Hunting Transgenders, the Chinese Way...

That's no baby, baby. -banned-

Imagine this, gentlemen: You’re walking through the streets, and at the corner you come across a beautiful woman, clad in nothing but a frilly bra and underwear. As she looks at you seductively, using the hottest /dance emote available, she says “4g 4 l4p d4nc3.” All of a sudden, you notice something about her is wrong. The chin, the hairy arms, the Adam’s Apple. IT’S A MAN, BABY!

If you’re a player who enjoys the occasional pixelated groping, or you work as a GM on Age of Conan, you’ll be glad to hear that, at least on King of the World that you won’t have to worry about that woman actually being a man behind the screen. Taking the phrase “pics or it didn’t happen” literally, and requires players to submit webcam pictures of themselves, otherwise male players playing as female avatars will be banned.

As far as I can tell, female players are welcome to play as male avatars, the rule does not work in reverse. Aurora Technology is a Chinese MMO company, who created King of the World, and publishes Aion, Dungeons and Dragons Online, and Company of Heroes Online. Gamepolitics references to stereotypes in the online community that decide that men playing as female characters are somehow secretly homosexual.

I have a question on this debate though: As a male, does owning Metroid Prime Trilogy on the Wii make me a homosexual? I’m playing as Samus Aran, who we all know is completely female. How about Blood Rayne? Final Fantasy (ZING), Tomb Raider? The Sims (Don’t answer that).

Also, this is coming off as just a skosh bit perverted. Imagine the reaction women will have when they attempt to create a female avatar, and are told they have to provide pictures of themselves or be otherwise banned. Let’s hope perversion isn’t one of the many laws that end in execution in China.

So when your friend tells you “there are no women in King of the World, he may not be that far from the truth.If Aurora Technology moves this into the games they publish, let’s hope NCsoft and Turbine make a Codemasters out of them and pull their rights out from beneath their feet.