Fight Virtual Inequality!

national | miscellaneous | news report Wednesday June 25, 2003 15:40 by pat c

Any Virtual Warriors on for battling this Cyber Inequality? These are not just feminazis with silicone chips on their shoulders. Lets smash these virtual glass ceilings! Demand that ICTU form the Information Workers of the World Wide Web (the Webblies). PC "Female virtual characters suffer from sexual inequality in financial matters, just like their real-world counterparts, according to a new study of the online game EverQuest."

Sexual inequality exposed in virtual world


15:25 24 June 03

NewScientist.com news service

Female virtual characters suffer from sexual inequality in financial matters, just like their real-world counterparts, according to a new study of the online game EverQuest.

EverQuest is inhabited by tens of thousands of internet gamers at any one time. Players choose a character to represent them in the role-playing world. These avatars can be male or female and one of many fantasy races such as elf or ogre. Once a character has built up experience and skills, some players then sell them for real cash through the internet auction site eBay.

"Holding all other characteristics equal, it turns out female avatars sell for about 10 per cent less than male avatars," says Edward Castronova, an economist at California State University at Fullerton, who examined the value of characters sold on eBay.

Overall, male avatars sold for an average of $346, while the generally lower skilled female ones went for $281. The discrepancy notably mirrors differences in wages earned by men and women in the real-world, says Castronova.

"This discount may stem from a number of causes," he told New Scientist, "including discrimination in Earth society and the maleness of the EverQuest player base."

Sex swap

Although the vast majority of EverQuest players are male, around 20 per cent of players choose a female avatar to represent them online.

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Weblinks


The Price of 'Man' and 'Woman', Edward Castronova (pdf)

Economics, Fullerton University

EverQuest

Centre for Research on Innovation and Competition, Manchester University



Jason Rutter, a computer games researcher at Manchester University, UK, adds that the difference could also reflect differences in the way male and female characters are treated in the EverQuest game.

"In EverQuest, as well as other games, people respond to you differently based on your sex," Rutter told New Scientist. "There's a growing literature about how female gamers adopt male characters to stop getting hassled."

Trading characters and items from EverQuest on eBay has grown into a profitable sideline for some players, although the game's owner Sony has sought to put a stop to the practice.

In January 2002, Castronova calculated the average wage EverQuest players could in principle earn by trading all the items obtained in the game on eBay. He found the game's per-capita gross national product would be $2266. If it were a real country, EverQuest would then be the 77th wealthiest in the world, just behind Russia.


Will Knight