Gender Swapping and User Behaviors in Online Social Games Jing-Kai Lou, Kunwoo Park, Meeyoung Cha, Juyong Park, Chin-Laung Lei, Kuan-Ta Chen In proc. of the 22nd International Conference on WWW, 2013
Online games Providing life-like virtual environments making new friends, fighting against others, trading things with others,... Providing the opportunities to observe the human (player) social behavior [Son et al. 2012, Szell et al. 2010]
Gender Issues Gender would be... the most celebrated issues in sociology. the salient features that people use to categorize and process social stimuli
A intriguing twist People are free to choose the in-game avatar gender, not limited to their natural gender. Gender types could be classified into 4. straight combinations: male-male (M.M), female-female (F.F) swapped combinations: (gender swapping) male-female (M.F), female-male(f.m)
Related works [A.S. Brukman,1993] first mention the fact about gender swapping in games [H.Cole et al., 2007] points out that 2/3 players experienced gender swapping in EverQuest [C.C Wang et al., 2008] male players show more prosocial behavior towards females [H. Zaheer et al., 2008] male players enjoy the... benefits via engaging in gender swapping
Do you really know who you are talking with in game? A gentleman, or a lady?
Limitations of previous study However, most related works are done with questionaries. The flaws would be... small sample size self biased We provide a quantitative research to see how gender swapping is revealed in game
Fairyland Online one of the longest-serviced MMORPGs in the world. developed by Lager Network Technologies, Inc. based in Taiwan officially launched in February 2003 in the Taiwanese market.
Dataset contain avatar activities and player profiles avatar activities: personal messages, trade,... player profiles: player age, player gender, and address collection data: period 2003-2004 4538 real player profiles (2719 male and 1819 female) and 17610 involved avatars
Questions According to the dataset, we could answer the following interesting questions What factors make gender swapped? How is gender swapping revealed in game?
Inspection of factors Demographic variables: 1. player age 2. living place Gamer profiles: 3. owned avatar number
Player Age average age 18.7, median age 17. 86.5% in age 10 to 30 (5.4% under 10, and 7.9% over 30) male population heavily concentrated around age 9 -- 13 (elementary school age)
Demography divide Taiwan into 21 areas 5 major cities as urban areas the rests as rural areas Number of players with the gender swapped avatars in the urban and rural areas
Number of Avatars a player majority of players own a small number of avatars, whereas some players own more than 10 avatars. 74.7% players own no more than 4 avatars.
Gender Swap Ratio Definition: 100 * (# swapped avatars / # all avatars) 0 indicates total straight players 100 indicates total swapped players example: Alice (female) owned 3 avatars (gender: F, F, and M). then Alice s ratio would be 1/3
Prevalence of gender swapping Two factors age, and number of avatars owned correlate to gender swapping Heat maps of gender swapping ratio over ages (top) and number of avatars owned (bottom)
How is gender swapping revealed in game? We introduce how is gender swapping revealed on Level: individual achievement Whisper: private 1-1 message Friendship: sustained social ties Trade: exchange and Sales of Items Notations: A.B = players of gender A controlling avatar of gender B
Leveling speed achieving high level with a shorter session time means leveling up more quickly aggregate avatars per 5 levels, and show the session time for FF, FM, MF, and MM level speed: M player > F players FM (swapper) speed up quickly.
Levels difference Distribution How players spend time on female avatars and male avatars? To do so, we show the level difference (M avatar - F avatar) for every player having a high level avatar imply spending long time on this avatar. Even player experienced swapping, most still spend more time on avatar with same gender
Whisper The prevalence of whispers divided by random expectation across all possible gender tuples. Avatar gender (appearance) dominates the chat probability.
Conversation Length Female (player) socialize more actively than male (player)
Friendship the prevalence of friendship divided by random expectation across all possible gender tuples. people tend to make friends with same-gendered players control the linked to same-gendered players, players still prefer a different gender avatar (avatar gender still dominate)
Trade market price = average price over all deals profits = selling price - buying price general speaking, female players are good at gaining profits when controlling player s gender, female avatars are more likely to succeed in profiting
Short Conclusion How is gender swapping revealed in game? male players achieve higher levels faster than females, females also do so when they play with males avatars. players tend to whisper more to opposite gender avatars, but they are more likely to become friends with player of the same gender. female players make higher profit in trades than males do. controlling the player gender, MF gain more profits than MM do. Thus, male really take some advantages via engaging gender swapping
Conclusion We investigate the issue about Gender Swapping, and find... 1. gender swapping is prevalent across player age and number of avatars owned. 2. people try to get relationship with other gender, but they turn out to be of the same real gender as in real life, indicating that assuming an alternative identity does not completely mask the real persona 3. people s personalities and strategies depend on their assumed identity in games. for example, female players acts like male as playing with male avatars (leveling more quick, not good haggler)