Demographic
Irradiated by LabRat
I realize these posts are of interest to a relatively narrow slice of our readership, but the subject sure as hell is interesting to me, and I’ve been stuck running around all day and this is the most interesting thing I’ve found, so there you go.
I’ve found a fascinating group blog linked to an ongoing longitudinal research project by a group of social psychologists studying the social dynamics of online MMOs using World of Warcraft, which directly addresses a lot of the questions and curiosities I’ve had about the demographics of the game and why people play the way they do, particularly the choices they make in character and activity. With twelve million players in that game alone and growing, social patterns become more and more interesting to me.
To make the post somewhat more comprehensible to non-gamers, a brief lexicon. Some of these are local terms to WoW, but most of them represent concepts common to most MMORPGs even if the local terminology varies.
DPS = damage dealer/damage dealing. The term itself stands for “damage per second”, the metric by which players in that role are measured, but has come to stand in for the role itself, at least in WoW.
Tank = Damage soaker. Players filling this role have to get and keep the attention of the monsters and absorb, avoid, or mitigate the force of attack. Usually a heavily armored melee class, though some games have some other tank models based more around total avoidance.
Healer = Exactly what it says on the tin. These players make health bars full or stop them from going down in the first place.
Melee = DPS that does their job at close range, the alternative being ranged DPS.
Guild = alliance of player characters sharing a common chat channel, resource bank, and calendar. Various forms of these are found in nearly all such games, be they guilds, linkshells, corps, or other. Often also have a Ventrilo or Mumble server/channel for voice communication.
Main = the character an individual player considers their first priority and plays the most. Nowadays in most games leveling is fun and easy enough more players have more than one character than don’t.
Alt = any character “alternative” to a player’s main. Varies from other characters played for the sheer fun of it to banking or crafting mules.
Mob = hostile non-player character or monster. The mob is what you’re aiming to kill. Term dates back to DikuMUD, where it was short for “mobile”.
Dungeon = instanced (each instance a group enters is temporarily its own world rather than part of the shared overworld) encounters involving small groups of players clearing mobs and taking down bosses. The most basic unit of group play.
Raid = group of players ranging from 10, 25, 40 people gathered together to defeat game content tuned to be impossible without everyone knowing their job and a high degree of coordination. Other than PvP and just generally having someone to talk to, the main reason guilds are formed.
PvP = Player versus Player. Activities organized around fighting other players, whether in complicated ruled games or straight one on one gladiatorial matches. As distinguished from PvE, Player versus Environment, which raids and dungeons are.
The upshot of the current PlayOn study is that, rather than taking data strictly mined from the characters actually in the game- which is pretty easy to do if you have some search engine skill, and in the original study was accomplished with census bots- it connects individual players with a large amount of real-world data on age, gender, country, and personality survey with their characters and tracks them that way. There are several different types of findings presented, though there’s on the whole more posts about gender differences than age or region differences… though there are evidently some fairly significant gender differences between regions. Since, like I said above, I have limited time tonight, this will be more a scattershot selection and commentary on some of the more interesting findings than a serious analysis.
Average age: Thirty years old. Not surprising, and probably fits in with my theory about the generation that were children when home video game consoles became widely available is also the generation playing the most games now. What’s a little more interesting is that the Hong Kong and Taiwan cohort is dragging that average age down some- they’re significantly younger on average than the Americans. They also log a lot more hours.
Gender demographics: Roughly a quarter of WoW players are women, though I’ve seen higher figures. Seems to be trending upward more over time, though male players are the very solid majority and their gamer culture tends to reflect that. I’ve also seen, at least in my experience, that female players tend to form alliances and centers of density on servers- some guilds are either all-female, majority female, or at the least have a much higher proportion than represented in the game demographics over all, whereas being “the girl” in other guilds is inherently cause for drama. Lot of self-selecting assortment going on here, I suspect.
Gender bending: Of players using characters opposite their actual gender, they are almost all men, and they are mostly the older men, which is interesting to me. The big majority of male players has the most to do with that “almost all men” thing, but by proportion they’re still three to four times more likely to roll a female character than women are to roll a male character. The biggest going theory is the “nice butt” one- to paraphrase, men are the more likely to decide that if they’re going to be chasing around an animated backside for awhile, it might as well be hers rather than his. I suppose the “older” thing is probably due to older men being more secure in their masculinity than younger ones and therefore less likely to feel they necessarily need to be represented by a bristling slab of beef.
The in-game stereotype is that all female characters are men. (And, in fact, that all players are, though that’s mostly running gag by now.) Apparently by the numbers, if you meet a female avatar, she’s 55% likely to be played by a man.
I’m more interested in why so many fewer women choose to play male characters. Do women identify more with their characters than men do? Do they just have an aversion to not being a “pretty” character? They find the male models just flat uglier to look at in general?
Player role: The in-game stereotype is this: men tank, women heal. There are fewer stereotypes for what the DPS do, but when the game zeitgeist as a whole admits that women play, it generally assumes that the actual chick is the priest back there in the robes healing the group.
What it turns out the data actually breaks down to is this: men tank (three to four times more often than women do), men and women heal, men play melee DPS, and women play ranged DPS. There’s a significant regional difference, though- if you’re in Hong Kong or Taiwan, the stereotype IS true and by proportion rather than raw numbers, more women heal than men. If you’re in America, healing is an equal-opportunity role and men and women choose to do it just as often. American men like to melee more than Hong Kong and Taiwanese men, and American women like to tank more than Hong Kong and Taiwanese women (though it’s a tiny proportion of both groups of women overall). More American women like to melee than the Pacific women, to the point where American female melee outnumber American female healers, but Hong Kong and Taiwanese women have a huge majority of healers over melee. In both regions, female players overall would really prefer to be standing in back slinging pain over anything else. The stereotype shouldn’t be “the priest, that’s the chick”, but “the hunter, that’s the chick”, apparently.
I suspect a combination of gender role and the kinds of fantasy role models men, women, boys, and girls are given has the most to do with this. I’m not intimately familiar with Hong Kong and Taiwanese gender dynamics, but my overall impression is that gender roles are a fair bit more rigid there than they are in the US; women heal more there because it’s by far the closest offered role to what a woman is supposed to fill out in fantasy that doesn’t threaten any traditional notions of gender role. It’s also possible I’ve just gotten southeast Asian gamer culture horrendously wrong and it’s actually because healing is a prestigious role that offers the most obvious path for achievement for female gamers- the Hong Kong and Taiwanese gamers are also much more achievement-oriented than the Americans.
As a general rule in an RPG or traditional high fantasy story or movie, if you have a woman in the party- and you usually do- she’s one of two things; either the nurturing cleric, or the roguish and faintly wicked sorceress, with an occasional option for ranger. (There is an obligatory scene where she takes off her hood and you realize it’s not a skinny guy.) The character in the heavy plate charging in not caring if they get hit and relishing in being in the middle of the things is nearly always male, and if it’s a female character taking a role vengeful or psycho enough to be in-your-face, it’s usually as a more roguelike character than a warriorlike one.
I can’t say I’m surprised that most women overall, given a choice between the standard two “womens'” roles in fantasy fiction, go for the damage dealer over the cleric. It was usually a choice between a nauseating passive-aggressive martyr and her much more fun counterpart…
PvP: The only finding released so far is for arena battles, which are matches between teams of 2, 3, or 5 players. Last team with a member still standing wins. It’s the most intensely competitive environment for PvP. By age, younger players are far more likely to have tried arenas, but age made no difference in whether or not players chose to stick with it. Lots more men play arenas regularly than women, but American women are more likely to be regular arena players than Hong Kong or Taiwanese women. BUT… by win ratio, American men win significantly more often than American women- while Hong Kong and Taiwanese women win no more or less often than their male counterparts. So the women I just painted as potentially being gender-conforming delicate butterflies above, are gonna kill ya. That might be the effect of the greater achievement drive in the Hong Kong and Taiwanese players I mentioned earlier- a greater ethos of “if you’re going to play, play to win.”
I will be very interested to see what further findings come out of this project, and one or two of you readers may even be too.
December 23rd, 2010 at 12:23 am
I’m surprised the number of men gender-bending Blood Elves isn’t much higher. Blizz went so over the top when they made the male character I could see David Hyde Pierce calling them “shockingly effete”.
Here are their voice emotes just to give you a taste…
December 23rd, 2010 at 1:49 am
I seem to fall squarely into the age and gender bracket (30-ish, male), and count myself among the gender-benders for my main. And yes, I chose a BElf for the “which butt would I rather follow around” angle. After 6+ years of video game QA, I comfortable playing whatever the hell I want, for whatever reason I want when I’m on my own time.
I do not fall into the role classification though. I’ve never enjoyed tanking or melee. My main is a Warlock, although I’m leveling a Priest alt (or was, pre-Cata). It’s not WoW specific for me. Give me a game where I can pick between melee and ranged combat, and I’ll pick ranged everytime. What that says about me, I have no idea.
December 23rd, 2010 at 2:26 am
I’m partly in the typical male group [almost 30, bear tank main, strong preference for orc characters] with no gender bending chars, but it’s interesting how well my flatmate fits the role classification - she started out with a female orc warrior, decided hitting people in the face wasn’t for her, and rolled a male undead lock. Her favorite alt is a draenei hunter.
My favorite battleground companions [other than healers] are another hunter and a mage - both female IRL. And hell yeah they’re lethal and competitive! Stealing my killing blows, dammit…
We’re all European, FWIW.
December 23rd, 2010 at 4:50 am
I’m more interested in why so many fewer women choose to play male characters. Do women identify more with their characters than men do? Do they just have an aversion to not being a “pretty” character? They find the male models just flat uglier to look at in general?
Not a WoW player myself, but from what I could gather (talking with others, observing as a woman myself), there aren’t exactly pretty male characters in the game. As in, seriously, not even close. Even I would rather stare at the girl butt than that male one.
(I think it’s worth mentioning Square Enix here, who pretty much owes their success to the fact that girls do, in fact, like to stare at pretty male character butts. What, you think Dirge of Cerberus was popular ’cause of the plot?)
December 23rd, 2010 at 6:32 am
I’m more interested in why so many fewer women choose to play male characters. Do women identify more with their characters than men do? Do they just have an aversion to not being a “pretty” character? They find the male models just flat uglier to look at in general?
I wonder if that’s part of why Perfect World has such a high proportion of women playing it? The male characters are certainly designed to be attractive. I was trying to roll a male archer in that game a while ago but was stopped by boring technical problems. I identify with range (7.62×51).
Women playing female characters because they identify more would contradict another observation of mine; pop adventure with its protagonists sort of defaulting male seems to leave women more ready to identify with a man. I came to that conclusion after I found out several women of my online acquaintance often are a male character in their sexual fantasies.
December 23rd, 2010 at 7:30 am
That’s pretty interesting in general. I fall in the stereotypical male group, running a warrior main tank and even my first main was a tanking Shaman. My wife is from Hong Kong, and she rolled a mage then switched to priest when I switched to warrior. So yea, later we are planning on having 1.5 kids.
I would say that the difference in culture between Hong Kong and the rest of SE Asia (I don’t know too much about Taiwan either way) is pretty immense, particularly with regards to women. Hong Kong has/had such a vibrant economy and benefited from English rule so long that the women are more dominant, even by American standards, being more achievement oriented and working much later in life. It may possibly be a dynamic between the economic structure and the history of having a large supply of Chinese men interested in marrying and moving to Hong Kong, I don’t really know.
It is also possible my wife is just a sociopath, a conclusion I came to after listening to her cackling gleefully during PVP, and theorizing that she prefers PVP because she “likes to think there is someone on the other side of the computer getting really angry and quitting the game because they can’t kill” me. Her sister is the same way though, so I am inclined to believe her cultural explanation
December 23rd, 2010 at 7:52 am
I was talking about the age thing with a friend the other day (he plays WOW, I prefer Guild Wars) and how many of the younger people ever played the original Warcraft games? It seems a lot of his enjoyment of the game stems from all the refrences to the originals.
December 23rd, 2010 at 7:58 am
The all-female guilding plays out in real life as well. My wife wanted to shoot more but I could tell “shooting with the guys” wasn’t really working for her. She did a Babes with Bullets class a couple years ago; came back with a huge smile on her face and picked up an amazing amount of friendships and skills.
December 23rd, 2010 at 9:14 am
I honestly would have expected to see a higher percentage of women playing male characters, and take it as a good thing that they aren’t. When WoW started out, women played male characters to get the lolkids to stop hitting on them so they could play the game. (And a lot of guys I know played female characters so the same lolkids would give them help and stuff.)
It’s actually pretty clichéd now — the male toon with a “broken mic” on vent? Always a chick.
December 23rd, 2010 at 10:33 am
On gender bending -The biggest going theory is the “nice butt”-
Probably going, but is it true? When I play the Bethesda games (Morrowind, Oblivion and Fallout 3) all characters look the same from behind once they have armor and a helmet on. So why did I (56 year old male) choose to play a female orc in Morrowind? I think when the choice came up during character generation (before having played the game) I felt it would be more exiting, for one thing that attracts me to fantasy roleplaying is that you can play someone you are totally not and I am “more not” a female orc than a male one. So why do many men who roleplay women say “nice butt” when asked why? My theory: because it sounds more virile, manly and heterosexual than “I want to be a girlie just like my dear mama”. Any idea what the biggest going theory is for women who play male characters? Nice muscles?
December 23rd, 2010 at 1:09 pm
One of the reasons I’m interested is that I’m living waaaaay over in Outlier Town; my main is a male tauren paladin tank, and my two most-played alts are a tauren warrior and a troll death knight, both female and both also primarily tanks. My alts in general (I have a lot, since I like to explore class mechanics) are nearly 50/50 male and female, I have a very strong preference for melee in general and especially plate melee, and while I have got a little holy priest, healing scares me and I’m primarily playing her to force myself to learn it so I know what I’m putting my healers through. Stingray’s favorite alt is a disc priest, and his cackles of pure schadenfreude while I cursed my way through a Gnomeregan trailing behind a charge-happy warrior tank were positively scary.
On the gender bending and role thing, I know I’m working on Erik’s principle of the not-me rather than wanting to hide my actual gender (although EVERYONE assumes the tank is a guy anyway, apparently for good reason); to me my characters are characters rather than avatars of me, so my main to me is a grey-bearded religious fellow with a stupidly idealistic streak rather than cartoon-me in heavy plate. Either way I suspect the appeal of “plate melee” in general is just that it’s fun for me to play out that kind of role when it’s as far away from my IRL self as can be got.
The tanking thing is an easy answer- I’m a micromanaging min-maxer control freak of a gamer, and tanking allows me to control the battlefield. Paladin gives me a huge toolbox to help the raid when things start to go down the creek, so there it is. Not a very complex set of motivations there.
December 23rd, 2010 at 1:32 pm
Ice and Mousie- I think that’s probably it; when they broke down the gender-bending women by race choice, they were heavily going for the races that were conventionally attractive as males- the two elves- and avoiding the steroid-freak ones, like the humans, draeni, and orcs.
The one exception, interestingly, is male tauren. I like to think that’s because there’s just something elementally fun about being an eight foot tall man-bull, especially if, in real life, you are short… not that I’d know anything about that, of course.
December 23rd, 2010 at 2:11 pm
My personal anecdote is that having talked to a number of my gamer friends (All guys, so I can’t comment on this from the other direction) about the male/female avatar question they have nearly ALL unanimously declared they’d rather be starting at an attractive ass for hours on end.
It sounds kinda plausible, I guess, and would definitely fit many peoples notions of Average Gamer(TM). Although when I sit here and think about it, if you’re busy staring at your characters shapely rear-end the entire time then you’re probably not paying attention to the actual GAME.
So I donnow.
Considering the personalities of said people I know and the logic gordian-knots they’ll weave as excuses for things my second guess is that they really do it because they think having a beefy male character on the screen they’re fixated upon would ‘look totally gay.’
This idea is especially amusing to me considering I’m still waiting for a couple of them to be honest with themselves and come out of the damn closet already.
December 23rd, 2010 at 4:03 pm
Dang, Ma’am! Kids, these days! I thought the internet was a text medium. (I’ll be sixty soon.)
No, really, there is so much to read on the net, why would anybody use it for anything else?
I do miss the all-text Adventure games.
December 23rd, 2010 at 8:32 pm
My main is a female troll warrior and my only alt is a female tauren druid. I can trace a lot of my choices regarding them to my hatred of dealing with fiddly details; overall in games I just want to hit things and make them die in new and interesting ways. Prior to WoW my favorite games were Goldeneye on the N64 (proximity mines FTW) and Champions of Norrath 1&2 for the PS2. CoN is incredibly similar to how I play WoW, i.e. hit things until they die and then loot the corpses. It’s a simple gameplay, but it works well for me as I’m far more interested in just plain having fun than working towards a goal.
I seriously debated making my characters male because they don’t have navel-showing armor, but decided on the smaller butt option of the females. My tauren fits into that because she’s only out of cat form when forced to be. It’s absolutely amazing how much screenspace can be taken up by the backside of a character and until my tauren got cat form my most used rant was “Get your damn butt out of the way, I want to kill it and I CAN’T SEE IT” punctuated with frantic camera movements. I actually got killed at one point because one of the mobs attacking me was small enough that it was hidden behind a huge expanse of tauren butt and I couldn’t figure out where it was to target and kill it. If it wasn’t for the screenspace issue I honestly don’t think I’d care which gender the character is. I’m just there to kill things and what’s in my character’s pants doesn’t affect that.
December 24th, 2010 at 5:43 pm
Interesting. I’m mid-30’s, female, and have 5 female toons on WoW. I don’t think I have anything against playing a male character, it just didn’t really occur to me. The whole “ass I’ll have to look at for hours” concept never occurred to me. Let alone to try to “pass” as a male (broken mic syndrome). I’m exactly who I am, and I’m female. I don’t really see my toons as being avatars of myself IRL, or of who I wish I could be, but they are still “me” if that makes any sense. Particularly since WoW is such a social game, I make no pretense about who I am.
My main is a warrior, straight dps, and was chosen when I first started because I thought the mechanics would be easiest to learn as someone coming into the game really late. I also have mage, priest, warlock and pally. The only real thing they have in common besides sex is height. For some reason it’s the short races that appeal to me. So far it’s 2 dwarves, 2 gnomes and a goblin. And the goblin race was the incentive for me to finally play horde
Like Brownie above me, most of the time I’m of the “just point at what I have to kill” persuasion. Plan? Who needs a plan? Get’em! After a rough day at work I’ll be the first one to suggest going online and finding things to kill. It’s pretty therapeutic sometimes. Now if only there was an add-on that would let me rename some of the mobs…
I have nothing at all against tanks/healing. In fact I’m working on levelling both in WoW. It took a few years before I got over my personal fear of screwing up from not knowing the spells in depth in tabletop D&D before I would play a spellcaster of any type. Once I got over myself, I discovered I really *did* like being the walking bandaid. My priest’s motto was “nobody dies unless I die first”. And over many years of TT RPG’s, I’ve played a wide spectrum of genders. Male, female, and even one who was frequently, in character, changing gender.
December 31st, 2010 at 5:43 am
I was just thinking the other day about how I have never met a female tank in the game. I just thought it odd, every female player in the guilds I’ve been in have been healers, ranged DPS, or Rogues.
I guess I’m also a very confused person. I’ve raided since Vanilla, and I’ve had just about all the character types as mains in competitive raiding guilds.
Started as Ret Pally in vanilla, Fury Warrior in TBC, Feral (tank) Druid and Resto Druid in WotLK, and now my main is a Hunter in Cata. Maybe I just don’t like committing to anything!
Another thing, I have my doubts about the butt-staring excuse. I’d like to see some research into how many males play female characters and have “show cloak” checked in the options.