An MMO bans men playing female characters

[thewayne]

If you try to create a female character, you have to show up on a web cam to prove that you're a woman. Conversely, women DO NOT have to prove they are a man to create male characters.

Double standards FTW!

http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/26/1517244

Comments

[kylejcrb.livejournal.com]

Seems kinda silly. Guess you can't roleplay in an RPG anymore, huh?

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

Exactly my thought. I have a total of seven or eight toons in WoW, two are female. A female friend of mine, the guild founder on one of the two servers that I play on, I believe most of her characters are male. My ex-girlfriend, I think her characters are almost 100% female.

I don't remember my gender mix in CoH. Probably more female characters, but the majority was still male.

[kylejcrb.livejournal.com]

All of mine in CoH are female. That's about 9 characters, I think. Luckily the developers of that game realize the "role-playing" aspect of an RPG means being something your not, whether it's a monster, a robot, or even the opposite gender.

[droewyn.livejournal.com]

My first thought was "Oh god, now female characters are REALLY going to get harassed, because pervy men will know FOR SURE that they're really looking at a woman."

I would never play that MMO.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

That is an excellent point! Hadn't considered that, and it snuck past my wife, too.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

My wife further replied that she would probably play it as a male character.

[silveradept]

Right, and the first thing I can think of someone saying when a female wants to prove she's female:

"Show us your tits."

Wouldn't have to be unclothed, but there can't be any delicate or effective way of asking that question.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

I think the company is based in China, not New Orleans. :P

Interesting way of collecting some adult webcam footage.

[silveradept]

Something like that, yeah. You'd have potentially one of the biggest archives of women flashing the camera. Can certainly see how that might be "leaked" out to detrimental effect.

[ateji.livejournal.com]

...wow.

I would never, never play that game.

Depending on the game, the sprites/avatars/whatever of one gender can be more visually appealing than the other. And what about when you have huge clothing differences?

Free gender for the win!