Terrors | Oakheart at LizDanforth.com

[...] went by the name of Fiona. (Put that eyebrow back down. We were old-school role-players and gender bending was simply not an issue.) The game eventually ground to a half a year and a half later, but it was [...]

March 22nd, 2011 at 11:23 pm Posted by Quora

What motivate guys to play female characters?…

Wanted to add some stats in the discussion. In studies of online games like World of Warcraft, men consistently gender-bend 3-4 times more than women. For example, see this recent data from the PARC PlayOn project: http://blogs.parc.com/playon/2010/07/…