Thursday, June 16, 2011

Surprised About Gender Preferences

I do research into urban legends, mythology, folklore, etc., so I am highly aware of archetypes and roles in storytelling, games, etc.. Consequently, two of my first characters were male ones. It just seemed natural to me to try creating a boy character when I started as my first impressions of the Wizard101 game included notions of "battle," "quests," "defeats or wins in battle," and to me, these seemed like "boy" things. Also, since I tend to get wrapped up in gaming, I wanted to make sure I created an opposite gender character to distance myself by identity - from the gameplay persona. I suppose the choice of a boy character and associating "battle" with the masculine gender has to do with North American gender role conditioning that has been going on for hundreds of years as well...

... so with all the above, I was completely shocked with kid-player reaction to my character creation choices!

I have literally been scolded by children online at Wizard101!





What an experience! or two - or three...

Needless to say, since this is a family arena for game play and children are a special demographic group this site is dedicated to, I took a step back and reconsidered my ideas surrounding character creation.

I can only guess that child players who chided me earlier felt uncomfortable with my interactions knowing I was a different gender than my character and an adult, to boot! Since this (cause of discomfort) was never my intent and I want to promote myself in a safe way online at Wizard101, I felt I should return to character creation and start again in a different way.

It may be that with the game requiring quite a lot of thinking (some of the Krokotopia puzzles, remembering locations, where books and reagents, where portals and such are) at times, younger people don't want to mess with figuring out who is behind the character and just want to assume that when they meet a boy character, it's a boy behind the mask. Same ditto for girl characters and females behind those personas.

I was very quickly taken off a friends list early in my Wiz101 gaming experience - when a female player and I battled a few rounds together and ended up on the same quest-line for a little while. Later in questing when we were doing some reagent gathering and had more time to chat, she started flirting with the male persona I created for the game. When I told her I was a female adult, the player got very upset. Needless to say, we are not on each others' friends lists and that game-relationship lasted only about a half hour!

LOL

I am not LOL-ing because this is terribly funny...but more out of a slight discomfort resulting from this experience because 1 - I had never intended to misrepresent myself as a person but thought most players are highly aware of the persona/role-play details of this game and 2 - I got quite the "talking to" by this player for a little while before we went our separate ways... mostly it was apparent that the player's feelings were quite hurt. I had to come to the realization that in particular - TEENS - are a huge demographic group who are playing Wizard 101 and THEY CAN BE VERY EMOTIONAL!

Lesson LEARNED!

It's not that a particular GENDER is favoured, either male or female, as best to use during game play - it's that your real GENDER used for game play seems to be a preference - especially for adults playing Wizard 101.

Character Looks - Adult Grey Hair

I don't know if this is important or not and I don't know if other game players notice or not but since I am an adult player of the game, Wizard 101, I decided to make sure to give my characters grey hair. I didn't start this until I gained a little bit of experience with navigating and playing the game, so I have a couple of characters from my "noob" days that are not gray-haired but that I have caused to be mainly inactive. I don't want to lose the resources and items I gained from these first characters so I am gradually sending these resources to my newer, grey-haired characters and will delete the former personas pretty soon. I may keep the strongest original character for gathering resources and keep the friend list feature shut off when using this character in game play. I haven't quite decided yet...

I am in very strong agreement with The KingsIsle/Wizard 101 concept of safe play online and the efforts of this gaming community to look after the best interests of our youngest game players. Since I am behind a monitor and relatively anonymous during gameplay, I felt it best to attempt to display at least one signature feature that might be interpreted as an adult one... the grey hair.

Additionally, I keep my "add friends" feature TURNED OFF most of the time so that players have to chat a bit with me before adding me on a friend list. I try to let people who are interested in befriending me know  that I AM NOT A KID... and I hope other adult players have thought of similar ways to let gamers know a little about themselves beyond the restrictive and anonymous environment we are all in when we play Wizard101.

I just wanted to put these concepts "out there" for people to think about.

I really enjoy this game and wish KingsIsle/Wizard101 developers, creators, promoters much success and longevity so that I can keep playing and having a blast with this game. I think that anything players can do to increase safety, alleviate gameplay and character interaction confusion is good for the longevity and experiences at Wizard101. In fact, for adults of the game - who are supposed to be the responsible people - I think we have a duty to ensure that we are doing everything possible to maintain or even increase safety during game interactions.

Now, this isn't to suggest I mean to say all adult players need to turn off their befriending list feature and make their characters have grey hair all the time... I am just mentioning what I am doing to help promote a safe gaming experience around my characters for those who play and are at vulnerable ages.

Any thoughts on this matter from readers?