Location: Bedroom
Device: Laptop
Time: 1 hour
During this session, I played World of Warcraft with my childhood friend named Alyssa. She’s played the game for about seven years and regularly plays it with her guild. Alyssa created a night elf mage and joined my server. She quickly leveled up to five, which was my current standing, and we roamed around one of the towns. Alyssa showed me where to sell items, that I could make my avatar dance, and what dueling between two players is like. We dueled each other briefly. Before playing the game with Alyssa, I didn’t socialize with any of the other avatars.
When I selected the dance command, my undead avatar danced like a punk rock star. He banged his head, made the hand sign synonymous with rock music, and even played the air guitar. He even grabbed his crotch as part of the dance. My friend made her avatar dance as well, which looked very graceful in comparison. The night elf made controlled, flowy movements with her arms. My friend selected a “flirt” command and I couldn’t find the command for my character. I don’t know if that was because my character is male and flirting isn’t part of the male stereotype or if both sexes in the night elf race have that as an option. However, the dances seem to be assigned based on sex and the stereotypes that surround being male or female. I looked up a video on YouTube showing the dances for all of the races. I noticed that most of the male dances involve crotch grabbing and the female dances have flowing movement and/or hip action.
According to Judith Butler’s article on performative acts and gender constitution, “gender is instituted through the stylization of the body” (519). With World of Warcraft, I can stylize my character depending on sex. It almost seems like the player can extend or even create their own identity with the avatar since there are so many options in regards to race and skillset. I can almost make the character my own through customization. Because the avatar’s sex doesn’t impact progression within the game, it seems as though I can institute whatever gender I please. The fact that the dances have distinct movements based on sex implies that the game enforces gender.