7.8.06 MT: Women in Gaming
Posted July 9th, 2006 by Shayalyn
Let's Hear it for the Girls
by Mercurie|
|
Given the apparently low percentage of women who played pen and paper RPGs in the 80’s and 90’s, I would have thought that a similarly low number of women would participate in MMORPGs. This is apparently not the case. A study done by T. L. Taylor, assistant professor of communication at North Carolina State University, and published in The Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 9, 2003, indicated that 20-30% percent of all individuals who play MMOs are women. Indeed, I must admit that I know many more women who play MMOs than I did women who played pen and paper games. In fact, the first person I ever met who played Everquest was a woman (although, like me, she had begun in pen and paper games).
To many old time gamers like me, the revelation that many women play MMOs was a bit of a surprise. In her paper, "Multiple Pleasures: Women and Online Gaming," Taylor gives various reasons why women would be attracted to MMOs. One is quite simply the social dimension of online role-playing games. In MMOs a woman can log on, meet new people, renew old acquaintances, and socialize in general. Quite simply, the virtual communities of MMOs give women the opportunity to forge new relationships. Indeed, Taylor points out that traits stereotypically thought of as feminine--social adeptness, social inclusion, and forming and maintaining relationships--are precisely the traits desired in MMOs. It is those traits which can make or break a good role-playing party.
Yet another reason Taylor gives for women being attracted to online gaming is probably one that attracts many men as well. Quite simply, MMOs give women the chance to create a new identity in a fantasy world. In an MMO a woman can generate a character who is her exact opposite in everything from temperament to physique. Like many male roleplayers, women enjoy the chance to play someone other than themselves for a change. Indeed, one of my friends (the first woman I ever met who played Everquest, in fact) says that she knows a woman who enjoys MMOs for precisely this reason--she can be someone she isn’t in real life.
Another reason women enjoy MMOs is one that
defies the usual feminine
stereotype: women enjoy the competition. MMOs allow women to take an
active role, facing the same dangers as male characters, and as a
result give them a chance to compete against other characters. It would
seem that enjoying a good competition is not solely a male trait.
Indeed, Taylor testifies that there are women who actually enjoy the
combat aspect of MMOs. Like many male players, women enjoy the combat
as a means of showing their mastery of the game as well as a means of
earning experience.Regardless of why women play MMOs, I must say that it is good to know that they do. One of the problems shared by nearly every pen and paper role playing group I knew was the lack of anyone to play female characters. True, men can play female characters (I must confess that I played a few in my days as a pen and paper gamer), but I don’t think we can do nearly as well as actual women can. In this respect, women playing female characters make the games more realistic in my mind. One has female characters actually behaving as actual women would, not as a male either thinks or expects them to behave.
Of course, I do think MMOs could be more “female friendly.” While it is true that nearly every MMO treats male and female characters as equals, giving them the same starting stats and chances for experience, combat, etc; and while it is true that nearly every role playing game usually has several major female NPCs; it seems to me they fall short in other ways. Some MMOs give women fewer choices in avatars than men have. Furthermore, even when a game does give women as many avatar choices, those avatars aren’t always pleasing. My friend who is also the first woman I knew to ever play EverQuest complained about the female avatars when EQII first came out. She said that all of them were the same--big breasts and ugly faces! I must admit that, upon looking at the avatars, I could not argue with her.
Regardless, I think I can speak for a large number of male players when I say that I am very happy that many women play MMOs. I think gaming, whether pen and paper or online, had been a boy’s club for far too long. For a good, even, realistic game, there needs to be women playing as well.
Related Articles: Vanguard Gamer Girls for the Win, by Shayalyn
Genre: Fantasy
Status: Published
Release Date: January 30, 2007
Fee: P2P
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