Nicolai ([info]nikikikiii) wrote in [info]wow_ladies,
2006-10-19 09:31:00

WoW Research

Hey ladies, I have a favor to ask all of you.

I am doing a study on the impact gender has on people's perception of performance, in particular I am looking at stereotype threat and gender discrimination in WoW. If any of you ladies knows of other research on this I would really appreciate a link to the study, or if any of you out there have done some research yourselves I would love to hear what you found. I am looking for research and published work on these topics, not random internet articles from sites like the escapist.

Thanks in advance! :D

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  • 13 comments

[info]tanela

October 19 2006, 14:17:35 UTC 5 years ago

http://www.nickyee.com/ is the only thing I can think of, and it's not entirely WoW-specific, but he might have access to other documents.

[info]nikikikiii

October 19 2006, 15:07:17 UTC 5 years ago

awesome thanks :D

[info]amarafox

October 19 2006, 14:38:59 UTC 5 years ago

I'd also look through psychology journals to find information on stereotyping in general, you might end up finding some stuff that's video game related. :)

[info]nikikikiii

October 19 2006, 15:06:39 UTC 5 years ago

yeah I have several resources already, however because the actual study will involve WoW I wanted to see if anyone knew of studies that were specifically about WoW. :)

[info]andreva

October 19 2006, 15:50:25 UTC 5 years ago

Have you looked at the journal Games and Culture? It's pretty new (on issue 4 I believe) and recently did an issue dedicated to WoW. I don't know if there is anything on gender specifically because I haven't had a chance to go read the articles myself, but it certainly could be useful. They are offering free access online right now (http://www.gamesandculture.com/news/) and I have access through my university job so if you're associated with university they probably have it.

Also, this is not WoW specific, but the book Play Between Worlds by T.L. Taylor (http://worldcat.org/oclc/62341652?tab=details)is a sociological study of the social experience of playing Everquest, and the author, being female, deals quite a bit with female vs. male gameplay issues and differences. It's a good read anyway if you're interested in the topic.

There's really only one book out there on WoW specifically, and it's called The Battle for Azeroth, edited by Bill Fawcett. See: http://worldcat.org/oclc/67374991?tab=details
I haven't read it, but some of article titles look like they might be interesting. However I think it's a lot more "pop-culture" than "serious research" and it's only held by about 12 libraries.

[info]nikikikiii

October 20 2006, 09:31:15 UTC 5 years ago

yay!
thanks so much!

[info]icklehoot

October 19 2006, 16:17:03 UTC 5 years ago

Hah. That's my thesis topic! XD

[info]snowflakelike

October 19 2006, 16:18:13 UTC 5 years ago

Good luck. I tried to do something WoW-related for a sociolinguistics project and I couldn't get enough information. So I ended up looking at gender in video game magazines instead. Which was far less interesting as I never read them before.

[info]freddiefraggles

October 19 2006, 16:38:54 UTC 5 years ago

http://blogs.parc.com/playon/

They do studies into realm populations, I don't know if that's important, or at all useful, but it makes interesting reading.

[info]nikikikiii

October 20 2006, 09:32:24 UTC 5 years ago

I'll look into it, thanks for the link!

[info]anonymissity

October 19 2006, 17:10:10 UTC 5 years ago

I think it can be tricky to sterotype in-game, a lot of the time because there a re a ton of people who often roll opposite sex characters. Maybe you should ask guys who roll girls characters if everyone just assumes they are a girl and treats them like an asshat, or vice versa.
Me, personally, have never encountered any kind of sexism in the game.

But I defiantely think Wow is one of those games that has a high demographic of people who either don't typically play PC games or video games in general.

I know I am one.

[info]robertprice45

October 19 2006, 20:37:48 UTC 5 years ago

For the record, i'm a guy who rolled an alliance female - pink haired gnome (pah, alliance! what was I thinking?!) ;) as opposed to my usual male characters and immediately experienced sexual discrimination - even on public chat traffic! From the immature abuse I was recieving, it was clear that the person was clearly under-18...or "very" misguided about the opposite sex! Anyways, it certainly broadened my exposure to sexism.

One tangent you may wish to investigate is that while WoW is a virtual world, the same real-world stereotypes exist. Take racism as an example, in the real-world, years of slavery and oppression are often seen as the seeds of this form of discrimination - yet in WoW, we have no system of oppresion to relate to - and any narrative based discrimination against other races is fictionalised discourse.

Following on from this, you could explore discrimination from a matriarchal/patriarchal basis - say, Night Elves (matriarchal) vs Horde (patriarchal). Do female character Night Elves carry more prominance than their Orc counterparts?

[info]_juliamarie

October 20 2006, 07:04:26 UTC 5 years ago

To be honest, when I PUG I find that despite playing a female character, I'm still percieved as a male. while in my group of ingame friends, it's well-known that I'm very much female over the age of 18 and married as well. yet, in a group of strangers, I've (as well as the entire group) has recieved "I wonder why so little girls play WoW" while I was standing right there in my hugeish female Tdrood form... thinking to myself "he's kidding, right?". That's a very interesting subject, good luck with your findings!
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