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Race, Gender, and Ethnicity in MMORPG's

Bulldog13

Bulldog13

Golden Member
Hello all, this is my first time posting to ATOT.

I have to decide on a topic for a sociology paper. It is completely up to us what topic it is on as long as it deals with Race/Gender/Ethnicity.

I was thinking of doing something with MMORPG's and these issues. My question is there enough resources out there to make it feasible?

I did a brief google search, and found the daedalus project, but I don't know if that ll be enough source wise for a paper of 10 pages length.

I am NOT looking for the people to do my research for me, but am wondering on the feasibility of the topic? Does you think there is enough info out there to create some kind of topic using the previously stated criteria (race/gender/ethnicity and MMORPG).

All opinions are welcome and if anyone else has seen anything similar to daedalus project feel free to post it.

-Bulldog
 
I am a white male, and for some reason, I like to be a black female on games... I guess I just wanna try something different... or at least throw people way off and make them ask me if I am really a chick 😀
 
In Neverwinter nights I always make myself pitch black like a Drow, and I'm white.

Edit: Scratch that. Not always. I also have a light blue fighter with grey hair.
 
A sociologist did a paper on gender and MMORPGs. He reported on his different experiences as a male character and a female character.

Also, someone did a paper on the economics of Everquest. Things like GNP and what not. Pretty interesting.

Note, both of these articles were seen maybe 3 or 4 years ago. But you may be able to find them online. Both dealt with EQ as their MMORPG.
 
In my limited experience, sociologists love stuff that isn't completely mainstream.... so sometimes the more obscure a topic is, yet interesting, the more they like it. Maybe, if there's not a lot of information published about it, your teacher would allow you to do a study of it... I ended up doing something like that in college.... I was looking for sociological information on graffiti. I couldn't find a whole lot of information, except on taggers in the cities. I started looking around at graffiti and asked if I could see the graffiti in the local jail. Bingo, I ended up doing a study on graffiti in jails... Teacher loved it... had I pursued it further, it was probably publishable....
 
check out ubbforums.ubi.com.. I recommend the CHAOS POLITICAL DISCUSSION subject. There have been controversies where people would word something like a black person (ie: "my brother") and other players would pvp because of it. The game is called Shadowbane and it is a mainly pvp game - so there is a lot of killing and trash talking.

In one instance, a pvp guild came by a player and the player asked to be kept alive. The pvp guild players agreed. He said, "Thank you, brother." Then, the pvp guild asked "Are you black in real life?" He said, "yes, I am." Then, the pvp guild said, "It's lynching time!" and promptly killed him in game. He posted in the political forums and it angered many people - including me.

I'm normally not a PC person at all.. but I absolutely hate it when a person is being racist out of character. Like, I don't care if a person decides that he hates all elves to go along with the lore. I do care, however, if a person hates the people behind the characters.
 
My experience with online-only games is more with older games. I co-administered a "famous" niche site in the genre from 1996 - 2001 before they became this popular and because of that I was essentially paid to play these games, find new ones, etc. Back then there was a Korean game called Lineage (I'm not sure if it's still alive). When it became available, there was only one server for people to play on. So, Koreans, Americans, Europeans, etc. all played on the same server. It essentially became a sort of Language PvP war. The game had built-in English and Korean text options, so back then the game was essentially an English speakers vs. Korean speakers war. If the Koreans saw someone speak English, they killed them 🙂 If the English-speakers saw people speak Korean, they would kill them 🙂 Sometimes if I would spawn in an area near Korean players I would switch the input to Korean and smash stuff on the keyboard and then run like hell before they figured out that I was just typing random crap 🙂

I played another game called The Realm (again, not sure if this is alive... it was some sort of experiment by Sierra to see if they could make online rpgs IIRC). They didn't have that many skin shades, so my character looked white... I became friends with fellow jumpers (the game's term for player-killers) and it turned out one of them was some sort of Skinhead Nazi KKK type person... it was awkward. 😀
 
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