How would identify a female player guy/girl?

[LineageRazor]

*looks at op*

fuck identification, use gender neutral identifiers until your told otherwise.

English isn't geared well towards gender neutral without sounding really awkward. Just refer to characters by their apparent gender until corrected.

Any player of a male character who gets offended at being called "he" or a player of a female character that gets offended at being called "she" really isn't worth wasting any sympathy on. Fortunately, such people, if they even exist, are quite rare; most people either flat-out don't care what pronoun you use, or will gently correct you if they don't want to be referred to by the gender of their character.

[Wilhelm_Frost]

There are a number of unflattering stereotypes I could apply to the sort of people who devote so much effort to trying to figure out the gender of a person playing a video game. "Heavy mouth-breathing closet case" comes to mind, though I'm not directing that at anyone in specific. Just a vague feeling of unease at the idea that people still obsess over this thing.

Let me give you a dose of reality; if I wanted you to know, I'd tell you. If you weren't creepy and just -asked me- like a normal human being capable of thought and emotional depth, I might also tell you. If I'm not telling you, and you don't have the grace to ask politely, it's not something you need to worry about.

A person is more than their gender, more than their preferences. Try getting to know us for who we are before you start worrying about what's beneath our attire. Otherwise, you're just being shallow, and creepy, and there's a long line of shallow and creepy people in my ignore lists.

[ShaneDawn]

You could just, you know, ask the person if it matters to you?

[BunnyChain]

As someone who read everything in this thread since this morning since it was a light day at work up until now that I got home from work I can conclude that....this thread never made any progress even after 39 pages. Just plain ol bickering about each other's beliefs. Aaahhhh.....*sips wine* just another day in the forums...

It's a bit of a shame indeed that there has been little to none serious discussion about this, until the last couple pages, only waffling.

But what does science has to say about this? *adjusts glasses*

According to this interesting article.

EQII: 7,129 players (5,719 males and 1,406 females) participated in the survey in just over 2 days.

I will try to abstract the findings here:

• Females were older and better educated but slightly poorer than males.
• Females were much more likely to be bisexual.
• Male players were more achievement oriented, while females more by social reasons.
• Females played more than males, were less likely to play another MMO or quit the game in the near future.
• Both players in romantic relationships were conform to stereotypical gendered roles. Namely females being less aggressive and males slightly more if playing with a partner.
• Females were happier than males (less) if playing with a partner. The causality however is not clear!
• Males reported a higher BMI than females - being in better shape than the national average. While males BMI reports were nearly the same as the average.
• Females had more underreporting of their play time than males. (3h less for females vs. 1h less for males)
• 61% of females to 24% of males regularly play with a partner.
• Women in relationships tend to be less social than men, again, causality is unclear!

And another one.

WoW: 375 participants (56% male and 44% female).

The groups we used were women who use a female avatar (W/Fav), men who use a male avatar (M/Mav), and men who gender-switch by using a female avatar (M/Fav) in study sessions.

• 23% of men and 7% of women gender-switched
• Action directive statements were more common among men, and the other chat variables were more common among women.
• Both (W/Fav) and (M/Fav) were more likely to make an attractive character and use traditional hairstyles.
• Emotional phrases, exclamation points and smile emoticons were used the most by (W/Fav), followed by (M/Fav) and (M/Mav).
• Appreciation phrases, polite phrases and action directive don't show significant differences.
• Moving backwards was mostly prevalent with (M/Mav) followed by (M/Fav) and (F/Fav).
• (M/Mav) stayed .15 yards away from their group compared to (F/Fav), (M/Fav) being in between the two.
• (M/Fav) jumped about 112 times more than (F/Fav).

Too bad the last one doesn't include (F/Mav) type of players, that would be highly interesting.

[Kyarra]

I am an older female gamer but I never let anyone know online what gender i am only because of some of the tells I get just being a female avatar. In the end, who really cares unless of course you are looking for an online date lol.

[Spawnie]

was hoping this thread would disappear lol some1 bumped it again = =

[Red_Wolf]

I won't be steamrolled by your bluster and ignorance. Statistics are how you quantify research, and how you prove a hypothesis. Psychology is a medical science, you talked of trusting academics earlier, so you can hardly dismiss psychology with a wave of your hand now. Not to mention the obvious point that choice of avatar gender is clearly something that psychology would illuminate.

Ignorant of what exactly? This is your own little soap box thing over explaining why tally marks from a random sample of 375 people needs a peer review. If I could find another study I would, but this is the only one I've found without pure EQ data from a decade ago. You are chasing your tail here until you offer evidence to the contrary. I think ~25% and ~7% are accurate.

This is way off topic, but please do no mock the fields that did this study while claiming Psychologists are medical scientists and statistical experts. Psychology is a soft science at best. It has its uses and I respect that but ultimately it proves absolutely nothing concretely.

[Aphel]

Snip

That was incredibly interesting! Are there any more MMORPG studies like those out there?

[Peerless]

<1/2>
I've been playing MMO's since 1999, and here's how I handle this "issue":

1.) Assume gender neutral until proven otherwise.
2.) Don't pursue romantic relationships in-game. If they happen on their own, well that's just fine.
3.) Remember that the girl character you're playing with could be a cool dude IRL. And the dude character could be a cool chick. Either could be quite the opposite as well so stop making assumptions.
4.) Don't make a situation awkward by acting based on assumptions. If you can't stomach the awkwardness of asking, then you probably can't stomach the results of your acting based on an assumption.
5.) Remember that 99% of the time, how a character looks in game is decided by what its player finds pleasing to look at. The fact that you find it pleasing to look at as well is irrelevant.

[Peerless]

<2/2>
I play both male and female characters in the games I play. Sometimes I relate more to the character I'm playing and I roll a scrappy dude. Other times I feel more like I'm just a witness to my character's badassery and don't mind watching a heroine do her thing at my behest. But more frequently I make the decision based on the options available. In FFXIV, I originally rolled a skinny, feminine-looking "male" character (despite my best efforts to make him look macho), and once I equipped that bronze subligar I knew SE was trying to tell me something. So I changed up to a female because if I'm going to look at a virtual person's backside all day, it's going to be a female (no offense, men).