Professor studies how online games affect gender views

Everyone knows that totally hot 18-year-old California swimsuit model you met playing the popular online game, "World of Warcraft", is probably a 36-year-old guy living in his parents' basement. But does taking on the persona of another gender affect how people perceive each other online? \nThat is the question IU Public Speaking Director Cynthia Duquette Smith and MIT Instructor Katie Livingston Vale have set out to answer in a paper they will present later this month in Cleveland.\n"We found most people think the female characters they meet online are males," Vale said. "But still others are convinced that females are treated differently."\n"World of Warcraft" is a massive multiplayer online role playing game where thousands of people simultaneously play in one persistent game world, all the while interacting with each other.\nReleased in late 2004, the game has a worldwide subscriber base of over 6 million people and controls more than 50 percent of the massive multiplayer online role-playing game market, according to a May study posted on the Web site mmogchart.com, which tracks such games.\nSmith and Vale's study of approximately 130 players who responded to a survey they posted online, found about 40 percent of players log on as both male or female characters, but more than half will never play as the opposite gender.\n"When asked why, we found most just find female characters more attractive to be staring at the whole time," Vale said.\nIn studying "Warcraft," which Smith and Vale's husband said they play regularly, the two have found many similarities to real life social situations, especially in the larger guilds -- where groups of dozens form.\n"In a guild you're not anonymous," Vale said. "You go on long raids and get to know the personality of another person, to trust them or follow their instructions. There are schisms and subgroups. People split off over all sorts of disagreements."\nSome people have even put being in charge of a guild down on their resumes when applying for real jobs, Vale said.\n"Let's say you lead a guild of 120 people in eight different time zones and have them all up to level 60, businesses are taking that seriously," she said. "Managing a guild like that online can help manage workers outsourced to India that you'll never meet."\nSenior Enrique Lozano said he is an avid "Warcraft" player and participated in the survey, but said he doubts the game offers that much real world experience.\n"I have heard of people putting down leading a guild on a resume, but honestly it's either BS or a very remote case," he said. "That doesn't stop the fact that leading experience is very good experience for a job though"