- The document discusses a study on the phenomenon of gender swapping in MMORPG games and its effects. It analyzes player demographic data from the Fairyland Online game. - Females are found to participate in gender swapping more than males. Older and more experienced players also swap genders more. Gender swapping is found to affect in-game behaviors and social networks. - Players' levels increase faster when their avatar gender matches their real gender, following real-world gender roles. Females profit more from trades, also following online gender roles. Social networks are affected by both real and virtual gender.

1. 대규모 다중 사용자 온라인 롤플레잉 게임에서의
젠더스와핑 현상과 그 영향에 관한 연구
Gender swapping and its effects in MMORPGs
박 건 우, 웹사이언스공학전공 석사과정
지도교수: 차 미 영
2013. 12. 3. MS thesis defense 1

2. Background
• Millions of people have enjoyed MMORPGs
• MMORPGs provide real-time interactions similar with real-life
• Research opportunities
• Human mobility patterns [La and Michiardi, WOSN 2008]
• Understand the structure [Son et al., PLoS One 2012]
• Verify social theories [Szell and Thurner, Scientific Report 2013]
battle conversation trade
source: http://hohobbang.egloos.com source: garden.egloos.com source: http://www.techspot.com
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3. Background
• Users can freely set their online identities independent of offline identities
players can set their avatar’s gender
as opposite to real gender
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4. Gender Swapping
• Users can choose to play with avatars of their opposite gender
• Notation: Player-Gender.Avatar-Gender
• 4 possible types: M.M, M.F, F.M, F.F
• 16 possible types for a give pair
M.F
Gender swapper
F.F
Straight player
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5. Motivation
• What are the effects of gender swapping on online games?
• Which gender is more prominent for in-game behaviors?
• Do players of same gender combination show similar patterns?
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6. Previous works
• Gender swapping is widespread
• It was firstly observed in text-based MUD (Multi User Dungeon Game) game
[Bruckeman, 1993]
• Many gamers have participated in gender swapping
[Griffith et al. 2004, Hussain and Griffith, 2008]
• Gender roles in online games
• Males play for achieving in games,
while females are motivated to meet new people [Yee, 2006]
• Males are achievers and females are socializers [Bartle, 1996]
• Gender differences of in-game behavior and social network
• Males enjoy longer sessions than females, as same in the Internet [Lo et al. 2005]
• Male and female manage their networks differently [Szell and Thurner, 2013]
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7. Previous works
• Gender swapping is widespread
• It was firstly observed in text-based MUD (Multi User Dungeon Game) game
[Bruckeman, 1993]
• Many gamers have participated in gender swapping
[Griffith et al. 2004, Hussain and Griffith, 2008]
• Gender roles in online games
Existing researches are conducted by online survey
• Males play for achieving in games,
while females are motivated to meet new people [Yee, 2006]
• Males are achievers and females are socializers [Bartle, 1996]
Most of them consider only one among two type of gender
• Gender differences of in-game behavior and social network
• Males enjoy longer sessions than females, as same in the Internet [Lo et al. 2005]
• Male and female manage their networks differently [Szell and Thurner, 2013]
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8. Research questions
1. Who participates in gender swapping?
2. What is the effects of gender swapping on in-game behaviors?
3. What is the effects of gender swapping on social network structure?
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9. Fairyland Online Dataset
• 17610 avatars owned by 4538 Taiwanese players in 2003
• Player profiles (offline) – age, gender, zipcode
• Avatar information (online) – avatar gender, in-game behaviors (level, trade),
communications
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10. Demographic characteristics
• 1819 (40.3%) players are female
• quite high fraction than other MMORPGs (16-32%) [Huh and Williams, 2010]
• Except for 9-13 old, there is no gender difference (p>0.1)
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11. Who participates in gender swapping?
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12. Who participates in gender swapping?
Correlation with gender
• Is there differences of gender swapping ratio across gender?
Gender
Experienced
gender swapping
gender swapper
Male 957 37.0%
Female 791 45.3%
Total 1748 40.3%
• Method: Chi-square test
• Females are more likely to swap genders (p<0.001)
Fraction of
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13. Who participates in gender swapping?
Correlation of player maturity in game and real world
• Basis
• Age
• Number of avatars a player owned
• Method
• See fraction of gender-swapped
avatar among all avatars a player has
• Older players are more likely to
swap genders than younger players
• Players with many avatars are
likelier to swap genders
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14. Who participates in gender swapping?
• Gender swapping is widespread
• Females participate in gender swapping more than males
• Older players and experienced players are more likely to swap gender
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15. What are the effects of gender swapping
on in-game behaviors?
source: http://garden.egloos.com source: http://www.techspot.com
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16. Effects of gender swapping on in-game behaviors
Level-up: achievements in game
Q. Who do achieve levels faster than others?
• Method
• Using session time (online active time)
• Kolmogorov-Smirnov test (K-S test)
• Male players level up more quickly than female players (D=0.0611 and p<0.01)
• Female players with male avatars show the fastest level-up (D=0.1824 and p<0.001)
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17. Effects of gender swapping on in-game behaviors
Level-up: achievements in game
Q. Who do achieve levels faster than others?
source: http://garden.egloos.com
• Method
• Using session time (online active time)
• Kolmogorov-Smirnov test (K-S test)
Level-up follows gender role in both world
• Male players level up more quickly than female players (D=0.0611 and p<0.01)
• Female players with male avatars show the fastest level-up (D=0.1824 and p<0.001)
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18. Effects of gender swapping on in-game behaviors
Trade: economic gains
Q. Who does get a better deal?
• Market price of the five most traded items and their expected gains
• Female avatars tend to profit more in trades
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19. Effects of gender swapping on in-game behaviors
Trade: economic gains
Q. Who does get a better deal?
source: http://www.techspot.com
• Market price of the five most traded items and their expected gains
• Female avatars tend to profit more in trades
Trade follows gender role in the online world
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20. What are the effects of gender swapping on
in-game behaviors?
• Players swap avatar’s genders to get benefits of opposite gender
[Bartle. 1996, Bruckman. 1993, Wang and Wang. 2008, Zaheer and Grifffiths. 2008]
• Female: to achieve
• Male: to get advantages of trade
• Both real and virtual gender affect in-game behaviors
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21. What are the effects of gender swapping
on social network structure?
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22. Effects of gender swapping on social network structure
Dyadic relationship
 Whisper: one-to-one private communication
M.F
• Method: the odd ratio against random expectations on whisper communication
• Players are more likely to send messages to opposite-gender avatars
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23. Effects of gender swapping on social network structure
Dyadic relationship
 Chat length against gender combination
• Female players chat longer than male players
• Chats are longer between opposite-gender avatars
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24. Effects of gender swapping on social network structure
Dyadic relationship
 Friendship: sustained relationship
M.F
• Method: the odd ratio against random expectations on friendship
• Players whose gender are same with each other tend to become friends
• Controlling for player genders, the players were slightly likelier to form a friendship tie
when their avatars had opposite genders.
• For friendship formation, offline genders have more significant effects than online
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25. Effects of gender swapping on social network structure
Triangular relationship
 Fully connected triangular relationship against gender combinations
• Method
• Construction of network using friendship having at least one whisper communication
• Calculate the odd ratio against random expectation
• Heterogeneity of avatar gender is more preferred (p<0.01, for top users, p<0.001)
• Triangles consisting of two male and one female avatars are more easily formed than triangle of
one-male and two female avatars
• similar trends are observed in two social networking services (Facebook and Weibo) [in Appendix]
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26. What are the effects of gender swapping
on network structure?
• Both in-game gender and real gender have an impact on dyadic relationship
• For triadic relationship, gender role of avatar is more followed
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27. Conclusion
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28. Implication
• Gender swapping provides another point to view online games
• It gives clues to understand various behaviors and network patterns
• The result shows similar trend with real world’s pattern
• It supports that MMORPG is a good platform to conduct user behavior research
as well as social network analysis
• Potential application
• Bot detection: use gender-related features to boost accuracy
• Online identity fraud detection: find sexual deviants or predators
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29. Limitation
• Limited to analysis on an instance of MMORPG
• Hard to generalize
• Sample bias: Taiwanese users
• Can expand to studies on culture differences in future works
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30. Future works
• Similar analysis on other MMORPGs
• Understanding differences of language usages across gender combination
• Investigating identity differences between real world and web services
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31. Publications
• Researches on Gender Swapping
• J-K. Lou, K. Park, M. Cha, J. Park, C-L. Lei, K-T. Chen.
Gender Swapping and User Behaviors in Online Social Games.
In proc. of the 22th International Conference on World Wide Web (WWW),2013.
• J-K. Lou, K. Park, K-T. Chen, J. Park, M. Cha.
Social Networks and Hidden Node Information: Gender Swapping.
In proc. of Workshop on Information in Network (WIN), 2013.
• Other studies
• K. Park, S. Lee, E. Kim, M. Park, J. Park, M. Cha.
Mood and Weather: Feeling the Heat?
In proc. of the 7th International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media
(ICWSM), 2013 (poster).
• K. Park, J. Park, S. Park, J. Kim, S. Kwon, J. Kwak, M. Cha.
Voice of the Employees Resonated in Online Bamboo Forests.
In 7th International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM)
Workshop on Social Computing for Workforce 2.0, 2013.
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32. 감사합니다.
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33. Appendix
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34. MMORPG player statistics
source: http://MMOdata.net
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35. Demographic characteristics
• A quite large fraction of players
live in rural areas (31.25%)
• Gender ratios are nearly
consistent across regions
(p>0.01)
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36. Who participate in gender swapping?
Correlation with geography
• Are people who live in urban more likely to swap genders?
Region
Experienced
gender swapping
Fraction of
gender swapper
Urban 1212 40.7%
Rural 536 35.6%
Total 1748 40.3%
• Gender swapping ratio was nearly consistent in rural and urban areas (p=0.5697)
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37. Triangular analysis on Weibo
• User: 2286 – 1302 males (56.96%), 984 females (43.04%)
• Link: 3265
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38. Triangular analysis on Facebook
• User: 50016 - 23137 males (46.26%), 26879 females (53.74%)
• Link: 154568
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