The slide seems to have been taken absolutely out of context, with little explanation by Kotaku. Can you tell us anymore Kotaku? Secondly, surely, "The most likely gender to play a female character in an MMORPG are guys," is a sweeping and fuzzy statement. Do we know this for a fact? Don't more guys play in general, thus female characters are more likely to be played by a guy because of the gender-split of the actual player populace?

Makes complete sense to me. But then again, I'm actually a resident of Second Life. In Second Life, you can very easily dictate exactly how far away your avatar is from everybody and whether or not you're making eye contact with anyone. It's not bullshit, it's just incredibly obvious. In order to make eye contact in Second Life, you have to either 1: Zoom your camera in on someone's face (easy to do, happens a lot) or 2: Simply look at someone's face while inside the first-person perspective (known as mouselook - also easy to do) or 3: Just wait for someone to chat. Your avatar (if not doing the previous two) will look at the face of whoever just spoke. In all three cases, it's very easy to tell whether or not an avatar is looking at another The results basically state that more people play male avatars as heterosexuals (because if you're close to a guy or making eye contact with them, "you're gay") than people playing male avatars as homosexuals. At least, it came easy to me because I actually know a context in which this statistic would make sense. Skeptic's side: How do you take into account non-gender avatars like robots and animals and inanimate objects? Also, does this study even matter. -_-

no, it does not.

What's up with the latest rash of crap posts Kotaku? Got someone new onboard? I so wish you'd start signing your posts so I could at least roll my eyes at seeing someone I know is foolish post. Anyway, the slide, with or without context, makes perfect damn sense. "Eye contact" can very easily refer to whether or not your character is positioned to face the people they are speaking to ala the real world. Some people don't care which way their character is facing when chatting away, others do. Finally, retarded behaviour aside, male characters avatars do try to keep their distance. Really Kotaku, you harp about how games need to be taken more seriously (and here's a prime example - gender studies in video games) and then you shit all over the same concept.

That's funny, but accurate in real life too if you think about it. I'd be funny if "neck hug" was an action, anyone got close to me they'd get one. The best part of all is that the two femle avitars are probably both male players, but by some strange warp in the intarweb don't feel wierd about it the same way they would if they had male avitars.

"Don't more guys play in general, thus female characters are more likely to be played by a guy because of the gender-split of the actual player populace?" I think that was exactly the point being made by the original post.

On average, anywhere between 18% to up to 30% of MMOG customers are female, but you can be conservative and plump it at 20%. That's 2 in every 10 characters, folks. You sound like you think female players are rare as hen's teeth. They're not. If you're in a guild with no women in it, then there's probably something wrong with your guild :)