Study: Men Choose Female Avatars in MMOs Because Butts

[Scold]

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/05/13/world_of_warcraft_gender_switching_why_men_choose_female_avatars.html

(Sorry if this is the wrong forum, but it *is* about MMOs, so...)

[Sjofn]

The men moved backward more often, stayed farther away from groups, and jumped about twice as much as the women did.

STOP DOING THAT YOU CROSSDRESSING TWITS


edit: On the butt front, I totally play dudes way more often in SWTOR than I did in WOW ... and they have far better butts. But it's also because I am SUPER HARD on female voice actresses, and get tired of them way, way quicker. 

[Cyrrex]

I am deeply offended at what this is suggesting and take issue with its validity.

Because it is also Boobs.  

[Xuri]

Quote from the study (or rather, article about the study):

In fact, it’s all about the butts. Because players see their avatars from a third-person perspective from behind, men are confronted with whether they want to stare at a guy’s butt or a girl’s butt for 20 hours a week.

However, that goes out the window the second you introduce.... capes! :P

My preference in avatars often comes down to the production quality of the models/animations. I don't have a single human female character in WoW, for instance, because their animation quality is shite, pure and simple. Same goes for male nightelves.

[Malakili]

Who the hell is staring at their character when playing anyway? You get almost no information about what is happening from watching your character in these games.

[eldaec]

That depends on the mmo and role, was untrue in CoX, TSW, GW1&2, probably a few others.

Also dps in WoW/EQ clones have nothing at all to do except tap out a 5 key rotation, so it is either stare at their own butt or surf for porn on a second monitor.

[Stormwaltz]

I choose female avatars because prettier clothes and hair options.

(I am not referring to lingerie-armor, but normal clothes.)

[Zetor]

If you're playing a dps warrior (with a 2-hander if Arms or two 2-handers if Fury) and it's not a female gnome, you're doing it wrong.

e: actually, looking back I've always had an even split between female/male characters in all MMOs I've played, usually depending on animation quality (seriously, if you play a GW2 guardian, it HAS to be a female asura) or if one of the models is terrible (there's no way in heck I'm going to play a male draenei or female worgen).

[Falconeer]

This article is  a huge wasted opportunity to really explore a topic. They scratched the surface of a deeper thing, and apparently only paid attention to numbers and statistics in a, literally, genderbinary way.

First of all, it's incredibly gender-normative and faithful to the binary. That makes it inherently conservative and quite useless for a contemporary analysis. It's not 1980 anymore.
 
Second, the deductions are biased that way, and because of that they aren't really saying anything interesting. The obvious reason is obvious about why lots of men choose female avatars to look at "something prettier", who didn't know that? But then there are much more complicated reasons that are deeply rooted in our society's issues at dealing with the concept of gender, notbaly the omnipresent and pervasive influence of the patriarchy in all sorts of social layers which artificially creates those differences that many men can choose to either enjoy as a privilege in real life or experience as a fantasy in a virtual world. To lots of guys the female avatar on screen isn't a representation of themselves, it's actually a doll they can boss around in their heteronormative abusive fantasy. Unsurprisingly many female avatars played by men have extremely "naughty" names. It's objectification at its best.

Finally, and to put it very simply because this topic would deserve pages and pages, to some other guys choosing a female avatar is a trick to explore their inner and very secret desire to drop the macho mask society has sewn on them and experience bits of a differently perceived sensitivity, as someone they actually happen to have a huge crush for but have been trained to look down on: women, girls, especially "hot" ones. Sometimes it is autogynephilia, sometimes it's something else completely. As I said, there's too much that can be said or explored about it, but once again the linked "study" simply ignores it.

So, while the article makes an effort in reading numbers in a very limited way, it completely fails to realize there is much much more that needs to be explored. For every five guys who choose a female avatar because it looks prettier and less boring than a male avatar, there's another five if not more who have very different reasons. And you can disagree with my analysis but that doesn't change the fact that the article is shallow, short-sighted, useless. I like the last paragraph but the content is still disappointingly narrowminded.

And please spare me the "I don't do it for any of those reasons!" because I agree and that's absolutely true. My point is that there are many reasons, and the article is stupid because it focuses on just one, which is the only one we all already knew about.

Another good question (but very bad for f13) could be: how come there's a huge market for sissification and feminization services/porn/erotica/fanfic/fanart, and little to none of the opposite? The answer isn't as obvious as you think.

[Maven]

"Given that most AAA video games and thus most of these female avatars are designed by men for a primarily male audience, gender-switching based on esthetics makes sense for male gamers."

It's interesting that we have numbers, but I don't know what kind of waves this study will make except as a tool in the argument for more female developers, more female perspectives, and more gender-balanced design. But that doesn't remove the fact that there are male-dominant development teams who will make games designed to appeal to stereotypical male interests, and these receive far more visibility than others.

Male / female demographics for gamers hovers around 50%, ya? Games that are designed primarily with women in mind or at least not for a specific gender come out looking completely different.

It's objectification at its best.

Finally, and to put it very simply because this topic would deserve pages and pages, to some other guys choosing a female avatar is a trick to explore their inner and very secret desire to drop the macho mask society has sewn on them and experience bits of a differently perceived sensitivity, as someone they actually happen to have a huge crush for but have been trained to look down on: women, girls, especially "hot" ones. Sometimes it is autogynephilia, sometimes it's something else completely. As I said, there's too much that can be said or explored about it, but once again the linked "study" simply ignores it.

No doubt on objectification, and I think you nailed something with this. There are several potential reasons: female identification (the White Knight), or perhaps secretly wishing someone was the opposite sex (possible reasons including that they want to be their object of desire or for a hatred of one's own masculinity). The surface level for some is butts and boobs, but there's a population that does it for ulterior reasons that they wouldn't dare admit in public and certainly not to a research study.

I mean, shit, the internet does strange things to people. Looking at the porn angle, a subset of transgender fantasies invariably creates an avatar that is hot, fashionable and promiscuous -- in other words, their ideal of fuckable, and, more importantly, someone they'd want to fuck. In these fantasies, why is their object of desire almost never fat, ugly, and without make-up? Because it isn't a sufficient condition to be female, it's necessary they are a sex object.

[Margalis]

Female bodies and clothing are generally more aesthetically pleasing. (Both in real life an in games)

A female avatar can wear male or female clothing and it's not weird - a male avatar can only wear male clothing without it looking odd. In games where the 2 sexes are animated differently the female character often has better animation as well. (This is why I played a Mithra Monk in FFXI)

Now, what's interesting here I think is if men are more likely to gender swap than women shouldn't that mean that more protagonists in games should be female? In an MMO your avatar is supposed to be you in a way a protagonist in another type of game may not be, so if men are willing to cast themselves as a woman in an MMO shouldn't they also be willing to in games like Uncharted?

[Sjofn]

If I'm totally honest, I don't give a shit why men play lady avatars (because ... why would I?), but I wish there had been more about how it changes the way they interact with other people. I'd also be interested in seeing how they're treated and such. This is in part because dudes will sometimes be like "I GET SO MUCH FREE SHIT AS A GIRL!!!!!111!!" but I've only ever gotten "free shit" when I was playing a dude. I am not "treated nicer" like a lot of dudes claim they are when they're playing a lady. And I have a sneaking suspicion it's because those particular men get really, really flirty and are willing to "work" their female avatar more than I ever, ever would be, but that's just a guess. They have an easy out, too ... someone gets super creepy on them, they have the "lol really a dude irl" escape.

And I'm not really casting stones, I'm a lot friendlier as a dude, because no one is going to think I secretly want them to send me raunchy tells because I'm not a raging bitch at them. I also vastly prefer playing a dude tank, because suddenly people don't feel the need to argue with me about how a dungeon I've run 348961283456236 times should REALLY be tanked. Do these dudes playing ladies experience that?

[tmp]

The men moved backward more often, stayed farther away from groups, and jumped about twice as much as the women did.

STOP DOING THAT YOU CROSSDRESSING TWITS

"The men moved backward more often" is kinda a "you don't say" if they chose the characters to stare at the butts in the first place

And I swear, excessive jumping should cost in-game money. Then you'd either see it limited to 1% or the games being able to skip any other kind of monetization. A win-win.

edit:

And I have a sneaking suspicion it's because those particular men get really, really flirty and are willing to "work" their female avatar more than I ever, ever would be, but that's just a guess.

I literally never ever get free shit with female characters, but i also never bother with the stereotypical "girly" behaviours and/or flirting, so that sounds likely to me.

On the other hand i don't really see people trying to teach tanks how to tank based on the characters gender in TERA, but that may be because literally every other tank is elin who are technically female, but no one expects them to be actually played by real women 

[Sjofn]

Gnomes were always the worst in WoW. I admit I'm pretty jumpy when I play an asura, though. They're just so goddamn bouncy!

[tmp]

I found myself spamming the spacebar yesterday when they added new class that does flips when jumping. So I'm going to partially blame the jumping disease on that.

[Zetor]

I also vastly prefer playing a dude tank, because suddenly people don't feel the need to argue with me about how a dungeon I've run 348961283456236 times should REALLY be tanked. Do these dudes playing ladies experience that?

I haven't really played female tanks (my gnomb warrior mostly plays arms, and my DK is a wolfdude), but 2 of the women in my guild had the same experience you described -- it was REALLY ugly back during vanilla WOW when a startling number of people (random puggers as well as people from high-end raid guilds) just plain couldn't stand that "omg, a girl is tanking?!". In fact, one of them has switched to playing male characters for this reason.

e: re jumping, I'm also guilty of bouncing all over the place with my characters, but I consider that normal since most of my characters are gnomes / asura. In WOW jumping is actually beneficial in pvp and in high-latency situations, since you can turn and shoot while keeping your forward momentum. I also jump a lot on my worgen DK, since the 2h special attack animation is a heavy overhead chop that goes well with a jump!

[Maven]

In an MMO your avatar is supposed to be you in a way a protagonist in another type of game may not be, so if men are willing to cast themselves as a woman in an MMO shouldn't they also be willing to in games like Uncharted?

Why don't more movies feature female leads? It's story / culture vs. aesthetics. Games and their visuals are more highly regarded especially in an MMO that is about numbers and how those numbers are represented. In stories, men take a leading role because there's this implicit "this is what men do" type thing to an adventure. Audience identification, heroic qualities embodied in a man over a woman.

Maybe I'm not homing in on the point very well and someone could explain it better, but something like "Men are more fitting in a lead role" paradigm is in play.

Not saying that's 'right' ....

[ezrast]

Yeah, the reasons a man would recast his own character as a female aren't necessarily sufficient for appreciating someone else's female character as the lead in a story. Also, much as I'd love it if more games passed Bechdel, that would require the industry to be capable of writing compelling non-male characters.

I play a lot of female avatars but they're not generally attractive by any traditional standards (excepting the games that don't give me any other option), nor do they represent sexual objects for me. Trolls and tauren in WoW, charr in GW2, a creepy stabbing-obsessed girl with lab gear and rubber boots in CoV, a hardass soldier with full body armor and a shaved head in SWTOR, etc. Games that force my female avatars to be "sexy" usually just make me feel pervy and exploitative. I guess I do it because I know we need more strong female characters, and if we're being honest maybe a bit of what Falc said. Also a lot of dude models are just uggo, like the humans and night elves in WoW look like lumpy apes, what is up with that.

The "people are nicer to female avatars" thing feels foreign to me because even on the rare occasion that I both a) care what gender another user is and b) have bothered to see what visuals they chose for their avatar, I still pretty much just assume everyone is a dude (which is harmful, I know, I'm working on it), and also assume that everyone else assumes the same thing until somebody suggests otherwise. If I were going to pretend to be a girl in an attempt to get free stuff I would probably do it with a male avatar just for the novelty factor.

[Sjofn]

I tend to assume people match their avatars unless they're dressed like a stripper. Yes, I am sure there are plenty of ladies who like to dress that way for their own reasons, but nothing makes me go THAT'S A DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUDE faster than seeing someone run by in a slave girl outfit (bonus if their female companion is also in one).

People seem to assume I am whatever I'm playing, most of the time. When I'm a dude, if I'm not ~roleplaying~, people seem to just think I'm gay. 

[Modern Angel]

This article is  a huge wasted opportunity to really explore a topic.

Slate

[Merusk]

If I'm totally honest, I don't give a shit why men play lady avatars (because ... why would I?), but I wish there had been more about how it changes the way they interact with other people. I'd also be interested in seeing how they're treated and such. This is in part because dudes will sometimes be like "I GET SO MUCH FREE SHIT AS A GIRL!!!!!111!!" but I've only ever gotten "free shit" when I was playing a dude. I am not "treated nicer" like a lot of dudes claim they are when they're playing a lady. And I have a sneaking suspicion it's because those particular men get really, really flirty and are willing to "work" their female avatar more than I ever, ever would be, but that's just a guess. They have an easy out, too ... someone gets super creepy on them, they have the "lol really a dude irl" escape.

And I'm not really casting stones, I'm a lot friendlier as a dude, because no one is going to think I secretly want them to send me raunchy tells because I'm not a raging bitch at them. I also vastly prefer playing a dude tank, because suddenly people don't feel the need to argue with me about how a dungeon I've run 348961283456236 times should REALLY be tanked. Do these dudes playing ladies experience that?

I got lots of free shit in DAOC and EQ playing women. I mean entire sets of equipment and things I would never have been able to acquire for the number of hours I had to put in to those games.  WoW I still got additional things and people passing on equipment if I asked vs. when I asked on the male characters, but it was a lot less. 

Part of this I attribute to the demographic change along that timeline (lonely internet geeks prior, and a more diverse and sociable crowd later) and part of it I attribute to the loot mechanics of the games.  Nobody gave things away in WoW because the good stuff was all soulbound or it was easy enough to throw it on the AH.  Folks who gave me things in prior games didn't want to bother with the trade channel/ shouting/ N. Ro Tunnel

I did work the flirtatious angle, though, knowing there would be no consequence.  I made liberal use of ignore and hey, I'm a guy, I don't have the hangups with it women do because I don't deal with it all my real life.

WoW was the only game I tanked in and I did see the "do it this way" problem but no more than the DK tank who was a guy. I viewed it differently than you, though. It wasn't someone telling me I couldn't do something because I was a girl, I just attributed it to the usual 'internet assholes know everything about everything' and let it slide.  If they got too obnoxious I ignored them and went on my way.  If the rest of the group didn't like it, I dropped and got the insta queue.

Y'all can take my jumping when you loosen the fuck up.

[Margalis]

Why don't more movies feature female leads? It's story / culture vs. aesthetics. Games and their visuals are more highly regarded especially in an MMO that is about numbers and how those numbers are represented. In stories, men take a leading role because there's this implicit "this is what men do" type thing to an adventure. Audience identification, heroic qualities embodied in a man over a woman.

Maybe I'm not homing in on the point very well and someone could explain it better, but something like "Men are more fitting in a lead role" paradigm is in play.

In both games and movies I think it's more tradition and evolution than anything else.

Games with female leads generally don't have huge marketing or development budgets and aren't in mainstream genres, so the conventional wisdom becomes that they don't sell because they have female leads, when the reality is more that they wouldn't sell well even with a male lead. In both these industries there is a lot of money at stake, so if something appears to be working it's seen as dangerous to deviate, and people are prone to develop conventional wisdoms that may or may not make sense.

[Cyrrex]

Not MMO related, but when I played Mass Effect (just one playthrough like most sane people) my Shepherd was female and she was hard as fucking nails.  It worked extremely well, and I got to "know" her character so well and shape her so clearly that I still cannot look at a cover of one of those games with man-Shep and not think that it's totally wrong.  I don't even know what game that is.

So, it sure is shit can be done, but it helps a lot that Mass Effect was the kind of game, with the kind of combat, that having a female lead was totally plausible in just about every way.  I don't think that is always the case (and I hope that doesn't get taken the wrong way).

[Sir T]

One of my problems with a lot of female avatars is the way they stand. I'm sorry game developers, women don't stand in that sideways way that cocks their butt in real life. It goes right back to KOTOR, and the ridiculous way they made the avatars stand and walk to be provocative. I much prefered STO where the females run and stand the same way as the men. In STO I have a few female characters, made for no other reason than a whim in character gen or I was playing around and thought this character looked good. Most of them are kitties anyway 

In GW2 I have 2 females right now, An asura Guardian and a female thief charr. I, out of curiosity rolled a norn female Mesmer, and then deleted it when after one roll I realized you could see her crotch with black underwear during a dodge roll and I got eyestrain from rolling my eyes.

And yeah an asura Guardian is jump city. From sumersaulting during dodges or jumping up and spinning during a hammer attack, she is a hammer whirling gremlin! 

[Engels]

Falc's definitely is onto something. For myself, I confess to playing female characters for multiple reasons; even from one character to another there were different motives. For my EQ character, I had paternal/protective feelings as I shepherded my brave dark elf shadowknight through Norrath. For Megan Hertz, my CoH energy blaster, it was definitely about those curves and her cute bob haircut. The way she wide-stanced that snipe shot was to DIE for. Other times, it was more complex than that. I channeled a semi-feminine persona already inside me. It wasn't the 'whole' me, but I can't deny that it was there and is perhaps closer to the heart of what Falconeer is trying to explore.

[Ratman_tf]

This article is  a huge wasted opportunity to really explore a topic. They scratched the surface of a deeper thing, and apparently only paid attention to numbers and statistics in a, literally, genderbinary way.

First of all, it's incredibly gender-normative and faithful to the binary. That makes it inherently conservative and quite useless for a contemporary analysis. It's not 1980 anymore.
 
Second, the deductions are biased that way, and because of that they aren't really saying anything interesting. The obvious reason is obvious about why lots of men choose female avatars to look at "something prettier", who didn't know that? But then there are much more complicated reasons that are deeply rooted in our society's issues at dealing with the concept of gender, notbaly the omnipresent and pervasive influence of the patriarchy in all sorts of social layers which artificially creates those differences that many men can choose to either enjoy as a privilege in real life or experience as a fantasy in a virtual world. To lots of guys the female avatar on screen isn't a representation of themselves, it's actually a doll they can boss around in their heteronormative abusive fantasy. Unsurprisingly many female avatars played by men have extremely "naughty" names. It's objectification at its best.

Finally, and to put it very simply because this topic would deserve pages and pages, to some other guys choosing a female avatar is a trick to explore their inner and very secret desire to drop the macho mask society has sewn on them and experience bits of a differently perceived sensitivity, as someone they actually happen to have a huge crush for but have been trained to look down on: women, girls, especially "hot" ones. Sometimes it is autogynephilia, sometimes it's something else completely. As I said, there's too much that can be said or explored about it, but once again the linked "study" simply ignores it.

So, while the article makes an effort in reading numbers in a very limited way, it completely fails to realize there is much much more that needs to be explored. For every five guys who choose a female avatar because it looks prettier and less boring than a male avatar, there's another five if not more who have very different reasons. And you can disagree with my analysis but that doesn't change the fact that the article is shallow, short-sighted, useless. I like the last paragraph but the content is still disappointingly narrowminded.

And please spare me the "I don't do it for any of those reasons!" because I agree and that's absolutely true. My point is that there are many reasons, and the article is stupid because it focuses on just one, which is the only one we all already knew about.

Another good question (but very bad for f13) could be: how come there's a huge market for sissification and feminization services/porn/erotica/fanfic/fanart, and little to none of the opposite? The answer isn't as obvious as you think.

That's some mighy fine wankage. I think it's mostly bollocks. Here's my take.

Men prefer women more than men. * Especially nowadays in our highly feminized society. I'm sure there's a bunch of guys who roll night elf female toons so they can dance naked on mailboxes, but a lot of guys simply roll a female toon for their "regular" gameplay. Shepard in ME is a great example, because most of the game is offline, and femShep doesn't spend a lot of time nekkid. She's usually armored up. Aside from a few sexytime cutscenes, she's mostly running around shooting shit.

* http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15491274

[Fordel]

I just want to be a pretty princess.

[Hoax]

If its a solo game or a game where the armor is really sexy and bikini-like I'm playing female. If its a group game esp one where I expect to play using voip a lot I'll go male. Examples:

-Vanilla WoW: male
-FF11: male
-TERA: would never ever play male  
-GW1: male
-DAOC: male
-Scarlet Blade: for sure female  
-ArcheAge: female for sure.
-Blade & Soul: female for sure.  
-WildStar: I made female mechari for obvious reasons but that game sucked because it looked like shit.

If I can play something hypersexualized I will unless I consider it more "serious" gaming where pvp or something will force me to use lots of voice comms then I have a tough decision on my hands.

For 100% sure though my Sheps were all male. In fact my SWTOR characters were all male too. If my character is going to be voice acted and its supposed to actually be me I'm going male.

The reality is though as WoW has become the dominant thing that people base their games off of male armor has gotten worse and worse. It starts boring and then becomes just boring with bigger and bigger shoulder skulls with spikes and shit. Cool is a lot harder to model and texture than sexy. So females are often a lot more fun and satisfying to dress up.

[Ingmar]

I'm pretty sure the girl-tank-instruction thing is real, because Sjofn and I were pretty much always grouped together and I saw it happen to her in PUGs on her tanks *way* more than it ever happened to me.

Introduce voice chat and it gets worse; even in our own raid group where everyone knew everyone, we had a couple guys who felt the need to re-explain the fight to new people right after Sjofn (or one of our other leaders who was also a woman, albeit not a tank) did it, and they basically never did that to me or the other dude tank.

[schild]

The T in LGBT stands for Tumblr, right?

This topic is absurd.

[Threash]

Once again proving that "because DAT ASS" is a perfectly valid answer to almost any question.

[Sjofn]

I got lots of free shit in DAOC and EQ playing women. I mean entire sets of equipment and things I would never have been able to acquire for the number of hours I had to put in to those games.  WoW I still got additional things and people passing on equipment if I asked vs. when I asked on the male characters, but it was a lot less.

I pretty much never got free stuff in WoW either, as either gender, but I rarely got free stuff in DAoC. Unless "r u rly a girl" tells count as free stuff. The one time I got a full suit of armor just because I was a delightful person, I was playing a dude. It was a highlander, though, maybe the lady liked my kilt!

I did work the flirtatious angle, though, knowing there would be no consequence.  I made liberal use of ignore and hey, I'm a guy, I don't have the hangups with it women do because I don't deal with it all my real life.

I KNEW IT


The thing I've found about myself is that when there's voice acting, I am the opposite of Hoax. See, the voice actor already gives me a sense of separation from my character so it never feels much like "me." So I have basically the aural equivilent of DAT ASS. If I'm going to listen to someone yammer on and on and on for hours, I'd rather it be someone whose voice I find hot. I am extremely picky about female VAs. For example, I loved my Sally Shepard, she was a part of one of the most empowering gaming experiences I've had (rare is the game where I get to throw my boyfriend over my shoulder to rescue him, you see), but I got goddamn sick of listening to her, and her Creepy Cougar Flirt Voice was the worst.

Actually no, the female wizard in D3 is the actual worst. Which is baffling, because her voice actor is one of my favorites in basically anything else she has done.

[Riggswolfe]

Like all of you my experiences are purely anecdotal but I have noticed an interesting trend in males playing female avatars lately:

I've encountered a not insubstantial number of them that once I get to know them confess that they are pre-op trnasexuals who cannot afford the surgery and/or aren't getting it because their families aren't supportive. They're using MMOs to live out what they want in their RL. The first time it happened I was like "Hmmmm..." the second time I was like "two?" by the third time I just nodded. That said, I also hang out with RPers a lot in MMOs these days, so that might partially explain it as these people are using the games to live another life.

Also, I heard the best answer ever to "I assume all women characters are played by dudes." It was said by someone who I assume is a female but don't know for sure. Anyway she said "I don't give a shit what you think. I know what I am and I'm not here to flirt with you or get into some kind of internet romance. Think whatever you like. I'm not proving myself to you."

[Fordel]

My response to anyone asking me "Are you a girl in real life?" is "Only on Tuesdays!" 

[Zetor]

I'm pretty sure the girl-tank-instruction thing is real, because Sjofn and I were pretty much always grouped together and I saw it happen to her in PUGs on her tanks *way* more than it ever happened to me.

Introduce voice chat and it gets worse; even in our own raid group where everyone knew everyone, we had a couple guys who felt the need to re-explain the fight to new people right after Sjofn (or one of our other leaders who was also a woman, albeit not a tank) did it, and they basically never did that to me or the other dude tank.

Yep, confirming this on both fronts. People were flabbergasted that our MT (and GM too?! blasphemy!) was a woman, but everyone was OK when she played a priest. "girls can't tank" became a sort of running joke in our guildchat.

That was back in 2004-5 though, maybe things got better since then (yeah, right.)