According to Gender Swapping And Socializing In Cyberspace: An Exploratory Study, 68% of female MMO players and 54% of male players played characters of the opposite gender. This isn’t exactly new information, but it’s nice to have the cold, unflinching numbers of science to backup what most of us already knew. While participants in the study gave differing reasons on why they chose to play a character that differed from their real life gender, most of the answers reflected the desire to see the world – even a virtual one – from a different perspective.

As Wired’s Game|Life blog is quick to point out, this study is hardly conclusive, finding fault with the study’s small sample size (just 115 participants) and the fact that it only polled users from popular enthusiast sites such as (Allakhazam, Everquest Vault, White Wolf , and Women Gamers.

Still, the issue of how we define gender in the inherently genderless space of virtual worlds remains an interesting topic facing our digital age.