As a pair the two seem to rarely go hand in hand, one of the books I had read prior to this project was ‘Play between worlds’, as I started to read this I didn’t actually know that this was a woman who wrote it and just instantly assumed that it was a man’s perspective on online gaming and its culture; I found it interesting that it was a book actually from the gamers perspective unlike quite a few books on gaming and its culture, but the fact it was a woman surprised me. It’s a good example of stereotyping the gaming culture, mainly men are seen to be gamers; especially so with online gaming, and I don’t actually know why for that matter, it’s just the first thing that comes to mind with that subject.
Her book mentions about the gaming culture, “powergamers” how it as seen more as work that for the actual enjoyment; and finally women players, the stereotypes and how the industry doesn’t seem to acknowledge them or have over generalised what we like in them.
She researches first hand with an MMOG she plays called ‘Ever Quest’, from her starting her first character in the game; going surprisingly in depth with just that alone. That creating a character on games like these shows a lot of the players psyche, for instance she describes her process in the stages of gender, race and class wanting to choose a female character like herself as she is in real life; the races for the game having their own special traits, she ended up choosing to be a gnome as a lot of the other female races were over sexualized and her other option being a human “...human character didn’t appeal to my experimental side.”
She had a theory that choosing the gnome race wouldn’t attract as much attention from male players “I believe I received many fewer ‘hey baby’ comments...” She later experiments with this generalisation in the book. It does raise the interesting question, why do many male players on MMOG games seem to take notice of the pretty female avatars in the game? They may not even be a female gamer for all they know; they’re trying to get an avatars attention. Choosing her avatars class as a necromancer even went into good deal of detail, in another attempt being a warrior instead she felt more under pressure as more people relied on the hard hitter as opposed to her necromancer; “...I was more inclined to pick character that would let me hang back in the shadows and be somewhat self sufficient...” , “Much like my offline personality.” So even in a fantasy set game, when it comes to character creation some of your self will always bleed through into the creation process.
Taylor makes an insightful comparison with online games, similar to ‘Ever Quest’ with ‘Dungeons and Dragons’, the process of creating your own character; the adventuring with groups of other players. Both also involve interaction with other players, socialising and working with others, with differences like if one person in a D&D campaign group isn’t there it’s difficult to actually progress; whereas with online games it’s just a case of the once person signing onto the system, if their friends/ teammates aren’t there, they can still just adventure solo or meet other players.
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