In the "Eh?" category, Kotaku, /. and others report on a Chinese MMO development company's decision to crackdown on gender benders in their game King of the World. Aurora Technologies is banning men from playing women, requesting that all female avatar selections are accompanied by visual verification via webcam. The makers don't intend to stop women from playing men.
Not only is this ripe for exploitation (a whole new subsidiary of RMT?), but it's also completely bizarre. Further, as the preponderance of gender benders are male-to-female (according, admittedly, to Western research - see also Griffiths, Davies & Chappell, 2003), this will have a profound effect on the social culture of the game. The 80% of men who play women will now flood the virtual world with testosterone creating a social imbalance which can only result in even greater distinctiveness for the women playing the game. Whether they want to be singled out is another story. Many of them may choose to blend in with the crowd by gender bending. Thus the masculinisation of that particular MMOG will be complete.
How very very strange.
