Blog 8 Week 10 – MMOPRG’s Are women players welcome?
Suda 51's Depictions of Female Characters Just Want to Make You Laugh (anselyou 2013)
Which of these characters would you prefer to play? Any of them?
With women surpassing men in online gaming (50.40%) we can look at the how women are represented and welcomed into the hardcore massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) space (Taylor 2003 p.21) . My online game is Words with Friends, a simple scrabble type game without traditional male or female roles attached. Zwart and Humphries (2014) illustrated that player’s moral codes are embedded from their external cultures, thus the well established female and male traditional roles are carried into the digital world and with those roles, unfortunately, sexism raises its ugly head too.
In MMORPG there seems to be type casted hyper-sexualised female characters. Although women are drawn into MMORPG because of the sense of community they provide. Interpersonal perks include chatting, forming friendships, connecting with others, not to mention playing roles they would not normally assume (Taylor 2003 p.24).
However there seems to be a sociological barrier to female players of MMORPG’s. Women’s participation is seen to be challenging the traditional coded role and expected feminine interest. This has been met by hostility from some players who have invested themselves in the hyper-masculinity identity of these characters and games (Salter & Blodgett 2012 p.413).
Castronova, a male in RL, says other Everquest players assume he is less knowledgeable or skilled as a female character.
"I'm pretty experienced, but I'd still get people coming up to me and saying, 'OK, honey, stand over there and watch what I do,'" he said. "Even though everybody knows the person behind the avatar could be either sex, the male avatars tend to be treated as more skilled...We've just taken sex roles from Earth and put them into Norrath" (Becker 2003).
http://news.cnet.com/A-virtual-glass-ceiling-in-EverQuest/2100-1043_3-1020180.html
Avatars dressed in chain bikinis and large breasts also portray sexual imagery which diminishes the value of players and can invite unwanted commentary. “I don’t have a problem with a sexy character; I just don’t want to play one where body parts are hanging out” (Taylor 2003 p.37). This is in stark contrast to strong armored masculine characters as in the picture below.
Tera (Foster 2014)
If game creators want to encourage 50.4% of players to remain and enjoy playing maybe they could look at trying to introduce some strong, fashion forward, feminine avatars that are just as valuable as male characters and move from the dark ages into the age of enlightenment and equality.
References
anselyou 2013, ‘Suda 51's Depictions of Female Characters Just Want to Make You Laugh’, [image], in mmosite, viewed 28 January 2015, <http://news.mmosite.com/content/2013-06-25/sudas_51_depictions_of_female_characters_just_want_to_make_you_laugh.shtml>
Becker, D 2003, A virtual glass ceiling in EverQuest?, CNET, viewed 28 January 2015, <http://news.cnet.com/A-virtual-glass-ceiling-in-EverQuest/2100-1043_3-1020180.html>
de Zwart, M & Humphreys, S 2014,’Week 10’, The Lawless Frontier of Deep Space: Code as Law in EVE Online, Learning materials on blackboard, Swinburne University of Technology, 26 January 2015, viewed 27 January 2015.
Foster, M 2014, ‘Tera’, [image], in Joystiq, viewed 28 January 2015, <http://i.massively.joystiq.com/2014/02/18/the-soapbox-my-hypersexualization-conundrum/>
Salter, A & Blodgett, B 2012, ‘Hypermasculinity & Dickwolves: The Contentious Role of Women in the New Gaming Public’, Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, vol.56, no.3, pp.401-416, DOI: 10.1080/08838151.2012.705199
Taylor, T.L. 2003, ‘Multiple Pleasures: Women and Online Gaming’. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, vol 9, no.1, pp.21-46 doi: 10.1177/135485650300900103
