What's 'choice' got to do with it?: avatar selection differences between novice and expert players of World of Warcraft and Rift

Abstract

It's a now familiar refrain among both players and academics that healing is a 'feminine' activity and tanking a 'masculine' one within Massively Multiplayer Online Games. In this paper we present data from a multi-site study of World of Warcraft and Rift that examines this stereotype across novice and expert players. Our findings suggest that gender role stereotyping is progressively internalized as players become more competent in their gameworld of choice, with experts being more likely than novices to adopt this convention in their avatar selection.