Breaking down borders in video games.
Female gamers and website traffic
I ran across this blog post tonight on ChicagoNow.com that claimed to be written by a “gamer girl” who plays World of Warcraft. I skimmed the article and quickly realized it didn’t contain much substance, and ended up settling on one of the comments, which said:
As a female gamer I have mixed feelings about girls with low self esteems in RL (real world) who flaunt a fake confidence and avatar sexuality in the game world. On one hand I’d love to see more women gamers, on the other, those women make it harder for real gamer girls to interact with males in the game.
I really wanted to blog about the internal sexism in that statement and the words that followed it, but after re-reading the original blog post I realized that the whole post was most likely bogus. Now I can’t get beyond that. It’s quite clear to me that this was a freelance writer carrying out an assignment to be a female gamer for the sake of a blog post, and here’s why:
Lightning fast download speed
Meghan Freebeck claims:
I was first introduced to World of Warcraft (WoW) by accident. A college sophomore at the time, I walked away from my laptop in the library for a few moments and a friend downloaded the game to my computer as a joke.
So, she walked away for “a few moments” and an entire almost-20-GB MMORPG downloaded to her laptop? Mmm, okay.
Robust character creation
She then goes on to say that she spent 5 hours customizing her female warrior. I’m sorry, but blood elves don’t have that many customization options.
Exhaustive gamer lingo
In my favorite quote of the whole blog post,
My name in the ‘World’ is ‘Mulier Proeliator’, which means Woman Warrior in Latin. I am a Blood Elf from the Horde Realm.
Well, considering you cannot have a name with a space in it, and Mulierproeliator is too long…I’m doubting that. Unless of course, this is a roleplay character. However, there isn’t a realm in WoW named “Horde”. Just an entire faction.
The author on the left, and her level 1 Blood Elf on the right.
This post screams with obvious farmed website content. It even opens with a tantalizingly-sexy opening paragraph to draw readers in, and talks about her “fantastic cleavage” and skin tight armor. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen posts like this. The only thing I can assume is that these kind of articles are bringing traffic to these websites which is why they’re hiring freelance writers to create this content.
I don’t doubt that the author logged in to play WoW once or twice for the sake of this article, but was she someone who played it obsessively and didn’t leave her house for days? Highly doubtful. Was this a progressive article about women in gaming? I don’t think it was. It seems like yet another “I play games and I’m a girl so RAWR!” blog posts that we see so many of lately (even from people who obviously don’t game). Readers, why do you think that is? It feels like female gamers on the web are turning into nothing more than SEO and ad revenue for website owners and content farms. Who is monetizing on this? We could figure it out by turning Adsense on here on the Border House and see what kind of ads come up – but I don’t want to do that. ;)
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about 7 months ago
Wow. Is geek-cred such a commodity now that people try to fake it? I think an article from the perspective of a non-gamer girl trying out WoW might have been really interesting. Likewise, they could have found an actual gamer if they wanted that perspective. But to fake it so blatantly? The whole thing is just weird.
about 7 months ago
Gosh, her download must’ve been so fast that it defies the space-time continuum and she’s also got Cataclysm. She can’t possibly have a belf warrior, and my scant understanding is that it could only be a possibility but about 1 year hence!
about 7 months ago
It feels like female gamers on the web are turning into nothing more than SEO and ad revenue for website owners and content farms. Who is monetizing on this?
Couldn’t tell you; I turned off adsense because it kept trying to put ads for warez on my site, which as a game developer really upset me. Since google couldn’t manage to police the system well enough, I dropped that. My only ad revenue is a few cents a month from Amazon clickthroughs.
about 7 months ago
Really interesting find! I think that, now that games have become more visibly mainstream, mainstream media outlets are continuing to perpetuate the unicornification of women gamers. They still see gaming as a male activity, so women gamers, they think, are rare and because they are women, held up as being so incredibly different and magical (like unicorns). This othering turns out to be the undercurrent of many articles, and might serve as the motivation to try and get women gamers to write for them. It’s kind of shocking to see so many inconsistencies in what seems to be a professional article.
about 7 months ago
… blood elves can’t be warriors! Not until Cataclysm, anyway.
I suppose she could have used the first part of the word instead of the entire thing. There exists a “Mulier” blood elf paladin on the Perenolde realm.
I don’t know if this is written by a “real girl” or not, but it’s definitely written by someone with little to no knowledge of Warcraft terminology. It also promotes the stereotype of the obsessive, addicted gamer. Plenty of people play and don’t neglect their appearance or decide that unkempt low-lives hitting on them are cozy because they look like something in the game world.
If this is a legit article, this chick has got some major issues.
about 7 months ago
There’s quite a few ad-supported sites out there which do these kinds of articles. They don’t fool actual players, but they might fool people who don’t play that specific game. And more importantly, they do fool search engines. For a machine, it’s hard to tell the difference between a real news/hint site and one filled with nonsense that uses the right keywords.
about 7 months ago
Even if the writer in question, did stick around to play the game. Her real insights about gaming wasn’t what this article required. They wanted an angle and they got it.
The pic looks like a Paladin. She probably just called it a warrior.
about 7 months ago
This is one of the most insightful posts I’ve read on the borderhouse. If there was one thing I’d love to read more of, it would be these lines of inquiry.
It is important to expose, understand, and keep in mind that at the end of the day all of the decisions are decided by the bottom line, and this is one of the direct ways in which oppression happens in our society. Focusing on the production and reproduction of oppression is just as important and focusing on the results and effects, IMO.
Great post, great questions, thank you cuppycake!
about 7 months ago
As long as we’re on the topic of women and MMOs, here’s something that’s actually substantial:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=gal-gamers-geekier-than-guys-09-12-23
about 7 months ago
We reported those findings in this post.
about 7 months ago
ouch. my memory sux
about 7 months ago
Awesome article, but I’d caution against edging into “no true Scotsman” territory. I’m constantly being told that I’m not a “real gamer” because I play The Sims (1, 2, and now 3).
about 7 months ago
I hear how you can feel that this is what can be garnered from this article. However, when I do believe this is more of a rant against people who hire writers who have no clue what they’re actually writing about, do a bit of research and then post the article.
Usually this is done to say that they’re commenting on a “new” demographic or in an attempt to sell advertising space.
An article you might want to read is this one which talks about what you’re talking about. The problem that does exist which is, as you so put it, “no true Scotsman” territory.
Note: You play games, you like games (Sims 1, 2 and 3 are all games) ergo you are a real gamer at least on this site. ^_^
about 7 months ago
Thanks, koipond, exactly =) We are about breaking DOWN barriers here, not building them! (It even says so at the top of the page! ;D)
about 7 months ago
Oh yes, quite, and thank you both! And in this case, it seems pretty clear that the author is falsifying their credibility, by tossing around a bunch of facts and terms which are clearly wrong.
Thanks for the link to the Diamonds in the Rough article, koipond!
about 7 months ago
No worries Erika. We’re all in this together. ^_^