Majority of women, men swap gender in MMOs

by Justin McElroy on Mar 4th 2008 9:20AM

Smirk all you want at Eddie Izzard, but keep in mind that some of your closest gaming cohorts are likely e-transvestites, if they're in to MMOs. A recent study called Gender Swapping and Socialising in Cyberspace revealed that 70 percent of women and 54 percent of men swap their genders when playing online games. For men, it's reportedly a way to get special treatment from males. On the other hand, women prefer to play as men so their characters aren't so frequently distracted by handbag sales and America's Next Top Model marathons. We kid.

For our part, we play World of Warcraft as a gnome warlock who looks exactly like former presidential hopeful Dennis Kucinich. His name is "Kucinich." ... We have no idea what that says about us.

[Via MEGATONik. Thanks, Zizzy]

Source

Tags: eddie-izzard, gender-swapping, world-of-warcraft

Reader Comments (64)

Wait a minute. You mean, in the movie... she's really a dude?

Thanks for the SPOILER ALERT, Joystiq!

You're late, buddy! Everybody knows the secret of the Crying Game. Roger Ebert spilled it over 10 years ago!

P.S. Rosebud is a sled.

also Bruce Willis was a ghost the entire movie, Sam Jackson was the terrorist, the aliens were deathly allergic to water, the monsters outside the village were actually people from the village and of course Paul Giamatti is the healer not the guardian.

Oh sorry, spoiler alerts!

"P.S. Rosebud is a sled."

I don't think knowing that would solve a thing. No, it'd probably be like one of these jigsaw pieces. Another part to build the full picture...

As for Sixth Sense you really could have seen it coming.

The cake is a lie,ops sorry.

SPOILER!!!! You forgot that darth vadar is luke sykwalkers fathers.

Snake kills bumblebee.

Heard it here first.

You fail Ryuukuro, it was Gene Siskel (RIP) who spoiled it for everyone, not Ebert.

yeah and soylent green is people.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

And Darth Vader is Luke's dad.....

Wait,What?!

Soylent green is people? but it is my favorite breakfast cereal,there is no effing way...yet that would explain the funny aftertaste.

And all this time I thought women played as men, just so someone would take them seriously.

Well, I played a male a couple times but more often than not, the male models are ugly. The female models are aethetically pleasing. That, and people just give you free shit when you're a female avatar...

But mainly they look better.

I play a female in WoW but not because I want any special treatment....I just figure if I'm gonna be staring at someone's butt for a few hours a week it may as well be a chick.

post of the day.

dude id rather look at a real girl than a digitized one, but i get yall point. what really scares me are the guys who cybers while being female.

Hell yes. That's my main reason. I want a character that I want to look at for hours on end. This goes for all games I play. Lesbian couples in the Sims FTW.

In my many, many years of playing video games, I have never found myself looking at the characters butt. The tho With that said, If i create a character in a game, they will either look like me or will be an oddity of some sort (super tall dwarf, really short troll, really fast fat guy,etc)
I think that the characters you choose to play as in games does say something about you psychologically. What that is, I have no e'ffin clue.

Oh yeah I am in no way shape or form an RPGer. I don't refer to the toon as "me" and I don't imagine myself running around killing a bunch of stupid shit. It's a character I am controlling.

Sometimes in games (but not mmos cause I don't play those) I choose a girl character, mainly because I'd rather watch the back of a hot chick for 15-20 hours than a dude. Especially if there's ass physics (has this ever been done?)

Yup, I almost always played as a female class in MMO's. Loved arguing with idiots who think that my playing a female is some sort of subconscious way of me wanting to being a female in real life. Best response to them was what someone said earlier:

Which is gayer? Wanting to stare at a dude all day, or a chick all day?

That usually shut em up.

I use to play as females for the same reason, however I only play male characters at this point beacuse lots of guys form crushes on female characters in MMOs.

I know you think if a guy hits on you , you just tell him your a dude, but its not that easy, a guy will feel embarassed that he had a crush on you and never asked if you were a woman or not and quit playing. These may have been good gaming buddies and losing them makes the game less enjoyable. I'm sure women play men mostly to avoid unwanted crushes as well as to be taken seriously.

The way I see it you have 2 choices. Play as a man, or learn to give good e-handjobs.

Women in Guild Wars have freakishly long necks, but male warriors are freakishly huge. Damned if I do, damned if I don't.

HINT: Which one has a bikini as an armor set?

You know what you need to do.

LOLz...best reply of the day. Hats off to you, WiNG.

... Play a spellcasting class as a male? Seriously, it's unnerving playing a giraffe-woman.

Also, WTF at email links to replies never working. :(

Its cuz all of these weblog blogs don't dump in the '#' when putting in the URL.

I think someone should tell them. =/ quite annoying lol.

That's just it, it doesn't even take me to the article at all. Just... a scrunched version of Joystiq with nothing between the links on the sides.

why should it matter if a guy wants to play as a girl character, or a gal wants to play as a guy character?

Who cares...just have fun with the game and enjoy yourselves. In PSU, I have 2 female characters and two male ones.

My friend plays only as women because he enjoys looking at them instead of a male character. I think he approaches it as a character that isn't him. Where as I like to think I'm the character, so if there's any customizing I always try to make the character look like me.

My friends did make fun of me for this saying they never make the characters look like themselves, which I found shocking. I thought that was the point.

I'm right there with you. I have on occasion made some female characters. But I like to be able to think of myself as being in the game.

Maybe it's that over-active imagination of mine liking to pretend I'm a lvl 37 Retro Pally instead of a lvl 5 CAD Draftsman.

In a RPG I always play a dude because I'm a dude. I don't fantasize about being a woman.

That's exactly my point. If I play a female character, I'm not fantasizing about wanting to be a woman. Perhaps you just enjoy staring at a man's ass all day? Congrats!

I don't know about you, but I don't stare at the asses while I'm playing.

Haha lol.

1+ Mike.

I play as a gal and play along with anyone wanting to cyber. The reactions I used to get when I finally revealed my penis ranged from funny to hysterical. Now it seems like everyone just expects it.

Also, female avatars just tend to look nicer than their male counterparts. Ragnarok Online is a pretty extreme example of this.

I think dudes that play female toons by CHOICE in MMOs are scary. You're not a chick.

You're not an elf, or an orc, or anything other than human either.

He is right I'm not an Undead Warlock...I am A Nightelf Mohawk!

Maybe Mr. T is good with computers and hacked the game to create a Mohawk class. Ever think of that, Mr Condecending Director!

In Guild Wars and similar games I've played, I have a 50/50 mix of characters. Honestly, I just invent a character, and if that character is a woman, whatever. I play as black/hispanic/nordic people, and I'm not any of those.

I play as short characters not because I "fantasize about being short." It's just for a change of pace.

I don't play Super Mario Bros. because I wish I were an overweight mustaschioed Italian plumber.

Just think about it: If you substitute "black" or "short" for "woman" in any of the ignorant posts above, you'd see how ridiculous it sounds.

My problem with dudes playing female toons is that theres no way to tell someones sex IRL without asking them.

Sometimes you can tell by the way they type, but that rarely works.

Does it matter? You're playing a game, if they are good at said game, then gender should play no issue am I correct?

Unless of course, you troll around Goldshire looking to cyber with some ladies[doodz].

It only matters if you're a pervert or a shauvanist.

It's just a little embarrassing when you identify someone by the wrong gender.

Spoilers:There are no girls in the interwebs.

It only matter when people get annoyed with you for using the wrong gender when referring to them, but get mad if you ask them directly.

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Majority of women, men swap gender in MMOs

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