A recent study revealed that 70 percent of women and 54 percent of men swap their genders when playing online games. For men, it's reportedly a way to get special treatment from males. On the other hand, women prefer to play as men  for a variety of reasons.

The details are as below:

MILLIONS OF online gamers are furtively indulging in virtual sex changes, according to a new study published by Nottingham Trent University.

The research, which will now be published in a top US journal, Cyberpsychology and Behavior, has revealed that as many as two thirds of self-discovering, role-playing gamers, on sites like Warcraft, EverQuest and Final Fantasy, pretend to be members of the opposite sex, whether to gain an advantage or simply just to "fit in".

The Nottingham Trent University study, called Gender Swapping and Socialising in Cyberspace, also reckons that one in every five socially-awkward gamers preferred interacting with others online rather than in the real world. Two in five said they escaped to the virtual havens to escape their real-life personal problems.

Boffins from the University's International Gaming Research Unit, part of the Psychology faculty, discovered that women were more likely to take on male roles in Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs), with 70 per cent admitting that they had done so. Men seem to be less inclined (although not by much) to explore their feminine side with only 54 per cent strutting their stuff as a female persona.

Chief researcher, Zaheer Hussain, commented: "It seems that women gender swap for a variety of reasons, such as to avoid unsolicited male approaches on their female characters, or because they felt male characters were treated better by other males during the course of the game."

The main reason males gave as to why they took on female personas was so that they could flirt with male characters to gain game perks like extra money or weapons. Yeah, right.

More honest gamers admitted to gender swapping in order to experiment with facets of their character that they wouldn't dare explore in the cruel sunlight of the real world.

Hussain added, "The games are often seen as a means of escape and a coping strategy which gamers use to distract themselves from having to deal with other problems."

Gender-bending gamers generally feel that online gaming offers "challenging and exciting" opportunities to explore role-playing. They sya they enjoy the levels of interactivity they reach with fellow players and the chance to make new friends.

News Original From: theinquirer