I read an interesting article recently on the Iron Realms website, regarding gender roles in MMORPGs. As a female gamer, and someone who plays a free MMORPG in particular, I was interested!
The article points out that men and women often play MMORPGs differently, or for different reasons: men are on average more likely to be interested in competition and individual victory, but women are on average more interested to be interested in socialization and communal achievement. For those individuals who don't fall under that category for their own gender, they will still be affected by the stereotyped expectations of the players around them, who think of "tanks" as guys and "healers" as girls.
A member of the serpent class (and a kickass woman) fighting a magi. Artwork by player Mattias of Achaea.
What was almost as interesting, to me, as the article itself, was the comments. In other discussions of MMORPGs (and in my own experience playing them), I've heard a lot of complaints from female gamers who feel like games are really very much made for men and marginalize women--women's roles are to be healers, damsels in distress, or sex objects. And they have problems with other players too: I've quite a few stories from women who try to join raiding groups only to be sexually harassed, or condescended to because it's assumed they won't be any good.
I knew one woman who played male characters to avoid negative treatment, but when she joined a group coordinating by voice she'd get sexually harassed as soon as they heard her voice and realized she was a girl...so she had to get software to alter her voice! Obviously, the vast majority of gamer guys do not act that way! But a small number who do can be enough to drive some women away from gaming altogether.
But in the comments on this article, numerous players from Achaea and other text MUDs, male and female alike, all chimed in to say they don't really feel that bias is a problem in these games. And that's my experience too--the mud games I've played have an atmosphere that makes me as a woman feel very comfortable playing, and I've never had people treat me in rude or creepy ways just because my character is female. This is obviously only anecdotal evidence at this point, but from my limited experience I do get the sense that MUDs are more likely to be friendly and comfortable environments for women than the average graphical MMORPG.
Part of this is may be due to the text medium. Someone's gender is much less salient when you mostly interact with them by their name (and the fantasy names people use are often ambiguous as to gender), not by a picture. And when you do look at them, each individual gets to describe how he or she looks--so you don't have a situation where all the female characters have stripper boobs and are wearing almost nothing. A woman sends a sexual message with her character's appearance only if she deliberately chooses to.
It was also suggested in the article that MUDs like Achaea might just be more appealing on average to women, because they have more set up to enable deep, substantial roleplay, the formation of lasting friendships and social ties, and nurturing roles other than just being the healer in a raiding group. Women even hold the majority of leadership roles in Achaea's major player-run organizations, I think. But of course there are plenty of women who just play to kick some butt, which is also awesome!
I certainly wouldn't want to scare women away from MMORPGs because of the possibility of meeting the odd sexist jerk, but the higher number of powerful female leaders and the lower prevalence of discrimination or harassment are definitely things that have contributed to my love of MUDs like Achaea. And hey, if it's true that we women are more likely to be drawn to MUDs, that's good for you guys too, right? :P
Well, I never witnessed mistreatment of player just because player was woman. I had met annoying people, but they tended to be men. I had met people who just like to prey on noobs: if you harvest resource, he will come and over-harvest you (and resource is not rare one). On the contrary, most good players that will support any newbie were women (at least in my Istaria). And I never saw someone being attacked because of sex.
Sun Jun 10 2012 12:50PM ReportI think female characters in MUDs have a larger chance of being hit on, especially by the same people. Smaller community and female characters tend to usually be real females whereas in WoW it's like playing russian roulette (when approaching "females").
Mon Jun 11 2012 6:14AM Reporti have witnessed on numerous occasions ill treatment of players who were female, or presumed to be female.
as a male i'm frankly tired of trying to get clothing to cover my female characters more. for example, in Aion there is a fabulous set of armor that you see when you first start the character creation process. now, you never get that as starter armor, not in any game, however, it game me some degree of hope because it was full plate and covered her completely. so i figured, hey, maybe they actually do have some decent clothing/armor options in this game for female characters.
of course, i was wrong. the most complete covering for my tank character has exposed parts. and those parts are purposefully sexual in placement. this bothers me. not only from the standpoint of what impression this makes, but also simply from an aesthetic point of view.
i'm not saying get rid of 'sexy' armor or clothing, i am saying create more choice. just give me the option of how i want to portray my character, male or female.
having said all that i will add that more recent mmos have become a bit more 'body friendly' as far as female characters go. but it is still hard not to make a character that appears to be a teenager.
i get the idealism, we all like to play something we're not. however, sometimes that something we want is more gritty and realistic, not more shiny and happy.
Mon Jun 11 2012 3:41PM ReportThanks for the comments, guys!
I think you must be right, Dalucalin, that playing a character of the opposite gender is somewhat less common in MUDs than in most MMORPGs. (There are no pictures, so the motivation of choosing the female character because you think it looks nicer isn't there--plus it's hard for most people to roleplay as the opposite gender.) It hadn't occurred to me that that does mean that people tend to assume you are female in Achaea if your character is, where they might not elsewhere.
And Aion, I completely agree! I purposely designed my character to look normal and not sexy, and to wear normal modest clothes, because the RPG trope of every female clothing type being overtly sexualized grates on me. It boggles my mind how slow MMORPGs have been to move away from that as their sole available portrayal of women.
Tue Jun 12 2012 12:57PM ReportI read your blog and had a think for a few days. You know, I don't know any female gamers that played a healer or other support as their main character.... almost all of the women gamers I have gamed with played dps.
Looking at my own gaming history, none of my main characters have been primary healers. Almost all of my main characters have been some sort of hybrid dps or pure dps.
In WoW, I was part of a good guild on my server. The two other female players in the guild were a hunter and mage. I was a warlock. The main healer, a shaman, was a guy...all of the secondary healers were guys.
In EQ2, the guild mistress was a conjuror and her daughter was a wizard. I was a conjuror as well.
In DAoC, I was the only woman in my guild, but I played a Cave/Augment shaman dpser for the most part (annoying for my groupmates, fun for me).
In EVE, I was the main tank for my corp's PvE operations. The oher woman in the corporation was a stealth bomber and scout who mainly played when we were doing mining ops.
I guess you can't really generalize about gender roles.
Sat Jun 16 2012 2:17AM ReportOher = other.
Sat Jun 16 2012 2:19AM ReportIf you wanne change this:
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" I've heard a lot of complaints from female gamers who feel like games are really very much made for men and marginalize women--women's roles are to be healers, damsels in distress, or sex objects "
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Men have to accept females as there equals and that will not happen for many reason also female are in this situation becouse they let men dominate them see them as sex objects as long female let them nothing will change.
Also from day girls and boys are born the whole education social skills attitude or playing with toys have to change from ground up whole socity have to change from series movies music comercials verything then MAYBE women will be equal to men and all will evolved equally around male and women.
But humans are still way to primitive so maybe in couple of hundred years women will play games that also are made for them:)
Sat Jun 16 2012 2:36PM ReportMMORPG.com writes:
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