Study Claims Men Play Female Avatars to ‘Win’

Kathryn Wright, WomenGamers’s consulting psychologist, earlier this decade found that 60 percent of male players who don female avatars, or on-screen personas, do it to gain an advantage in game play. An enthusiast with the online handle Jackpot649 nailed the zeitgeist in his response to the About.com query: ‘I’m a guy, but if I gotta look at an avatar all day, I’d sooner look at a female avatar. Plus, people give you more free stuff.

I don’t have a single doubt that this is completely true. To me, playing as the opposite sex is rather ‘sad’, but it almost makes sense if you want to have an immediate advantage in the game.