Virtual Avatar，Real Awareness：The Gender Construction in MMORPG

• Main Authors: Yen-Ping Huang, 黃彥萍
• Other Authors: none
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2011
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/00895101254489102661

碩士 === 國立雲林科技大學 === 設計運算研究所碩士班 === 99 === In the virtual world created by humans，a player could use a new body which we called avatar to present herself or himself and communicate with others. This study is a game study. We use the concept of avatars to explore the relationship of MMORPG players，MMORPGs and gender. The aim is assess how players practice their avatar gender，how players use their avatar to interact with other players and the difference and relationship of gender construction between on-line and off-line. We use netnography as the research method，and World of Warcraft as the research filed. We explore how players construct gender in World of Warcraft by observation and interviews. In World of Warcraft，avatar gender is fixed. So that they are lacking of identity experiments. Players point of view of gender come from stereotype off-line. Therefore，the gender construction on-line is copied off-line. But，we also found the gender blurred by sharing avatars，by a lack of text clues and the fact of woman alliance，and that all of above present chances to destroy the boundary of gender in the on-line world. Finally，we found that the genre and type of OLG influence its menber and their game exhibits，so it is likely that there is different gender construction between different games.