Women in internet games

[One_Life_To_Give]

Watched a program on discovery last night about electronic games. Of particular interest was the demographics of the "Second Life" internet game/community. It was reported that 80% of the female characters in the game are played by men.

Seems to me that gives two problems for society in general and women in particular.

1) Men/boys perceive some desirable characteristics that make it better to be a woman than a man.
How can equality be advanced if perhaps 40% of the men wish/fantasize about being women? That would assume
they either don't recognize male priveledge or think the advantages of being female far outweigh the privledges of
being male.


2) The men/boys in the game are interacting not with women but with (in 80% of the cases) mens perceptions of how women interact/think.
At 80% the reinforcement of how to react (as a female) to other players will be coming from other guys. I fail to see
how this could do anything but to create a bunch of guys who all interact/socialize with (lets call them
"g(uy)emales" in the game and assume females they meet outside the game environment think/react the same as the
gemales.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

1. very interesting.

I think you should cross post this to GD.

[LoZoccolo]

2. Men impersonate women in /World of Warcraft/ to get free gold from other men.

This is what a friend of mine who plays it told me. He read an article by some journalist who impersonated a female character and lots of lonely guys would chat "her" up and give her things.

There was an incident a while ago too where a woman prostituted herself for gold:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/210451/woman_prostitutes_herself_through_craigslist.html

That would assume they either don't recognize male priveledge or think the advantages of being female far outweigh the privledges of being male.

This view assumes "privilege" is a commodity, that you can make an even comparison between the privilege of one group to another.

[eShirl]

3. I know it's a high percentage but no way do I believe it's that high

I'd be interested in their methodology.

[One_Life_To_Give]

5. Self reported by the company

According to the story on discovery this was self reported by the games manufacturer. They didn't mention what percentage of women play male characters. Only this one statistic was given. It would probably make an interesting study for some grad student to explore. What genders do people play in these games and why? Does it have something to say about society as a whole and what impacts could this have on society in the future.

[eShirl]

4. did they study what percentage of the male characters are played by RL women?

Did they figure in that most regular players have multiple characters, many have at least character of the opposite gender.

[Lars39]

6. Some of the guys might just be playing females in order to view

a female figure. Even the female aliens have curves. :shrug:

[rebecca_herman]

7. Yep

I play World of Warcraft. I'm a female with a female character, but I play in a guild where all the guys are nice enough and not creepy/weird to the females in the guild. But a lot of the guys play female characters and they say it's because they'd rather look at a female character and the male characters look ugly. There are several females besides me in the guild and all have female characters. But I'm sure there are some females out there with male characters but I personally haven't met one.