Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Male gamers not allowed to have female avatars in China

http://kotaku.com/gaming/only-in-china/shanda-says-no-to-men-role-playing-women-characters-302795.php

In China, male gamers with female avatars had their accounts frozen in a game called King of the World. Male players can only have male avatars while female gamers can have either male or female avatars. Female gamers, however, must prove their sex via webcam if they want to have a female avatar.

There is speculation that this isn't true, but we're not getting much more information on it (at least, in the US we aren't). Considering China has a different government and different culture than the US, I think it's plausible, but the whole thing sounds so odd.

I wouldn't want my character creation limited that way. I know in Ragnarok Online, you could choose the sex you wanted to play, but all your characters on that account had to be the same. I'm still not sure of the reason behind that.

4 comments:

Vic Tokai said...

I saw this when researching online, although I think I saw it for a different MMO, also in China. They make the player verify their gender with a webcam to play a female character. I've played several multiplayer games from overseas, like Pangya, where they make your avatar the same gender that the player chose when creating the account, meaning the player's gender. Of course, you can always lie about that.

This sounds a bit extreme and also silly.

Steve said...

I saw somewhere that said up to 75% of male avatars or characters were played by females.

Brian Smith said...

Interesting stuff. Really ties into my post above. I'm going to agree with Josh and say this is taking it to a pretty silly extreme.

kpenn said...

This is crazy. I don't get what the big deal is. Like Josh said, it would be too easy to lie to prove your gender. I don't see it working very well, and it's a bad idea to begin with.