7/6/13: In which I'm a Feminist on Star Wars: The Old Republic

I recently started playing Star Wars: The Old Republic. I was never one for MMORPGs before - I assumed most of them were basically the same as World of Warcraft, which I played a brief and boring free trial of years ago. When SW:ToR went free-to-play, I decided I'd eventually give it a try. Recently I did, and surprisingly kind of fell in love with the game. It's not going to be my favorite ever, but it is a lot of fun. I created a Jedi character because I wanted to be able to hit stuff a whole lot, and I went into the game. Because I liked the aesthetic and I generally prefer it, I made my character a woman, and also an alien. No big deal for me. But apparently that put me in something of a minority.

I named my character Jzosaiea, which has a somewhat feminine and somewhat alien feel to it, since I'd joined a roleplaying server. I wanted to have a character that I could enjoy playing as, in the game and in any roleplay situation that might arise. Oh, and in the spirit of clarification, when I say roleplay I just mean speaking for and as my character. My female character.

All went well the first time I started RPing with someone. I made a friend, played as my character, and had a nice time. What happened after got a bit strange, though. I had never said my real name, never revealed anything about my identity, and yet as soon as the roleplay ended, my new friend - who played a male avatar - began to address me with male pronouns. He assumed that the female avatar he'd been playing with was controlled by a guy like himself. And he wasn't the only one. It felt strange to me that most of the players I interacted with addressed me as a man, despite being able to see my female avatar. It didn't bother me, particularly, because I'm a guy in real life, but I did play with people who weren't. I made it a point to not assume who anyone was. If you played a female, I referred to you as female unless you asked me to do otherwise. Which, I feel, is entirely reasonable.

A few days after I started playing, I got into a lengthy discussion with a pair of other players - both female as far as I knew - about the nature of gender roles and sociology in relation to the game. I wish I'd been able to copy it all down because it was as fun to have as it was insightful, and for the most part it made me feel really good about the game. I was dealing with a better crowd than the people who'd helped shoo me away from World of Warcraft. Then, though, someone started to complain. One of the other players decided he'd had enough of our impromptu 3AM sociological discussion and started making derisive remarks about how we were "in the wrong place for a talk about social issues." And he wouldn't stop with those sorts of remarks. Luckily once we'd wrapped up our talk (one of my conversational partners logged off), he stopped harassing us. But that wasn't good enough. It revealed to me the nature of certain gamers, and I think MMOs attract them more than other genres. They don't want anything to interrupt their game, their microcosm.

Gamers like this guy don't want their games interrupted by anything that alters their worldview. A large part of that worldview is the idea that everything is fine. Most of these guys are straight white men of college age. There's nothing particularly wrong with that. College-aged straight white guys have it pretty good, so why should they care about the issues that other people face? Why, in fact, should they assume anyone but themselves play the game? It's their game - no one else matters. So they build themselves a little world without conflict or strife and they bury themselves in it. In a game without a social aspect, that's acceptable. You can do whatever you want when everyone else is just pixels on a screen. But a lot of those pixels come with real thoughts, feelings, and personalities, and that shouldn't be discounted. Just because something doesn't fit in someone's worldview doesn't mean they get to shut it out. The world thrives on diversity, and there's no reason that the worlds inside our games shouldn't be the same. If you don't want to hear what someone else has to say, these games give you the option of ignoring them.

I guess I don't have more of a point than what I've already written. I just wish people were better.