Women Keep it Real: Avatar Gender Choice in League of Legends.

This article examines avatar gender choice within a competitive context in which avatar gender is not equivalent across functions. In data from the game League of Legends (n = 15,392) reflecting >5 million avatar gender choices, women were found to have stronger preferences for avatar gender consistency than men. Furthermore, women tended to choose female avatars at twice the available rate offered by the game, whereas men chose male avatars at a rate approximately the same as the proportion offered.

Virtual muscularity: a content analysis of male video game characters.

The 150 top-selling video games were content analyzed to study representations of male bodies. Human males in the games were captured via screenshot and body parts measured. These measurements were then compared to anthropometric data drawn from a representative sample of 1120 North American men.