Chinese Company Challenges Gender-Bending In MMOs

China continues to prove that MMOs are serious business. So far, both the government and the corporations that operate in the nation have proven that they aren’t shy about controlling the market economically, socially, or culturally. It wasn’t too long ago that they started to crack down on gold selling, and seemingly innocuous game content sometimes needs to be changed for a title to even be released in the country. Blizzard learned that the hard way (apparently they’re not big fans of bones over there).

One company has taken things a step further than normal by banning male players who choose to play female characters, demanding that their sex be verified by webcam. If they can’t prove their identity, then they can kiss their account goodbye. Interestingly enough, this policy does not apply to girls who’d like to experience the thrill of having a hairy chest or a little something extra between their legs, but I’m willing to bet a few hundred yuan that the community is already a bit of a sausagefest.

Currently, this only affects Aurora Technology’s King of the World, an online game so niche that I could only find a single image of it using the good old Google Image search, but that doesn’t stop it from setting a dangerous precedent. Aurora is a subsidiary of Shanda, a company that publishes more popular MMOs such as Aion, Maple Story, and D&D Online in the region, signifying that the mandate has the potential to spread. I wouldn’t expect Blizzard to take up the banner any time soon (in fact, they seem downright friendly to the idea of gender choice after offering a sex change service), but the day may come when they have to conform to the policy to continue operating World of Warcraft in the region, just as they were forced to in the story I linked towards the top of the article.

So what’s the beef? Why can’t a person play any type of character they want? Isn’t that one of the things that draws people to the genre in the first place? To get away from the real life and, in some ways, become the person they want to be?

I have several male characters, but my main has always been, and always will be a female Troll Rogue. I’m not entirely sure why I picked that combination, but I’ve always fancied the fairer sex in video games when the choice is available. It’s easy to say “because they look nice,” but I gravitate towards thinner, more agile characters and those tend to be girls more often than not. And hell, how many people play a female Troll anyway? It’s nice to see a little variety out there on the fields of Azeroth!

Sure we’ve all had our run-ins with gender-bending griefers and unfortunate interactions with that “hawt Blood Elf chick” who we thought we were getting to know oh-so-well.

Certainly, character customization is open to some level of abuse, but what about the LGBT players out there? Those that honestly identify with or would prefer to play a character of the opposite gender because they can relate to the game, and the community, better that way. Is there any legitimate reason why they should be restricted? The US server Proudmoore is home to one of the largest guilds on the planet, the puntastically named Spreading Taint. Undoubtedly, there are some Chinese players out there who suffer from their real-life sexual orientation or feel the need to hide it from their family and peers. It’s a real shame that they can be so easily prohibited from finding like-minded friends online. This ruling prevents them from having a group like Taint to call home.

I’m not out to start a culture war, but this is a pretty heavy issue for some players out there. Any thoughts, readers? If you play a character of the opposite gender, what drove you to do so?