Over-Role-Playing

I saw this article on Massively today that totally intrigued me. It was about a study that was conducted that suggests that gamers take on aspects of the personalities of their game characters. Sheesh. That was a mouthful. Anyway, I saw another similar mention of this...somewhere. I don't remember where. It was more along the lines of certain people gravitating towards Horde while other gravitate towards Alliance (it being WoW specific). I would dismiss this all out of hand as being craycray, but Stanford conducted the aforementioned study and you can't ignore Stanford, right?

The study found that basically, women who represent themselves in a gaming world in provocative clothing see themselves more as objects versus women who don't. I suppose that this study would have to apply to role playing because I, for one, have both Alliance and Horde toons, one of which is male, and they all wear a variety of gear and I don't role play at all. I've never thought of myself as a sexy gnome rogue. Right?

The study goes on to talk about how only 45% of gamers are female and that "many" feel the gaming world is not welcoming to female gamers. I don't feel that I can speak to this from experience. I've never felt unwelcome in any game environment based solely on being a girl gamer. I've dealt with male/female stereotypes plenty. I even got a little bent out of shape on Goolge+ the other day when someone intimated that all women like the Lifetime network, which I hate, by the way. I've also been annoyed PLENTY in game by idiots that follow me around and constantly drop duel flags on me or by 12 year olds who talk politics in trade chat like they actually know what they're talking about. But my many annoyances have never been gender-based. 

A direct quote from the article says, "It used to be passive and you watched the characters. You now enter the media and become the protagonist. You become the characters." I just don't know if fully I agree with this. I also would like to know, of these people, how many of them also have gaming compulsions? It just seems to me that someone who has a hard time separating their real life selves from their game avatar would also have a gaming compulsion. Just a thought.

What's your opinion on this article? If you're a girl, have you experienced sexual stereotyping while playing an online game?

Winding Up the Week

I have compiled a summary of blog articles, tweets, and other random stuff I found interesting this week. I have high hopes to make this a weekly feature on my blog. Don't be too harsh if this is the only post of its kind that you see here. ;)

Newbie Blogger Initiative

This first section is featuring blogs from the NBI. Please check them out and give them some comment love.

Susi from Gaming Abroad. She wrote about TERA this week which helped to whittle away at my reserve. She also wrote about the WoW Iron Man Challenge. Lots of variety.

Diane at tl-dr ruminated about ERP and bad groups. Wowsa. 

Nomieke at /con mmob is blogging from Tumblr. One of the few NBIers I've seen on Tumblr.

Ravious at Kill Ten Rats wrote a fantastic article about the evolution of bloggers. Ravious isn't a newbie blogger but this article was written for the NBI.

Jacob talks about protecting your blog at tl-dr. It's an excellent post for both newbies and veteran bloggers.

I LOVE the title of this blog:  My Staff is Bigger than Yours. 

Twitter

As Seen On Twitter (these were all copied and pasted directly from Twitter. I didn't change a thing.

@WTSHeals said, "BARES IS CAN DUNCE! DUN DUN DUN! LOL! DUNCING BARES IS CAN MAKE HAPPY TIMES FOR UDDER FRENDS!"

@druidheals said, "Why would Blizzard delete a thread entitled, "Nozdormu's Nipples"?? This is serious stuff, man!"

@Vixsin_LiGS said, "I love how my mind works. Endless raid farming for useless upgrades? YES PLS! Endless transmog runs for useless aesthetics? OH F- THAT."

Other Blog News 

Rashtag gave a touching tribute to Maurice Sendak at Need More Rage.

Brunpal ruminates about the state of the Diablo 3 auction house at Jaded Alt.

Lonomonkey posted about Grammar Nazis at Screaming Monkeys. I'm all for figuring out when to use you, your, you're, its, it's, their, there, and they're, but I certainly don't go around criticizing people when they make mistakes. Cripes people. Boundaries!! 

FYI

For those of you with the MoP Beta, the newest update crashes when trying to load the 64-bit launcher. To solve this problem, use the regular .exe launcher. Looks just like the 64-bit one, but doesn't say "World of Warcraft-64".