Do you play online games? Online
Games are one of the most popular leisure activities, not only for children,
teenagers but also adult. It’s becoming one of the most eye-catching parts of
social phenomenon in the last decade. In my leisure time, sometimes I play
games online but I’m not games online addict. I usually did it when I’m stress
out or saturated, and I haven’t think about the relation of online games and
gender even though I’m doing gender for example when choosing an avatar.
Joining this course (and of course this assignment) makes me questioned doing
gender in online games and I started to looking more information about it.
Massively Multiplayer Online
Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massively_multiplayer_online_role-playing_game)
are one of the most interesting innovations in online games. Through this game,
the gamers can choose which role they want to be and develop. Of course, the
key point in playing online games is interacting with other gamers, from any
gender and other social background. MMORPGs allow gamers to explore a range of
Identities by playing a character and develop their character; gamers can choose
the gender, race, profession and morality of their character. The interesting
part of online game is doing gender swapping; a man can be a woman in the virtual
world and vise versa. This is probably because of the strict role division in
that game, for example: role A and B are only for man, and role C and D are
only for woman, or because they simply want to make character opposite to their
real gender. It is interesting for me to question why a gamer do a gender swap in
online game. It may be an interesting having experience of to be opposite
gender or no gender at all and internet give an opportunity for it.
One study in online gamers (http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/mar/05/games.internet)
found majority of them had switched gender while playing and women were more
likely to switch than men. According to that study, there are several reasons
women gender swap such as to avoid unsolicited male approaches on their female
characters or because they felt male characters were treated better by other
males during the course of the game. In contrast, another site (http://ezinearticles.com/?Gender-Bending-in-MMORPGS&id=1206274)
said that 85% MMORPG players are male and up to 5x of them are more likely to
gender bend than female. There are several reasons why men gender-bend, such as
Female avatars are treated better and more likely to receive gifts and help
from other players (who are mostly men). From this site (http://n4g.com/news/595748/top-reasons-that-men-play-as-female-characters-in-mmorpgs/com#c-4193238)
there are several opinions why men play as female characters. This phenomenon
means the gamer don’t know exactly what gender actually they are interacting
with. Then I questioned does gender matter when you play online games?
There are some issues here. Refer
to Judith Butler that gender is a form of performativity, in the virtual world
a person also performing the gender. In the cyber world as well as in MMORPG, a
person can perform a character she/he wants. In the online game, gender is
performed through an avatar. Reading those two sites, give as picture how a
person will be treated differently according to her/his gender perform in the
game. By doing the gender swap, a gamer can take advantage for example a male gamer
swap to the female character in order to get prize due to the notion of helplessness
and attractive female attributes.
Besides giving choice of what
gender of character you want to develop, you also choose what kind of class you
want to be. Mostly there is also a strict gender division of class in the online
game. For example role A and B for women while role C and D for men.
Stereotypical thinking of women and men also portrayed in the online game. For
example, if you are female, you are a healer.
Another issue is related to the
body. Most of online game portrayed women avatar as better looking by having
more definition and a wider array of available accessories or decoration. It
makes a female character simply more appealing to play than a male avatar. In
the WoW, female characters are smokin’ hot, thin and have nice boobs. Then I
questioned whether a male gamer does gender swap due to the sexy body portrayed
by female character? Do people get satisfaction by playing a sexy deadly female
body? It’s irritating for me since it means objectified women’s body. Moreover
how women portrayed is not like most women look like in the real world.
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