At first I thought that it was just another entry from the slow MMO news day department but after thinking about it perhaps there are some deeper issues to consider. This week Broken Toys mentioned a blog article by a man who was offended by bunny ears as part of a WoW achievement for the Azerothian holiday of Noblegarden. The website in question is not even a gaming website — instead it’s devoted to radical gender feminism and other assorted left wing causes — full of cheery, happy-go-lucky people who only see the good in humanity.
If you look hard enough you’ll find that WoW is rife with every kind of “ism” imaginable. No matter what Blizzard does you’re going to find one person among 12 million that is waiting to be offended by the content or tone of the thousands quests and achievements. WoW and other MMOs have been no strangers to pressure groups and political correctness in the past few years. Due to the increasing popularity of MMOs and virtual worlds, it seems they are being used as a platform to advance political issues? Is the intrusion of the real world into virtual worlds a good thing?
Some Recent History on Political Correctness in MMOs
These days MMO companies are only too willing to cave in to the demands of pressure groups. A few years ago, afraid of being insensitive to African Americans Blizzard changed the name of one of their vanity cat pets called the Maine Coon— the actual name of a real world cat breed — to something more politically correct like the Black Tabby. It was rather cowardly of Blizzard to change the name but that’s how corporations behave these days — they are afraid of generating controversy and awakening the rage of the identity politics shakedown artists who are in the business of extorting money and influence.
From a lore point of view and since Maine doesn’t exist in Azeroth, Blizzard should never have allowed that named to be used in the first place. Blizzard needs to curtail the excessive use of real world references as they needlessly violate the sense of immersion which is vital to MMOs and virtual worlds.
Another incident where political correctness triumphed was when Blizzard set a dangerous precedent by apologizing for disciplining a player for advertising for new players for their GLBT guild. Regardless of your stand on the issue, Blizzard has every right to determine what speech is allowed both on their private forums and private servers as the U.S. Constituion which guarantees freedom of speech does not apply, yet due to pressure from special interest groups they folded like a house of cards.
Regarding Bunny Ears
Let’s examine the actual issue at hand concerning the Noblegarden achievement. The author of this charge seems be making the inference that the bunny ears could be seen as a reference to Playboy Bunnies — an easy target of feminists over the years. However, Blizzard routinely and shamelessly includes many real life pop-culture references in WoW which are rather silly, sophomoric and at times crude, so that practice may be coming back to haunt them with the Shake Your Bunny Maker achievement which could be seen as a sexual double entendre.
In defense of Blizzard, Noblegarden with it’s focus on egg collecting was intended to be an innocent homage to Easter — not a celebration of Playboy Magazine. Bunny ears are in fact harmless and many kids dress up in bunny costumes during Easter and Halloween. I think that it’s a bit of a stretch to claim that this is sexism. I have to wonder if the author of this article would have been as offended if Blizzard required that bunny ears be placed on both male and female players? I’m sure that for next year Blizzard will do just that to placate the few critics.
How anyone who is legitimately concerned with sexism in WoW can still be playing their MMO while the warlock class has a scantily clad female succubus pet that objectifies women (with no male counterpart – more sexism!) complete with S&M references is beyond me. There are countless examples of overt sexism and the objectification of women and yes even men in WoW. So why would any hardcore feminist striving for *equality* be a willing participant of such a obvious hostile and poisonous virtual world? The answer is that some feminists and feminized men can’t wait to be offended but as I will show you below, they are quite selective about what offends them.
Examples of Reverse Sexism in WoW
If anything the developers at Blizzard have bent over backward to give females in Azeroth positive images and in many cases have minimized negative ones. Here are some examples:
- What about the sexism of the matriarchal society of the Night Elves? They men stay at home while the women are guarding Night Elf civilization as sentinels.
- Where are the counter-balancing patriarchal societies in Azeroth? There are none, despite being fantasy based medieval societies they are conveniently mirrored on the gender equality of present day western civilization.
- How about the fact that the Stockades in Stormwind has only male prisoners? I guess females in Azeroth never seem to commit crimes.
- How about the over-representation of male villains? Sure there is Onxyia and a few other female bosses but for the most part they are exclusively male — hello Ragnaros, Illidian, Arthas et al. Anytime you need a bad guy it’s expedient to make him male.
- What about the irradiated gnomes in Gnomeregan? Notice they are all males, somehow the females miraculously escaped the radiation.
- What about the militant Dark Iron Dwarves? Again more bad males with no female representation. (Note: yes there are some female dwarves in BRD but they are normal skinned dwarves and rarely as the role of aggressors).
- What about the ogres? Again no female ogres. I guess male ogres just hatch by themselves.
- Why are there no males looking after the orphans in Stormwind and Ogrimmar? All we see are female matrons. Sexist!!!
As I have just demonstrated, it’s very easy to see sexism lurking everywhere if one looks hard enough. If the person who made this complaint was truly concerned about stamping out sexism in WoW they should have been honest and looked at everything in WoW. Thankfully Blizzard has avoided the temptation to give into political correctness and made WoW into a wonderfully interesting and unequal world. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
You’re in Their World Now
MMO companies have every right to create and shape the world of their choosing. You as a player have every right not to play in those worlds. Turbine for example does not have female dwarves as a playable race in Lord of the Rings Online which on the surface is oh so horribly sexist but is in complete accordance with the lore of J.R.R. Tolkien.
Let’s say if Blizzard decided to make a historical MMO about 12th century England — the world of Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham — they would have every right to enforce rules that are consistent with their desire to recreate that time period. They would not be wrong in enforcing that male and female avatars would have to assume traditional roles consistent with Anglo-Saxon/Norman medieval society.
Just as men and women who sign up to be actors in Renaissance Faires know that that they hired to recreate a romantic view of medieval life — not 21st century western modern society. So too should players who subscribe to that sort of MMO would know full well what they are getting into.
Bring Your Avatar Not Your Real Life Identity Please
Some people need to remember that WoW is not the real world. WoW is a role-playing MMO complete with a back story that includes lore, races and geography. Azeroth could be said to be a virtual world that’s cornerstone is contextual racism and bigotry exemplified by the ongoing distrust and conflict between the races of the Alliance and the Horde.
Yet no one could reasonably suggest that Blizzard supports racism in the real world because they promote racism between elves and orcs within the game. Similarity we as players should strenuously resist the temptation to transpose our gender politics into the genders of our avatars in a fantasy virtual world. Are you as a real life woman really hurt by the treatment of your female avatar in a role-playing MMO? If the answer is yes, then you are not really role-playing in a MMO — you are playing your real life self which is not how WoW is intended to be played. When all is said and done WoW *is* a role-playing MMO. If a player decides to play herself and then claims to the outside world to be a victim of perceived sexism inside the game then I do not feel sorry for them.
In the final analysis, you have only one right as an avatar: you have the right to decide whether to be a part of Azeroth or not.
What Happens in Azeroth Should Stay in Azeroth
Transferring offense and indignation from avatar to person and from person to avatar creates a fatal break in the immersion that is a defining characteristic of virtual worlds — especially fantasy virtual worlds. You can not enter Azeroth (or any other virtual world) and say that as real life minority or victim that you are offended by what you see in a fictional or period world and expect your grievances to be seriously addressed: you are playing as an avatar and not yourself. Allowing this insanity to go unchallenged would shut down most MMOs and virtual worlds.
This is not to say that there are no examples of players being legitimately offended in virtual worlds. In those cases the problem usually happens when a player introduces a immersion breaking intrusion of real world politics, bigotry, etc. into the fictional virtual world via chat or their character name choice. When that line is crossed then there is legitimate grounds for a grievance to be heard via the terms of use provisions.
Some food for thought regarding this modern disease of “sexism”. Sexism didn’t exist as a known social ill to the people who lived prior to the 20th century. It didn’t even exist as a term until the mid 1900’s. The people that lived before the 1900’s did not know they were sexist, they just figured they were normal and that’s they way the world was. So too will our current society be judged and labeled with some future “ism” that we currently can not fathom. Just think, future generations will pronounce judgment upon us and deride us with self-righteous contempt for offenses that have not even been created yet.
Other Concerns
Part of me sympathizes with the concerns of the author of the article that this made some females feel uncomfortable — although I did see many females with the bunny ears and the full Noblegarden regalia enjoying the fun of parading around in the costumes. I confess I felt a bit weird applying the ears to a few female avatars which was required of the achievement but it wasn’t because I thought I was objectifying a woman, rather it was all too cutesy for me.
It goes without saying that any kind of harassment and unwanted advances are wrong even in virtual worlds and thankfully there are customer service policies to deal with it. I’ve been the victim of it myself in WoW. Hazing and foul language in public chat channels is wrong as well. As well as rallying against it on my blog, I have spent countless hours over the past 10 years spending my limited gaming time reporting players who use racial, sexual and anti-gay slurs. I don’t just talk the talk, I walk the walk.
Another point to consider is that in a MMO like WoW anyone can come up to a male or female and use emotes like /hug, /kiss, /flirt and many more. Should they be banned due to their potential for sexual harassment? Of course not as it would be unpractical and contrary to what virtual worlds are all about: player interaction.
Should Blizzard create some an /emote ignore switch for players who may be offended by those emotes to prevent them from being broadcast publicly? Perhaps it would be a good idea. If people want to willingly isolate themselves from all communication and contact with their fellow players then by all means let them.
The Problem with Offense and Radical Feminism
The prickly problem with offense is that it subjective. One person’s scrap is another person’s gold. What is welcoming and fun to one player may be harassment to another. Given this problem we have timid companies and institutions erring on the side of caution and often capitulating at the hint of any offense related controversy with the result being we are all less free and we start self-censoring our thoughts and actions.
I really have to wonder if complaining about bunny ears is what the modern day feminist movement has been reduced to. Their concern seems rather disproportionate given the overt and institutionalized discrimination of millions of women who live in non-western countries endure on a daily basis. Given that reality, is this what modern day feminists should be concerned about, bunny ears in a MMO?
It’s hard to take this issue seriously when there real issues facing women who are striving for equality that need to be addressed. Playing the “I’m offended” game is getting tiresome as Female Gamer a reader at Broken Toys so eloquently states:
I’m a feminist. I’m a gamer. And I’m offended …
…offended by people who are claiming to be offended on my behalf. I never gave them the right to speak for me, and they don’t.
To anyone who was offended by the bunny ears: When you’ve been told you can’t even apply for a job you’re highly qualified for because you’re female, get offended. When you’ve been told you have to have a man co-sign to open a bank account, get offended. When your college academic adviser tells you that women shouldn’t be in college, and especially not in the sciences, get offended. When you’re denied housing because you’re a single woman, get offended. When you’ve been told you have to clean a filthy bathroom because you’re the only woman working there, get offended. When someone at your new employer’s home office demands that you put the real manager on the phone or you’ll be fired, get offended. And especially, when you’ve been told that your chances of getting a promotion from your boss are directly related to your boss’s chances of getting a blow job from you, get offended.
If the WORST thing that ever happens to you because you’re female is that someone zaps your game character with silly bunny ears, thank your deity of choice every day that you were not born into my generation, that you did grow up in the world we we grew up in, and that you did not have to fight the struggle we fought to have the opportunities that you take for granted. The women of my generation, and the generations who came before us, fought for the right to equal and fair treatment under the law. We fought for the chance to prove we could do a job, and do it. We fought for the opportunity to be everything we could be, do everything we could do. We did not fight for the right to never be offended. Anyone who thinks that such a right exists is trivializing every woman’s struggle to be treated as a human being, as an adult, as an equal.
Go ride your pink pony to the land of nicey-nice, you weak sisters. Find yourself some politically correct game where nobody is allowed to say any words, think any thoughts, that you personally do not like. You might want to get yourself a fainting couch while you’re at it, and make sure you have a man standing by to open doors for you and help you into cars. Or woman up, deal with it, and stop looking for things to get offended by, because you’re giving all the real feminists of the world a bad name.
Very well said. The feminism I grew up with was all about equality — not the overt hatred of men and radicalism that it has mutated into these days.
Conclusion
Do we really want to play in a sanitized Utopian virtual world where every kind of “ism” and social injustice has been eliminated? Heck no. Take away those kinds of imperfections and you have a bland, sterile world with no possibility of conflict, drama, and good and evil.
I’m concerned about the encroachment of our increasingly polarized society’s squabbles into the landscapes virtual worlds and MMOs. Companies like Blizzard need to hold fast to the integrity of their worlds and not bow down to the agenda of special interest groups hungry for new mediums with which to ply their “outrage” trade. MMO developers need to be able to exercise their artistic license to create the worlds they please free from the chilling effects of censorship and political correctness.
Our virtual sanctuaries should be places of refuge that are free from the intrusion of modern day politics; we go there to role-play and escape the real world, not to bring all of its issues and problems with us.
-Wolfshead
Well said. Very well said. I’m glad I’m not insane and that someone has the same mindset as me. I spent a bit of today going through Cuppycake’s most recent post about this as well and many of my points mirror yours.
So virtual bunny ears are nothing, but were you not offended that you did not have a choice *not* to torture a prisoner in a WOTLK quest some time ago? 🙂
https://temp.wolfsheadonline.com/?p=1020
I know it was about the lack of choice and not the torture itself, but you were also quite upset about that people were desensitized and talking about moral escapism.
Nobody likes radical feminists as they usually go too far and get upset about anything. This does not mean that they do not have a point, just like PETA is overdoing in their campaigns for a per se noble effort.
The bunny ears are really not worth a lot of fuss about it. My cousin Lisa thought they were funny, sexist indeed, but it did not offend her.
But CASUAL sexism, mostly male people are just getting used to this or that stereotype, is the root of the problem. This leads to the really serious issues when a woman just does not seem fit for a job in the eyes of the manager because she is a woman, and women should not do this or that.
Blizzard is mindless, not only in this regard. They have already demonstrated this with the still not available option to HIDE at least parts or your whole armory profile. PRIVACY is not Blizzard’s strong point either.
The issue with the maine coon, Guild Wars had the same with Pandas and Red-crested cranes: GW is also played in China, and depicting the death of an endangered species there is strictly forbidden. So the red-crested crane is now a blue-crested crane, and there are no more Pandas in Guild Wars.
The abuse of real-world references is also horrid in Guild Wars. It started during chapter 3, and somehow they ran out of ideas and used pop culture as inspiration. And basically copied this and that name slightly changed into their game world. It really destroys immersion and is rather cheap. People usually do that when they are running out of ideas and cannot deliver a good story themselves. There is a difference between a quest line or story that heavily borrows or is inspired by a popular culture or myth and a very plain reference to it.
“Bunny ears” are also an example of one more really silly achievement. You already wrote about that, achievements get sillier by the day, both in title and what is required to get it. People will do it, as there is the carrot of a special reward that you get if you did literally every crap that you were told to do to get this or that achievement.
MMORPGs have to be PC, as they are not single player games, so they are usually very strict with bad behaviour.
But somehow this does not apply to World of Warcraft – I can harass and insult other people or make their lives miserable at will, I have seen people with insulting names with sexual or dirty implications play the game for weeks and nothing happend. So much about Blizzard GMs, they are also very forgiving on their forums, and we see how awful they have become by now.
Blizzard’s devs are male geeks, more or less geeks, but for sure mostly male designers. They did not have problems with the bunny ears, it seems. They also do not seem to have problems with many other things.
You are right that they could do a lot more in terms of making their game more customer friendly by finally enforcing their own policies. Especially on roleplaying servers, where there are actually much more strict rules for not playing out of character that are almost never enforced by GMs.
I disagree that this achievement was not sexist. They could have used some more imagination and have made a better, more interesting achievement or easter event easily.
Because most players are male and believe this to be incredibly funny and my cousin Lisa and Feminist Gamer agree, this does not mean that the FEW women that play WoW are happy about the casual sexism of lazy developers.
I do not see too much PC in World of Warcraft, and it is not that you would lose a lot of fun if they would have decided not to make this event/achievement. They could easily have come up with something better than this cheap idea. It is not good enough to warrant pissing off anyone.
We could extend this to the zombie event: People complained that player controlled Zombies could kill new players in starter areas. I would like to comment that the real reason for many was that their bank alts got killed before the mailbox.
Blizzard gave in, apologized – after the event was over. And promised to think harder about avoiding such “unnecessary hardship” to players in future.
This is where *I* think that PC has gone too far and might prevent future fun events.
But I do not think PC goes too far when people say Blizzard should respect their very own standards that they rarely enforce, where certain racist or sexually oriented key words warrant an instant ban but harassing players in other ways is rarely punished.
They gave a damn about it with the bunny ears achievement. Casual sexism and lack of better ideas at its best? 🙂
P.S.: I should forward this to some ladies that believe me to be a really awful sexist person. I am almost a spokesperson for feminism in my latest blog entries…^^
Thanks for the thoughtful comments.
As a game designer myself and from a practical point of view I would have ensured that the achievement in question affected both males and females. Also they could have easily created one color of bunny ears for males and one for females. I did concede that the title of the achievement and Blizzard’s past behavior could lead one to believe that the achievement was sexual in nature.
One thing I hope we can all agree on is that Blizzard and other designers need to stop using the inclusion of pop cultural references as a substitute for coming up with original ideas.
The problem is that once we start viewing everything using the prism of stamping out sexism then where does it end? Should Blizzard establish a sexism committee and sanitize everything in Azeroth?
Regarding the torture issue, I also considered mentioning it but I didn’t want the article to be any longer then it is. 🙂
I think there is a big difference in having to torture someone versus casting a spell that puts bunny ears on someone. Of course the difference is that the bunny ears are affecting a player and the torture is on a NPC.
One solution I have thought of was that Blizzard could have had the target player’s screen come up with a dialog box:
However, then this doesn’t answer the other issue I brought up in my article with regard to emotes:
If we accept this kind of safety valve then it has other ramifications. Do we want to create an ultra safe world where every kind of player communication is restricted and filtered?
Just give me the ability to /emotemute people, and move on. *shrug*
I’d actually prefer a /kickoffserver command, but I don’t think that one would fly.
After thinking about this further it seems to me that the problem is the pop culture reference implicit in the Shake your Bunny Maker achievement. Blizzard willfully breaks the law of immersion shatters the wall that separates Azeroth from the real world by using this reference which brings with it a lot of baggage. Remove that from the equation and it’s just an achievement that has you putting animal ears on female players.
Blizzard stupidly opens themselves up to the “sexism” charge by their continual reliance and past history of reaching back into the real world for reference and use in their virtual world.
The second red flag that gives the sexism charge more gravity is having to apply the bunny ears to female players exclusively. As I mentioned previously I think the solution would have been to have found some kind of variant of the Bunny ears to apply to male players — not necessarily the same item.
Even in the Love is In the Air world event, they had different items that appealed to each gender: cologne for males and perfume for females.
The bunny ears “problem” is that there are many opinions about it, and that you cannot appease everyone all the time. Given the huge number of WoW players, it is close to impossible.
I think Lum also noticed that. Blizzard does not seem to reflect much about what they do anymore. He deviated to the old armory debate, people were upset that people could see their gear, their build and the exact date they last logged in. With the new achievements tab, they can exactly gauge what you did, up to the number of players killed in battlegrounds. The cheater who one-shotted all Ulduar bosses with a GM item got convicted because of the achievement page in the armory – he did exactly as much single damage as the boss with the highest HP had. 😛
He also recently posted an article where he told his readers that he suffers from a silly achievement that requires players to carry a dropped flag in a battleground. Now people fight against their own team to get that DAMN FLAG…! :>
I linked to your blog post about the achievement craze. It seems many MMOs copied the basic idea rather mindlessly… it makes for an interesting social experiment what people are willing to do for some kind of special “reward” (short answer: everything), but nobody seems to have thought about the extremely negative consequences on gameplay and player behaviour and mindest in general. People can hardly be arsed to play with you anymore in Guild Wars if they do not need this or that mission/achievement/whatever anymore. This was not the case as there were no achievements around.
This does not mean that achievements cannot be “done right”, but right now they are a collection of to-do-lists that include hilariously stupid things to do. Meta-achievements for doing stupid things en masse are then the icing on the cake.
The pop culture reference certainly focus people on ‘real world’ issues and blur the boundaries between in-game and out-of-game realities.
OK, you didn’t look at the bunny girl achievement and think ‘Ah, playboy reference. No equiv for guys. Casual sexism’. But it’s a tad ingenious to act surprised when other people did.
There’s no need for everyone to get up in arms about casual sexism, or the like. But let’s not allow screeds about political correctness encourage us to pretend it they doesn’t exist.
I think the problem is that this article appeared on a hardcore feminist website instead of a gaming website. People who write for sites like that are invested in the “I’m a victim” mindset and see Blizzard as just another evil company part of the patriarchal worldwide conspiracy. They can’t appreciate the difference between real sexism such as women being executed in Islamic countries (just happened again yesterday by the way) and applying bunny ears in a virtual world to a female player.
That author was preaching to the converted in a safe environment where he knew that most everyone would be supportive of his claims. He knew full well that he’d be laughed off the stage of any other forum.
I’m not surprised that *some* people would think it’s sexist. Gloria Steinem got her start exposing sexism at Playboy with her stint as a Playboy Bunny. Anyone with a hint of knowledge about the movement would see the bunny ears thing coming at them like a speeding freight train.
How you see the world all depends on your predisposition. Someone who lives breathes and thinks identity politics would see be much more apt to see bunny ears as offensive and “sexist”. I personally am not looking for inequality in the world when I wake up each day. That’s a sad and sorry way to live your life.
My personal opinion is that political correctness has no place in games, MMOs and virtual worlds. I don’t want those kinds of radicalized people deciding how MMOs should be made. It’s bad enough they are in control of most institutes of higher learning and the government. Keep out of our entertainment please.
Thanks, for the support!
Good observations. It seems that everything in MMOs has been reduced to the banality of a transaction. Every action we take now has to have some kind of appreciable benefit to us or it’s not worth doing.
Did WoW really need an Achievement system? I think not. It just made things worse. Just mindless adding features to an MMO is a recipe for disaster without first pondering the unintended consequences.
As quest driven game play has reduced the autonomy of players, achievements makes it even worse. It’s a poor substitute for content as someone over at Broken Toys noted.
Player should be doing things because they *want* to do them, not because they are told to do them by a game mechanic. Blizzard is treating their players like children here. I am so put off by the infantile nature of most achievements that I have refused to do them in WoW.
I just can’t believe that more players aren’t upset and armed with torches and pitchforks about this issue. It seems they will do whatever tasks the gaming company puts before them. What sad times we are living in.
As a former WoWer (not to be confused with a Wowser) I’ve not experienced the Bunny Ears, but I would have thought that with them being a Fluff Item only available during what is obviously the Spring Equinox festival, they were meant to help the player portray the Bird-that-was-turned-into-Rabbit by Oester, the goddess of Spring.
Second on my list would have been another nod to Nintendo’s Legend of Zelda, in the form of the Bunny Hood/Mask found in the Ocarina of Time, and Majora’s Mask.
Of course if there’s some function of the Bunny Ears that makes targeted female avatars shed their clothing and start dancing like female Night Elves, then I guess this Fluff Item is meant to portray a Playboy Bunny’s ears.
Personally, I’d just have liked the option to stick a 2′ codpiece onto male players without asking them whether they wanted it or not.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with bunny ears. What irks *me* (as the daughter of a feminist and quite aware that I didn’t have to fight much of the fight to have the life I have) is that this is usually casually handed out to guys, and when the women get a little peeved, we’re told it’s all in good fun and we shouldn’t get annoyed.
So fine. Give us an equal chance to objectify you, boys, and we’ll be able to do the “all in good fun” part too. Sounds fair, no? 😉
Before we crucify WoW, they are not the only “adult-oriented” MMO that objectifies women. Think of Everquest’s marketing campaign and (for me at least) the first image that comes to mind is the blonde in the wispy blue outfit.
Given this discussion I’m tempted to roll several different Toons of varying classes (of each Gender) in Runes of Mana, level them to 15 and get both the level 7 and level 15 Blue Armor Sets, then post pictures on my Blog. While a male Paladin’s suit of Plate armor will encase almost his entire body, it’s almost expected that the female Paladin will get a plate brassiere that offers little “real world” protection and leaves little to the imagination, coupled with a couple of pieces of Plate attached to her outer thighs, and a pair of not-quite knee high boots, just to complete the ensemble.
Sexism is rampant in MMOs. But what can we do about it other than complain on our Blogs? Can we take Blizzard to court over this? And on what grounds would we do so?
Court? Probably not, and I’d not think it worth the effort. I’d rather design a competing product that’s every bit as fun without the stupid. 😉
My wife giggled at the bunny ears, then proceeded to dance naked in Ironforge for money…
Is that sexist?
As long as your wife danced for everyone indiscriminate of their race & gender, then IMO (IANAL) it’s not sexist at all.
But if she only chose to dance for Male Humans, Draenei, and Night Elves, then that would not only be sexual discrimination against women characters, but racial discrimination against Gnomes and Dwarves. It could also be considered Heightest, and perhaps even Hordest.
I believe the nail was hit right on the head when you advised people to leave their personal identity at home when they come to Azeroth. You don’t like the new achievement? Fine. Cancel your sub and when Blizzard asks your reason for leaving, click the box marked other, and enter the words sexist achievements. Why anyone would pay money to be offended is beyond me, furthermore, with all the other VALID sexist actions Blizz implements to complain about, why pick this particular one? To me the issue seems to be about 70% stupidity and 30% sexism.
I applaud Female Gamer for her common sense and her ability to recognize a true issue from one that stems from nothing more than a lack of something to bitch about. Of course, I also thank blizzard because without their careless programming, many of US would have nothing to bitch about 😉
While I’m inclined to agree on the issue of mixing up Easter bunny ears and Playboy bunny ears, another thing in this article bothered me:
“Are you as a real life woman really hurt by the treatment of your female avatar in a role-playing MMO? If the answer is yes, then you are not really role-playing in a MMO — you are playing your real life self which is not how WoW is intended to be played. When all is said and done WoW *is* a role-playing MMO. If a player decides to play herself and then claims to the outside world to be a victim of perceived sexism inside the game then I do not feel sorry for them.”
In playing MMOs, I’ve noticed that there seem to be two distinct approaches people take to playing the game. One approach is the one you describe–role playing an avatar, and “what happens in Azeroth stays in Azeroth”. The other, equally valid approach, is to play your character as an extension of yourself into the virtual world. The first time I noticed these distinct styles of play was in the perennial controversy of males playing female characters and vice versa. People who are merely roleplaying see nothing unusual about it. People who are projecting themselves into the game find it peculiar that someone would pick a character with a different gender.
Quite a lot of people play these games this way, and nobody really has the right to tell them they’re playing the game wrong. If they want to treat the game as a virtual environment, and their character as a representation of themself in that environment, there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. It does lead to sticky situations where a real person can be offended by something done by a virtual character.
I think this point is easiest to see where the article says:
“It goes without saying that any kind of harassment and unwanted advances are wrong even in virtual worlds and thankfully there are customer service policies to deal with it. I’ve been the victim of it myself in WoW. Hazing and foul language in public chat channels is wrong as well.”
This seems to be arguing the exact opposite of the point made earlier. If players are merely playing avatars in a game, nothing done in the context of the game should have any real life consequences whatsoever. How can you be offended by harassment or profanity, when it’s just an avatar doing that to another avatar? There aren’t any real people involved here, right?
You can’t have it both ways. You can’t say that people are wrong to project themselves onto their characters and at the same time claim that people are right to be offended by some things that happen in the context of the game.
For my part, I actually like the suggestion:
“Jack wishes to (hug, kiss, flirt) you. Do you wish to accept this emote? Yes or No.
If we accept this kind of safety valve then it has other ramifications. Do we want to create an ultra safe world where every kind of player communication is restricted and filtered?”
We have those options in the real world. When someone goes in to hug or kiss you , you can step back and prevent it happening. One of the things that always bothered me in WoW was the /spit emote. I just found it distasteful and disgusting, and I really didn’t want it to be part of my experience of the game. It may seem like a small, silly thing, but why shouldn’t I be able to enjoy the game in a context that’s free of things I find distasteful?
Of course it becomes unwieldy to let everyone impose their own filters on the world, but just because it’s hard doesn’t mean game designers shouldn’t strive to make their games more pleasant for more users.
This is an excellent point. In the past I have played my avatars both ways. Sometimes when I create a character of my own gender I am apt to bring my own gender specific traits to bolster the person of my avatar because being a male in real life gives me lots of natural foundational material for how my male avatar acts.
While it is legitimate for people to identify their avatars with themselves I wonder if it slightly cheating and somewhat contrary to the intent of existing and role-playing in a virtual world?
I did qualify my point by noting that offense can be taken if players violate the immersion by importing real life racial slurs, swear words, etc. That kind of language is no longer one avatar speaking to another avatar rather it’s the person at one computer speaking to another person at a computer. The intent is to wound, disrupt and grief the other person.
From a practical point of view there is no way a commercial MMO company can allow players to constantly yell out real life racial slurs without damaging the play experience of other players.
Now if I’m playing a dwarf and a night elf comes up to me and calls me a “no good, rotten, filthy dwarf” or that “all dwarves are short, greedy and stupid” it’s perfectly fine as it’s within the context of the game as it has no real world connection that could be seen as inflammatory.
While races in a fantasy world can be completely unique, the tricky issue is that gender exists both in the real world and in virtual worlds. But we also have to realize that perhaps Azeroth isn’t the 21 century Earth. Azeroth still has the classism of the monarchy with Kings and Queens along with other medieval and feudal underpinings. Maybe the people of Azeroth have not yet evolved or progressed to overcome sexism.
I do understand your point. Again I think the problem is when certain players shatter the Magic Circle (which Raph Koster and Tesh talked about at Raph’s site) and destroy the immersion of the world by bringing in real world insults, issues, politics, etc. with them.
In the case of Blizzard, they shattered the Magic Circle of WoW by making the Playboy inference. While I think the charge of sexism could apply to Blizzard’s bungling here I feel it’s somewhat overblown. I think the positive thing is that it’s got folks talking about the importance of avatars and the integrity of the wall of immersion that MMOs and virtual worlds need to have to shield themselves from the real world.
The notion that “if you don’t want harassment, don’t play a female character” is completely asinine. That’s like saying I shouldn’t wear skirts because creepers on the train will attempt to look at my panties. I will wear skirts and play video games and play video games while wearing skirts if I damn well please, because I like wearing skirts and I like video games – but the idea that a lot of people think it’s acceptable to look up my skirt or (example) accuse me of blowing the guild leader when he gives me a piece of raid loot should not simply be passed by as “not important enough to worry about.” Yes, I know in some parts of the world women’s genitals are mutilated and in other parts of the world, when a woman is raped, she cannot get counseling or therapy because in her culture everyone says she was asking for it. I cannot do anything about it except donate cash to various charities who are hoping to stop this. What I CAN do to further feminism in my own life is maybe, just maybe, get across the idea that it’s not okay to look up my skirt – and that it’s not okay to call me a bitch when I get the raid gear. Show us your tits, you blew someone to get into this high-end raid guild, girls can’t tank. I should be able to play an extension of myself in a virtual world without dealing with that shit from total strangers. Wanting to be treated like a person rather than a thing to look at and shout lewd comments at and grope shouldn’t be too much to ask.
Yes, I have an ignore list. My server is huge. I can’t possibly preemptively ignore everyone in case they’ll say something disgusting to me.
That said, I was unbothered by the bunny ears thing. Easter tends to have a lot of rabbit symbolism, Playboy has rabbit symbolism, I’m actually kind of surprised they didn’t do this earlier.