(sp)infocalypse

First, a soundtrack for this article:

This is the first in many articles about Sony’s Playstation Home. Today’s topic is about the embarrassing gender craziness.

Whatever it is that makes men take a game controller and move it instantly in the direction of female polygons, is beyond me. And, through the miracle of modern Schadenfreude, we’ve seen this backfire, in the notorious “Quincy-ing” where an otherwise convincing set of high-definition female anatomy quickly changes into high-definition male anatomy, much to the chagrin of the dance-humpers.

These are words I generally never think I’ll put together in a sentence. So let me break it down further.

Some guys find it funny to make their avatar in Playstation Home female. This will immediately attract male avatars (presumably *actually* male in real life (RL)), who gleefully engage in whatever dance animation that even *remotely* resembles humping, grinding, or whatever your term is. Double dance-hump score if the aforementioned female is sitting on the ground, where the crotch is right at the level of the seated avatar’s head. They switch it up and everyone gets grossed out, and attempts to call each other ‘fags’, which of course, gets caught by Sony’s overzealous language filter (and hey, not saying it’s overzealous to filter ‘fag’, but you know, when someone says the name of the game “Need for Speed” and it’s edited because it has the word ‘pee’ in it, you gotta wonder).

So, armchair conclusion #1: All chicks in Sony Home are dudes. Some of these fake women are not as clever, because honestly, ‘come_fuck_me69′ is not a convincing female screen name.

Now in the off chance you get to witness a female avatar telling a group of male avatars, ‘Leave me alone’, followed by moving away from the dance-humpers, it would be safe to assume that she is, in fact, female.

One thing I noticed in other games is how women are treated on voice. Depending on quality of connection, it sometimes might be difficult for some to differentiate between the sound of a 12-year old boy who shouldn’t be online anyway (according to the rule book), and a female voice. So, those conversations generally start with ‘Hey, are you 12′ (to which the female is naturally offended), and then end up (upon group consensus) with ‘Hey what’s up, add me, show me your tits’.

I’m not making this up.

The other night in Playstation Home, I witnessed an actual female change into a male avatar because of the depraved operators of the ultra-masculine manvatars (I think I just coined a phrase. Manvatar almost has a demeaning ring to it, like ‘mangina’, no?).

One thing that seems to help *only slightly*, is the existence in a lesser-public space, like the bowling alley, or a themed area like Far Cry. At least with the bowling alley, people can be *busy*, so the sexualizing has to come second. In Far Cry, one would hope people would be talking about the game or bitching about how they don’t know how to play Mancala (I’m getting good at Mancala btw). No guarantees though.

With only top-down content in Playstation Home, shopping, and dance animations, this is what we have to work with. And by ‘we’, I really mean, ‘this is what people connected to the virtual world space have to sell against’. You are only as good as your clientele and your competitors. Build more content, deploy it immediately and distract as much as possible. I can’t think of a common area in any virtual world where the lame factor pegs the needle. Pick a virtual world, it doesn’t matter. It’s always the same.

Naturally, this is nothing new.

So, here’s where I look for your take. What’s your idea on managing this in disposable public social spaces? (Trick question, I know: disposable + public + social)