Seventy percent of female MMO players and 54 percent of male players have played characters of an opposite gender, according to a recent university study entitled Gender Swapping And Socializing In Cyberspace: An Exploratory Study [PDF].
When asked why they had experimented with virtual gender bending, study respondents gave a number of different reasons, including one female's choice to avoid unwanted male attention and one male's desire to experience a side of life which he was unable to access in reality.
The researchers, however, concluded that "genderswapping appears to have an effect on videogame stimulation" citing the crossover between the large number of genderswapping gamers and those respondents who stated they used online gaming "as a mood modifier."
This study is far from widely conclusive, though, as even its creators find fault with its relatively small sample size and the self-selected respondent pool.
Additionally, all the respondents came from four popular online gaming websites (Allakhazam, Women Gamers, White Wolf and IGN's Everquest Vault), further reducing the possibility for a widely varied population.
Despite these issues, the researchers feel their findings should pave the way for further research, particularly whether genderswapping in an online setting has a propensity for affecting a player's gender identity in the real world.
