first of all, people who call you “lady” probably wish, deep down, that you were not wearing pants
Lady gamers gets voice changer (Thanks to j00j for the link.)
The software comes with presets which turn lady voices into big deep Blessed-esque ones. You can also create your own new voice by mucking about with pitch and timbre settings, and other features include advanced tune and noise reduction.
In essence, “AV Voice Changer Software is somehow a unique product for female online game players who want to prove that playing online games is not a pastime for men only, and that their talent can make male partners goggle.”
If you want to make men goggle, visit Audio4fun.com to download a free trial.
So, let me get this straight. Female gamers “have a common concern about the long-lasting existence of ‘male chauvinism’ in the world of online games” (I like how that’s in quotes, like we imagined it or something), and so they’ll be interested in voice-altering technology that will allow them to conceal their gender even when using applications like TeamSpeak to coordinate group play.
Well, okay, maybe, although avatar gender-swapping doesn’t actually seem to be a massively popular strategy among female gamers (Yee 2003); many of them do cite male chauvinism as a problem in MMOGs, but are more likely to choose a less sexualized female avatar like a dwarf or Tauran than to play a male character. In my experience, “average” (i.e. sexualized) female avatars get treated as “female” unless they do a lot of work to explicitly contradict the gender claim made by the virtual body, so there’s little reason to expect that a woman who doesn’t play male avatars is going to feel compelled to masculinize her voice in TeamSpeak.
But the BEST part here is how the makers of this software assert that by going so far as to masculinize their voices lest male players find out that they’re GIRLS, female gamers will prove themselves! Yes! Nothing will show people that women can game like CONCEALING ALL SIGNS OF THE PRESENCE AND PARTICIPATION OF ACTUAL FEMALE GAMERS.
It’s like they’re from Bizarro World or something. How does one argue against a basic lack of any critical thinking skills?
July 15th, 2006 at 10:35 am
I’m particularly fond of the implication that female gamers only play in order to “make male partners goggle” (whatever that’s supposed to mean).
July 18th, 2006 at 3:53 am
Hmmmmm.
I actually wouldn’t mind trying out a male avatar for fun, to see if I could be convincing (and I’m pretty sure the answer would be “no”). But in order to prove my worthiness to be taken seriously? No.
What’s a Tauran, by the way? Google isn’t helping.
July 18th, 2006 at 10:14 am
K: I think you’d be surprised at how easy it is to be “convincing” as one gender or the other in MMOGs, particularly when that gender is the one assumed to be default for players (masculine). Despite the fact that people know there is no necessary connection between player and avatar gender, and that genderswapping does happen, in almost all cases avatars are treated as the gender their virtual body appears to be unless they provide explicit contradictory information.
Taurans are one of the non-human races on World of Warcraft. They’re cow peope.
July 18th, 2006 at 10:39 am
Cow people. I should have been able to work that out…