Tag Archive for roleplay

| February 16, 2013
16 comments

Games Imitating Life: Rape Culture in MMORPGs?

Contrary to the Kotaku article, no one was accused of rape in game at any point, and that is not the point of this blog post. Any comment that suggests that someone was accused of rape, or attempted rape, will not be approved.

 

A curious event happened to me recently while roleplaying, and I’ll use direct quotes whenever appropriate. For those of you not familiar, I’ll explain things. Roleplaying, being the act of taking on the role of a character that’s not yourself, is traditionally done through tabletop games like Dungeons and Dragons. With the rise in popularity of massively multiplayer online roleplaying games (MMORPGs) it’s taken on a different turn in the online space with people playing out scenes as their avatars (their usually three-dimensional computer generated character) in an online world.

These days I play Guild Wars 2 (GW2), a recent and fairly popular MMORPG set in the fantasy world of Tyria. Read more

Category: Culture, Media, Personal | Tags: , , , , , , ,
| July 2, 2012
3 comments

Roleplay in MMOs

I began roleplaying in World of Warcraft in 2006, and that has been my sole venue for roleplay throughout most of these last five years, with brief sojourns in other games – Aion, Rift, Lord of the Rings Online, Borderlands. It was only recently, since quitting WoW, that I’ve adventured into a new territory.

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Category: Media | Tags: , ,
| June 25, 2012
One comment

Fluid Sexuality in Main Characters

Video games often struggle with same sex relationships. They seem to feel that the only way to have same sex relationships is to make them a big, showy event, or to not have them at all.

There are a variety of other video games that have come out recently that feature characters that are fluid in their sexuality and allow the player to ‘project’ a sexuality onto the character. They don’t tell you that you have to play a straight male or a lesbian female – you are whoever you want to be. Sure, not all games can have this level of customization, and many opt to not even have romance or sexuality be touched on at all, but when romance and sex is an option, I enjoy it not being heteronormative.

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Category: Culture, Media | Tags: , ,
| June 11, 2012
No comments

Boys Who Play Girls – Female Measurement Guide

I’m a strong supporter of men playing female characters and female playing male characters. What better way to empathize with the opposite sex than to put yourself in the figurative mind and body of one?

However, I often notice that men, for some reason, have trouble with bra sizes. And weights. And statures of women. So I wanted to help out a bit in that regard!

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Category: Media, Personal | Tags: , , ,
| May 14, 2012
2 comments

What is Erotic Roleplay?

Erotic Roleplay (ERP) is the exploration of a character’s sexuality through text between two people, simply put. It is the development of a character within sexual scenes. Some of these scenes are important, some are not, but all can be immensely satisfying and arousing for both writers.

ERP has gotten a bad name in the history of the internet, leading people to think of ‘i tuch ur thigh’ style roleplay, done with the explicit purpose of getting aroused and, finally, getting off. However, it’s evolved into something a lot more than that, and if you want to join in and find a lot of great ERP, join Darknest! It’s one of our sites dedicated to erotic roleplay, fiction and art, especially in MMORPGs.

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Category: Media | Tags: ,
| March 21, 2012
5 comments

(Role)playing the Victim

-Trigger Warning for discussion about rape and violence against men and women-

I was reading an interesting article last year that got me thinking about how victims are expected to be portrayed in text based roleplay communities, especially those who have experienced sexual abuse or violence.

It was about a female journalist who, after seeing the pain and anguish in another woman after she saw one of the men who raped her after the Haitian earthquake, got Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

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Category: Culture, Media | Tags: , ,
| March 19, 2012
6 comments

Non-Violent Video Games

I spoke last time about violence in video games, especially sexual violence. This time I’d like to speak about the lack of games that don’t feature violence.

Now, when we think non-violent video games, there’s typically two genres that most people think of. Puzzle games, and games for women or kids. Of course combining women and kids is offensive in and of itself, and often is linked to the perception that only children or women would want a game that, say, taught them a new skill (like an art instruction or cooking video game) or to keep them active (such as a sport or exercise game) or allowed them to fantasize about another world (such as a farming or collection game).

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Category: Culture, Media | Tags: , , , ,
| January 23, 2012
8 comments

SWTOR: Women Don’t Flirt?

I’ve been playing Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) for the last few weeks, and have been really enjoying it. I’ve leveled a Sith Inquisitor to 25 and I’ve been finding the quests engaging, the characters interesting, and the moral choices to be over all well done (though some are fairly arbitrary).

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Category: Media | Tags: , , , , , ,
 
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