Sya and Me: Transpeople in MMOs .

A few short years ago, I would not have written this article. Not because of lack of desire to speak on the subject, but because I do not believe it would have been well received, and frankly, I’d have been a bit too frightened to write it. However, over the past year or so, the cultural winds of change have been blowing; from Chaz Bono to Caitlyn Jenner to Laverne Cox, transgender celebrities have found acceptance. Transpeople are being elected as public officials in locations from Poland and America to New Zealand and Japan, and are successfully pursuing court cases regarding everything from restroom use to employment rights in just as many places. In much of the world, things are much better for transpeople now than they have ever been, or at least better than they have been in a long time; pre-settlement Native America was, you know, pretty good in this department. The inclusion of a trans character in Guild Wars 2 shows that these changes are even extending into the realm of MMOs, and the culture of online gaming. I think I can talk about this stuff now.

On 23 June, 2015 – yep, just a few days ago – a set of rather significant game changes came to Guild Wars 2, along with a redesigned Lion’s Arch. For the benefit of anyone who might read this article who is not familiar with the game, Lion’s Arch is the central city of Guild Wars 2, and it is, frankly, a busy place. Anything done here attracts attention. An NPC named Aid Worker Sya was placed in Lion’s Arch, who informs people who speak to her, through dialogue options, that she was previously known as Aid Worker Symon. As I said, Lion’s Arch is a busy place, and people noticed, people talked about it, people wrote articles about it, and people expressed their opinions. Most of those opinions were quite tolerant and supportive of the decision to include the NPC in the game; some were not so supportive. However, overall, the character was well received. The largely favorable reaction of the wider community to this character literally made me breathe a sigh of relief.

I applaud the inclusion of the character, and frankly, how the character was introduced without any mention or fanfare by ArenaNet; making a bunch of ado over the inclusion of the character would be somewhat contrary to the desire of the transgender community to simply be accepted as normal, unremarkable, and unproblematic. This, in fact, was a common thing mentioned in responses to articles or forum threads regarding the NPC which popped up over the next few days; why were people making a big deal of it. That was refreshing to read, too; people did not understand why it was a “big deal”. The fact that it is still a change that is viewed by some as significant enough to merit some attention, however, indicates that, to much of the wider world, transpeople are still seen as something of an oddity or curiosity – which, I must admit, I find vastly better than being viewed as some sort of aberration. We still have a long way to go, but hey, I’ll take all the progress I can get, as it comes.

For as long as I have been playing MMOs – since 2003 – they have been something of a haven for transpeople. For myself, and for many others, the ability to participate in social situations while presenting as our identified gender from the safety of our own homes, along with the ability to tailor exactly how we look, was a godsend. In my case, it was also through MMOs that I first met other transpeople and where I was finally able to start learning a little bit about all of this. The revelation that I was NOT alone in dealing with the stresses and concerns of being trans was immense. These experiences and social connections helped me better accept who I am. Now, other players who might find themselves in that same set of circumstances might see that there are trans characters in the actual game, they might read those generally positive comments on forums, and they might, thanks to the gradual societal shifts that have happened over the past few years, have a much easier time of things than some of us did a mere few years ago.

Online gaming has a distinct culture, complete with its own set of norms to which adherence is expected, and sanctions which may be enacted upon anyone who does not adhere to those norms. Of course, like most societies, some of the strongest cultural sanctions are reserved for individuals who did not fit into the mold of what was deemed “normal”, particularly those who seem to deviate from long-standing notions about gender and sexual behaviour. I experienced this first hand when, upon being badgered as to whether “I was a real woman or not” by other players in Star Wars: Galaxies, I did, a handful of times, inform them that I was a transwoman. This was met with all sorts of responses, but a lot of them were negative; I distinctly remember one individual in particular referring to me as “shim”, “she-male”, and similar epithets, and others who told me that I should kill myself, and so on and so forth… sadly, all of us who play MMOs have met these sorts of people. The experiences in Star Wars: Galaxies made me so reluctant to mention to anyone else in an MMO that I was trans that I have never mentioned it to anyone since, unless they gave me extremely good reasons to believe I could trust them. Thankfully, decent MMO players are a good deal more common than the “special” sort outlined above, and some cultural elements one finds in one MMO may not exist in another.

In contrast to those early experiences in Star Wars: Galaxies, my experiences in EVE Online have been almost universally positive and supportive. Now, I started playing EVE in 2008, and I did not really begin to speak to people about any of these things until 2011 or so, so eight years had elapsed since those encounters in SWG. A significant amount of progress had been made during those eight years with regards to the transgender community, but I think there are other factors at play in why my time in EVE has been better than my time in earlier games. EVE has only one server which is populated with people from all over the world; the in game culture is, therefore, influenced by people from areas which tend to be more socially liberal, such as Western Europe, as well as people from more conservative areas, like some regions of the United States. The end result is that the overall culture of the game is a good deal more accepting of differences than a game with a single server which is populated primarily by, say, players from conservative regions in America might be. Also there is the fact that EVE is a game about spaceships flown by people with their brains; you never see another character’s full body avatar in normal interactions, only a small portrait. In spite of the simply phenomenal character creator in EVE, you will never see another character in the flesh in game, and you can only see their full-body avatar if you examine them and purposely look at them. In EVE, interactions are done between ships, between icons on your overview; what matters in EVE is whether the person is a good pilot, skilled leader, or shrewd businessperson, not what clothes they have on or what gender they identity as. No one cares what gender your character – or you – are, or identify as, because it simply does not matter. Lastly there is the fact that gamers, as a whole, are literally growing up. In this graph from CCP Quant’s Twitter, we can see that the mean age of EVE players is 29.4 years old. This is due to the fact that EVE is an intellectually demanding game which simply appeals to older – and thus, better educated – players, but also the fact that MMO players are on average growing older, as those of us who grew up playing games, particularly MMOs, continue to play them into our 30s, 40s, and beyond. More mature players simply react differently to things which seem a bit unusual or new than younger more impulsive players might; note I said more mature, not older. Emotional maturity generally comes with age, but that is far from an absolute; younger people tend to be more open minded, for instance, than those who came before. It’s a bit of a mess of interconnected factors.

Is this pilot transgendered…Oh crap, they’ve redboxed!!

I wish I could say it’s all been sunshine and roses; it hasn’t. I said my experiences in EVE have been ALMOST universally supportive, not that they’ve all been perfect. I have had some run-ins with some folks in EVE who seemed to be far more worried about the status of my genitals than I am. I am sure that I will receive some pretty nasty responses to this article, both in game(s) and via other channels. However, I am sure I will get a lot of good feedback too, and that the mean-spirited responses will be far fewer in number than they might have been a few years ago. Transpeople are finding more acceptance everywhere, and while I do not presume to speak for the whole trans community, I think that’s all most of us want; to just be accepted, to be seen as just another person, to feel no need to ever write articles like this. We’re getting there, and from me to every one of you who have been in our corner, who have been just treating us like any other gamer, I want to say thanks. Society changes when all of the people in it change, and that change is happening now, both in Real Life, and in-game.

Now, let’s get back to talking about Stuff That Matters, like assault frigates and explosions!