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.