AbstractsWomens Studies

This study focuses on female gender in the creation of virtual bodies in an online multiplayer gaming context. The framework we defined is the game World of Warcraft, because of its high popularity and consequent number of subscriptions, which make it a videogame icon. We wish to find insights on the way female gamers elaborate their virtual identities and how the latters affect the way they play the game. To clear up these matters, the construction of gender, the new place of women in the cyberspace and social interactions linked to gender will be questioned in our analysis. Face-to-face interviews with male and female gamers, combined to the visual study of players’ avatars, will help us to resolve our research questions.