Iris Gaming Network

Through fantasy anything, no matter how far-fetched, can become real. And yet, despite the elf ears or red skin, fantasy characters in video games still manage more often than not to fit into the idealized body types for humans. In a game such as World of Warcraft, a player can choose from a variety of fantasy races: everything from elves to anthropomorphic bovines, and yet no matter how divorced from humans a race might be, in the end they all share most of the same characteristics that are found in idealized human bodies.

This paper explores the rationale behind making fantasy creatures conform to narrow standards of beauty/strength in games such as World of Warcraft, and examines what this may imply for our conception of fantasy as a genre by investigating the delicate balance between emulated reality and fantastical escapism found in video games.

Understanding the Ideal

Since what constitutes an idealized body changes depending on the situation, it is important first to clarify what ideals are being used as the standard for video games.

At the most basic level, that standard would be the Western ideal of beauty (Fig. 1). This ideal is most typically white, thin – but not too thin for the men – with attention paid to symmetrical features and large eyes. Since games like World of Warcraft are based on the idea of the player as being an adventurer – someone who fights monsters for a living through physical, magical, or other means – looking to portrayals of idealized bodies in the field of fitness can help to narrow down which standards are being used when creating avatars (Fig. 2).

The fantasy genre is often criticized for the way it exaggerates, or idealizes, the human body. As Dr. Marlin C. Bates put it in his paper on monsters in online games, “Since gamers and the like have been used to video representations of scantily-clad females and steroid-enhanced males, the trend to represent elves in this way would only be seen as a natural element of an ideal… world.”¹ But such a simplistic explanation fails to capture the complex reality of game design.

It is worth mentioning two other possible driving factors behind video game characters, including fantasy races, being created to fit an idealized body type. The first is an acknowledgement that – due to the nature of popular culture products such as video games – using appearance as shorthand in order to quickly and effectively communicate the basics of a character’s personality is, to some extent, required if people are going to be able to relate to the product. ²

The second possible driving factor is one relating to perceptions of attractiveness. For the most part, protagonists are designed to elicit a positive response from players and even antagonists, though often made ugly in order to incite feelings of shock and horror, can be made beautiful to encourage a positive reaction.³

Although the two above arguments for idealized bodies hold some truth, they also share the same flaw: subjectivity. Firstly, while the Western ideal of beauty may be the most pervasive ideal of beauty in the modern world, it is not the only one and treating it as such can alienate players who subscribe to a different set of ideals.⁴ On the more personal level, privileging one set of ideals over another ignores personal preference. While it is true that not being able to play a character that one finds attractive can create a lot of discontent in players, what a person finds attractive varies from person to person and catering solely to one ideal strengthens the problem rather than alleviates it, as will be shown in the next section.

Idealized Bodies in World of Warcraft

World of Warcraft (frequently referred to as “WoW”) is an online game known as an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game), or MMO for short. Launched in November 2004, it now boasts over 8 million players worldwide, making it the largest MMO to date. It is set in a fantasy world called Azeroth and utilizes lore that was introduced in the four previous games in the series.⁵ In addition to humans, the major races include elves, dwarves, gnomes, Draenei, Tauren, trolls, and the undead. It should be noted that all playable races are humanoid in form, though druid classes are given the ability to take on non-human form temporarily.

Given such a diverse range of races, one would expect that there would be a similar range in body types. Instead, the “diversity” in men is whether they look like slim bodybuilders or huge ones, and for women it reads much like the shallow diversity in Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty (Fig. 3).

In fact, both the male and female avatars share many qualities with the typical portrayals that Sheri Graner Ray outlined in her 2004 book Gender Inclusive Game Design. For women she described avatars with exaggerated sexual features such as large breasts set high on their torso, large buttocks, and a waist smaller than her head.⁶ For men she described avatars with exaggerated signs of virility such as broad shoulders, slim hips, and arms that are well-muscled. In contrast to the female avatars, however, their sexual organs are not exaggerated⁷ (Fig. 4).

Players have noticed this tendency as well. As one respondent to a survey on sexism in World of Warcraft put it, “The species that are more humanoid seem to have a more ‘centerfold’ quality, especially the Night Elves.”⁸ Indeed, the body types of the female avatars seem to be closer to those of Zoo Weekly models than actual body builders (Fig. 5.). While races like the gnomes and orcs are closer to looking like an athletic build due to their thicker waists, they – like all the other women in the game – have an exaggerated hourglass shape that adds a distinctly sexual element to their appearance.

Unlike the female bodies – which have not generated much commentary on their body shapes outside of the feminist gaming community – male body types are hotly contested by WoW players. Interestingly enough, although Blizzard seems to have created the male avatars with the typical “virile, not sexual” line of thinking, one of the arguments made in threads about male avatars focuses on their relative attractiveness as an important part of their design.

Perhaps the most well known controversy on the WoW boards is that over the change that occurred with the male Blood Elves. Originally they were slender, although not as slender as the Elvaan male avatars in Final Fantasy XI, for example. Blizzard made the decision to make them larger, which caused a backlash in the community. The first attempt at “beefing up” the avatars was referred to with such derisive adjectives such as “deformed”⁹, “muscled freak”¹⁰, and “ultra buffed up with gorilla arms” ¹¹.

Three clear factions evolved in the debate thread regarding the toning down of the beefiness: those who, arguing for a broader range of body types, asked to return to the very original model; those who, like the first faction, felt that the male models in general were unrealistically large, but were content with the slimmer beefy Blood Elves; and those who felt that slender males are “like frail waifs” ¹² and were happy as long as there was not a return to the very original model.

In the end, Blizzard had already made its decision to stick with the updated version and so the Blood Elf models are those of a slim bodybuilder, with the same broad shoulders, slim waist, and well-muscled arms that Graner Ray described as the norm for male avatars (Fig. 6).

Another interesting point of note in regards to the avatars is how sexual dimorphism breaks down in the races. The humans, dwarves, elves, undead, and gnomes – being the closest to actual human beings – follow the idealized sexual dimorphism found in humans: the differences in build outlined in the beginning of this section, with the added feature of the male avatars being taller than the female ones. Despite the freedom to build a fantasy creature’s body from scratch, however, the less humanoid races of the Draenei, orcs, trolls, and Taurens follow not only the typical idealization outlined above, but go even farther to include distinct “feminine” and “masculine” markers which presents a clear separation between the sexes.

The race with perhaps the starkest contrast between the sexes would be the Draenei. What stands out first about the sexes is that the male is massive: tall with unnaturally large muscles and equally large hooves. Given this build, it would not be unreasonable to expect the female of the species to be similar, but instead her slim features are closer to that of the female Blood Elf than to the male of her own species. Female orcs share the same problem, although they are clearly the most muscular women in the game, perhaps apart from Tauren women. There is also a marked difference in the non-human markers such as tails and ears. The same can be found with the trolls – with the males having visibly large tusks while the females are only allowed ones so small that they often fail to show up in screenshots, not to mention the complete difference in posture – and the Tauren as well, as the males get horns and facial piercings while the females do not (Fig. 7).

The dimorphism was not always so strong, however. In the Alpha version of the game, races such as the Tauren and the trolls had more similarity between genders than difference: facial structure, body shape, posture, and even choice of accessories were more similar than not (Fig. 8). Apparently there were many complaints about the women of both races being “ugly” and so the developers changed them into their current incarnations, which have the significant differences between the sexes outlined above.¹³

A final note on diversity in World of Warcraft: though the diversity may not be as diverse as it could be, there are still some good points of note. O’Danu, a writer for the blog Feminist Gamers, points out that World of Warcraft, in having the non-human fantasy races that it does, has created the option for unconventional beauty in its women. Though all of the female characters share the hourglass figure, races like the dwarves, O’Danu points out, are “unabashedly thick and curvy, just like me.”¹⁴

Fantasy races, humanoid bodies

People play fantasy games for a myriad of reasons: escapism, wanting to explore uncharted territory, and to see what happens when we play the “what if” game of evolution. If fantasy is a vehicle in which to understand the human psyche, then what does it say that almost no video games yet created can imagine a world without patriarchal norms, such as those found in the problematic use of idealized bodies for fantasy races, being the standard?

If we think of these creatures as extreme expressions of societal ideals of men and women, an idea supported by the way sexual dimorphism is used in races such as the Dranei, then perhaps the choice of body types is one more way in which the fantasy is continued. After all, the notion of “attractiveness” was one of the driving forces behind the various changes that the character models have undergone since the beginning of the game.

And yet, “attractiveness” is not an objective ideal, and the appropriateness of the models is something that continues to draw debate even today. It is true that one of the key elements of good fantasy is characters with which the reader, viewer, or player can establish a baseline connection with, but is pushing all the races into a fairly narrow ideal the way to do that?

Looking at the wild success of World of Warcraft, one may tempted to say “yes” and leave it at that. But how many people are playing the game despite the avatar issues? How many are playing because of factors such as gameplay, their love of the Warcraft universe, or being a fan of other Blizzard products such as the Diablo or Starcraft series? And, even if the idealized bodies are a significant contributor to the game’s success, when you have the kind of budget that the game must have, does it really make good business sense to alienate a portion of your potential audience by not allowing them to choose an alternative?

Good game design presents many challenges, not the least of which is to create interesting avatars that will resonate with your player base. While it is understandable that Blizzard would wish to do whatever it can to maintain its success, it is also important to look at the costs of that success.

From a feminist’s point of view, Blizzard’s decision to force all of their avatars into a narrow ideal of human beauty reinforces negative stereotypes that continue to perpetuate inequality through the normalization of a kind of strict binary sexual dimorphism that does not exist in real life.

From a player’s point of view, Blizzard has denied many people the ability to play a character like them, or a character they would like to be. The extreme sexual dimorphism in the races, and the way that Blizzard is quick to “fix” avatars that do not properly fit the ideal, has sent the message to those outside of that body type – not just women, but men as well – that they are not worthy of being represented, that their body types are not good enough for even one avatar in the entire game to represent them.

At its heart, fantasy is a genre to explore possibilities and imagine worlds and ways different from our own. It is escapism and entertainment, but it is also there to make us think. Fantasy races are one of the easiest ways to do this, as they are not bound by the same laws of nature as humans are, nor are they inherently bogged down in debates of biology versus socialization. They can be anything, and do anything, that a person can imagine. The possibilities are endless, and yet it is the well-worn path that is traveled more often than not. And so, in the end, it is a shame that for games like World of Warcraft the reimagining of the human condition does not extend to areas such as sex and gender.

Footnotes

¹ Bates (September 2006), p. 13.
² Isbister (2006), p. 12.
³ Tiggemann (2002), p. 91.
⁴ Isbister (2006), p. 8.
⁵ World of Warcraft. Wikipedia.
⁶ Graner Ray (2004), p. 102.
⁷ Graner Ray (2004), p. 104.
⁸ Respondent 8 in Beth C. (June 2005), p. 5.
⁹ Bloodelf Screenshots from Beta: UPDATE #2. (October 2006), p. 7 (comment by Lyrana).
¹⁰ Bloodelf Screenshots from Beta: UPDATE #2. (October 2006), p. 8 (comment by Verdalor).
¹¹ The Blood Elf models got me thinking… (March 2007) (comment by Guind).
¹² Bloodelf Screenshots from Beta: UPDATE #2. (October 2006), p. 6 (comment by Pika).
¹³ Can any WoW players do me a favour? (May 2007), pp. 1-3.
¹⁴ O’Danu (2007).

Bibliography

Bates, Dr. Marlin C. (September 2006). Ur-real Monsters: The Rhetorical Creation of Monsters In Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGS).

Beth C.. (June 2005). Sexism in World of Warcraft.

Bloodelf Screenshots from Beta: UPDATE #2. (October 2006).

Can any WoW players do me a favour?. (May 2007).

Graner Ray, Sheri. 2004. Gender Inclusive Game Design: Expanding the Market. Hingham: Charles River Media.

Isbister, Katherine. 2006. Better Game Characters By Design: A Psychological Approach. San Fransisco: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers.

O’Danu. (2007). Rolling Pretty: Size and color and ageism in MMORPG. Feminist Gamers.

The Blood Elf models got me thinking.. (March 2007).

Tiggemann, Marika. 2002.Media Influences on Body Image Development. In Thomas F. Cash & Thomas Pruzinsky (Eds.), Body Image: A Handbook of Theory, Research, & Clinical Practice (pp. 70-84). New York: The Guilford Press. 

World of Warcraft. (n.d.). Wikipedia.

Wykes, Maggie & Gunter, Barrie. 2005. The Media & Body Image. London: SAGE Publications.