Shanda, one of China’s largest MMO producers, has announced that boys must be boys and girls must be girls in one of its latest MMOs… and if you want to roll a female character, you have to prove you are a female. Via webcam.
I fervently pray something has been lost in the translation.
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The interesting thing is that while females must prove their gender, the reverse isn’t necessarily true. I wonder what the actual policy is.
Headline: Shanda’s Aurora Bans Transsexuals
I have the sinking feeling that the appellation “transsexual” isn’t meant to be funny there.
They just want to amass pictures of Asian women.
Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
J.. That is the best response.. EVER.
I think J hit the nail on the head (lots of lonely devs in China with that female shortage and all) but I did have another thought. This also strikes me as a clever ploy to artificially control the entrance of female avatars into the game and thus create a higher market demand for RMT avatars. WTB female avatar? Only $20 US (they on sale). So cheer up Scott! They could simply be taking your philosophies to a new level. Or using the pics for all night coding sessions.
The really stupid thing is that this won’t even work. Most gamers know at least one female they could get to stand in front of the camera for a minute for them. This is like a CAPTCHA for lonely men. If this were an american game it would probably drive customers away because american women don’t put up with crap like that. What if you don’t own a web cam, do they send you one?
I would think this would be enforceable somehow if every account had a one of those government ID’s associated with it. Female ID’s only allowed to make female avatars etc. But that whole ID story is another mess all on its own.
Geeze. What next? Can’t have skinny avatars if you are fat? Do you actually have to dye your hair purple? Etc.
Some Chinese MMOs’ websites have real-life picture galleries, so you can see all the hot chicks you’ll totally meet when you play. Jeff Freeman pointed out this example.
I don’t understand how this can even bring about anything good at all. WTF?
One wonders exactly how a player “proves” their gender via webcam. How would a face-shot mean anything? It would be easy to assume the player is just a clean-shaven man with long hair. So the CSR could require more proof. Just take off your shirt and/or pants and aim the webcam down a little….
I wonder how many extra subscriptions they could sell if it included a live feed into the “verification” feed.
This is the first time I’ve ever seen a development shop officially put PIX PLZ in an EULA.
Would you want your picture conveniently collected with those of your fellow citizens, in a place anyone could view it?
Granted, this is in China, so their local attitude is likely different from that of, say, America. Which is full of people who would probably say “no” to the above, forgetting about their MySpace/Facebook/XBox Live/player community du jour mugs.
Plus, it’s not as if the world isn’t full of girly-faced Asian men. I mean, there’s a whole genre about it in anime. Shudder.
So instead of going down the “support / dev team must be pervert” and “wtf are they doing” lines, I’m going to work out what positive things they are going to get from this.
Now a disclaimer. I’ve not played WoW for months, and don’t have an SL account. In fact, the only multiplayer game I’m playing at the moment is YPP. This instantly disqualifies me from having an opinion that counts about MMORPGs in the eyes of most people. Also I can’t dig up any other information about this game (mainly because typing King of the World MMO into google comes up with a hundred pages about banning “kings posing as queens” [gambling911, first result on Google])
First of all, the company will have accurate demographics of thier players gender. No other MMO can boast that – to do so would violate various data protection laws that people agree to when transfering important things like credit card information.
Second, its a hoop to jump through during sign up. An interesting one at that, you have to have your photo on file to play. It might be an annoying step for most, but for some people it might just be a harrowing one. How likely are you to grief or hack a computer game if the company has your picture on file to hand over to China’s cybercrime units? Even if they don’t give those pictures over to the police, there are still things you can legally do with those pictures if you sneak them into EULAs (I personally like the idea of putting textured “Wanted” posters in game with images of those griefers…)
Third. It’s another instance of real life effecting MMO’s. Which can only give us interesting philosophical questions to ask in the future if this kind of thing becomes routine.
One thing I’m noticing though – the articles I’m reading seem to have missed out saying whether you need to send in your photo if you’re aiming to play a male character…
Are you saying this seems less invasive to you than the alternative of just, you know, asking? I don’t think that people will go out of their way to lie about their gender if you just ask them when they open the account.
Accurate demographics….
Why would this matter? Seriously. To deliver ads? As a market segment, gamers are a target market for more games, along with computers, caffeine, peripherals, more caffeine, and other things related to gaming. Beyond that, I know gamers in elementary school and gamers in the AARP. One person in my guild is a corporate lawyer, another makes minimum wage. The one critical thing we have in common is we all play the same game.
You already have the demographic category that matters: Game geek. I am more like male game geeks than I am like female non-gamers. Whether I sit or stand to pee is possibly the least useful piece of information about me.
Security? The game company presumably already has my credit card number on file, since I paid them, and my IP address in their logs. That’s entirely enough for the cops to find me. Having a picture of someone who claims they’re me is unnecessary.
And will people lie about it? Damn straight they will. I routinely lie about my age, sex, zip code, and anything else intrusive that websites demand. For one thing, it’s none of their damn business. For another, I’d prefer more interesting ads than the ones they serve if they think I’m female. I do not wear perfume (designer or fake), I would not be caught dead with a fugly overpriced handbag (that’s what pockets are for), and I have no interest in chick flicks or their TV equivalent. (now, if they’d supply a list of available ad categories that I could pick X out of, I’d at least give them a straight answer … I’ll take computer hardware, action movies, and technical books, please)
And what happens when the person playing isn’t the person paying? For example, a parent paying for a child’s account? Whose picture do you want, whose sex do you verify?
That is certainly a game I would not play, that I could not be paid to play. I play male avatars. All comments about “girls” getting free stuff and/or help aside, I am not flattered or amused by constant innuendos, almost as constant blatant passes, “funny” sexist insults, and most of all, by the fact that it is assumed that I am a casual, inexperienced, and incompetent player. I just want to be a player like any other player, and I have found that the only way to do that is to let people assume the player is what the character is: male.
A MMORPGs is not an online dating service. The only need to know “A/S/L” is if you intend to use it as one. I don’t, and I prefer not to be around people who do. Too much drama.
Sooooo…how is this enforceable?
Wait…I mean…not exploitable?
Fuck it. I’ll go with J.’s comments.
Got Yaoi?
“Shanda” is Yiddish for a scandal or a public embarassment. At least they chose an appropriate corporate name!
I recently joined the Destructoid forum community. Note the image below the avatar in this post.
Yeah, she’s not the only one.
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