Freed or Trapped: Gaming Pleasures and Expression of Gender Identities in World of Warcraft among Chinese Players

Abstract

Information communication technologies hold an ambivalent place for gender identities in cyber space. In this sense, the ways that online game players make meaning of, respond to, and take pleasure in gaming lead to insights into how online games might serve as spaces for the enactment of new forms of gender identities. This study focuses on a bourgeoning communication phenomenon concerning MMORPG. Through a case study of World of Warcraft (WoW) guided by Uses and Gratifications theory, the paper explores gaming (dis)pleasures and expression of gender identities. Based on the data collected from virtual ethnography, which mainly included participant observation and in-depth interviews of 22 WoW players, the study takes a snapshot of the ways in which gender identities are constructed in WoW. The findings show that diverse options seem not to lead to a corresponding mobility or fluidity in terms of how gender can be performed in the game, even with "ladyboy" as an interesting phenomenon in gameplay. The paper argues that players' preferences and orientations toward gendered characters reflect their interplay with gaming rules, dominant narratives and relationships in real life, as well as the enactment in role-playing and image-based interfaces. Although some female players have to derive pleasures from a male perspective, there are some alternative consumptions of the masculine genre like WoW.