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All Your Ladies Are Belong To Us
By Cameron Sorden | September 24, 2007
Frickin’ ridiculous. That’s what I have to say to this:
Shanda (Nasdaq: SNDA) subsidiary Aurora Technology has frozen game accounts of male players who chose to play female in-game characters in its in-house developed MMORPG King of the World, reports 17173. Aurora stipulates that only female gamers can play female characters in the game, and it requires gamers who chose female characters to prove their biological sex with a webcam, according to the report.
Lets play “how many problems can we find with this statement.”
- First and foremost, why the hell can’t guys play female toons? Without descending into all the arguments and discussions that this issue always brings, I’m just going to fall back on the same old defense that these are game characters and are not representations of your physical self. You don’t force people to play characters who weigh the same or have the same hair color as their real life persona, so why the hell should it matter whether my in-game toon has breasts or not (because lets face it, it’s not like we’re even talking about anatomically correct models– the only thing differentiating a male from a female character in most games is bone structure, presence of breasts, and possibly hairstyle)?
- You’ll notice that they didn’t ban female players who created male avatars (or if they did, they didn’t say so). “Hello, Mr. Gender Discrimination.” This is insulting on two levels. First, there’s the preferential treatment of female players who are given more freedom in their avatar choices which is insulting to me as a male player, and second, there’s an insulting implication directed at women: Since they’re trying to enforce real life gender roles on game personas, they’re saying that they don’t approve of men portraying themselves of women, but they’re fine with women who wish to portray themselves as men. This just drips with the mentality that being a woman is inferior to being a man, in my opinion. They seem to be saying, “Well of course the women will want to play men, and who can blame them?”
- This is beyond ridiculous: “Aurora stipulates that only female gamers can play female characters in the game, and it requires gamers who chose female characters to prove their biological sex with a webcam, according to the report.” First off, what does that really prove? If I were subjected to this law and I really wanted a female toon, I could easily have my girlfriend sit in front of a camera at my computer while I was “proving my identity.” Second, talk about invasion of personal privacy. This sounds more like the action of some horny company executive who wants webcam footage of his female players than a “decency stipulation” or however the hell they characterize it. And again, you’ll notice they don’t require anyone to prove their identity with a webcam when making a male character.
- How far does someone have to go to prove their “biological sex”? I know plenty of girls and plenty of guys whose biological sex wouldn’t be immediately apparent when you look at them, and especially not over a webcam of indeterminate quality. Anyone can throw on a pair of clip-on earrings, a wig, and a tube top. Granted, that might be going a little far for most people’s comfort zone just to make a female toon, but it illustrates the point I’m trying to make. What they’re really asking for (if they do in fact want proof) is a naked crotch shot, if I’m reading that right. I am in no way okay with that, and you’d be hard pressed to find a woman willing to send a complete stranger pictures of herself naked just to make a female character. How is that not terribly insulting and degrading? How is that in any kind of way a decency measure?
You guys were going to get a well-thought out article about activity spheres in MMOGs today, and you still might (today or tomorrow maybe), but when I saw that on Razorwire it pissed me off. Maybe it’s just my liberal western permissiveness (and I’m fairly uptight when it comes to a lot of things), but this just seems like a ridiculous, insulting, degrading stipulation to place on your players. I wonder how many of those frozen accounts were actually female players with female toons who refused to provide “biological proof” of their sex?
Topics: Random |
September 24th, 2007 at 2:21 pm
I almost wonder if it’s just another convoluted attempt to cut down on people playing MMOs. I mean, China has pretty publically been trying to squelch as much online gaming as they can for a while now.
When they’re delaying the release of Burning Crusade in China by requiring Blizzard to change things such as adding pants on skeleton monster models ‘for the sake of modesty’ and other ridiculous things like that, it seems pretty clear that they’re just doing whatever they can to make online gaming inconvenient for players and developers as much as they can.
But yeah, the sexism angle (nobody has to prove that they’re male to play a male character?) is just another layer to the stupidity of this.
September 24th, 2007 at 3:11 pm
Well, in this case they probably aren’t trying to discourage players, seeing as the stipulation comes directly from the company in question and not from the government– my thought is that they wouldn’t willingly shoot their business model in the foot. Whether they can see when that’s happening is another question altogether.
If I had to guess, I would tend to agree with some of the more sarcastic and abrasive comments on the Kotaku story and suggest that perhaps an exec higher up in the company is pissy because he had an unfortunate scenario where he got a little bit more involved than he would have liked with a sexy little night elf that turned out to be a guy.
September 24th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
I dunno… isnt the Chinese government a lot more intrusive and totalitarian about almost everything over there? That’s where I got the idea that maybe they could have something to do with it, though I might be wrong.
September 24th, 2007 at 11:35 pm
Yes, they are, but they don’t have the resources to micromanage everything everywhere all the time. That’s what middle management is for. I could definitely be wrong, but I get the feeling that if this came directly from the Chinese government that it would be country-wide (applying to all Chinese MMOGs) and also wouldn’t require something as extreme and ridiculous as requiring women to photograph their genitalia to play a game. It wouldn’t exactly look great for international politics.
September 25th, 2007 at 11:59 pm
Joystiq calls bullshit on this one, echoing some of the same thoughts I had:
“Besides being ineffective (what’s to stop a player from sending in a picture of someone else?) the system seems overly complicated when a National ID card number could easily provide proof of gender (much as it already does for age confirmation in other MMOs).”
http://www.joystiq.com/2007/09/25/rumor-control-shandas-anti-gender-bending-mmo-policy/
It’s good to hear that this is probably an error that got lost in translation, because if it’s not, jeez. As they Joystiq states, it’s probably not a great policy for a publicly traded company.
September 26th, 2007 at 3:13 pm
Yeah, hearing that it comes from a website without the best track record for confirming real news makes a difference.
September 27th, 2007 at 4:55 am
[...] now, you may have read about the following news snippet: Shanda (Nasdaq: SNDA) subsidiary Aurora Technology has [...]
September 30th, 2007 at 6:24 pm
[...] wants to cut down on women players Gaming, Identity, and Sexuality All Your Ladies Are Belong To Us Debunking rumours: Chinese MMO’s anti-genderbending [...]
October 7th, 2007 at 7:00 am
“Well, in this case they probably aren’t trying to discourage players, seeing as the stipulation comes directly from the company in question and not from the government– my thought is that they wouldn’t willingly shoot their business model in the foot.”
China is communist. All businesses are majority owned by the government.