Let’s talk about race.

At the risk of boring the young punks out there (and aren’t you supposed to be doing homework instead of screwing around on the net?), in the old days of You Will Play EQ or UO (cuz they be the only games in town), we had no idea what race our fellow players were. Or had pledged to. Or were drafted into. However that works nowadays.

Hell, we didn’t even know what gender most players were, much less any physical markers that may, or may not, identify them racially. (Maybe I’m not supposed to talk about that.)

I always found that most refreshing: I don’t know anything about you, you know nothing about me, let’s keep it that way. Your history, your ancestors’ history, not interested. I’m not really interested in real life either, but some people insist.

Heh, there was this one guy in EQ — guildmate, terrible player — and I, ever the tough taskmaster, would ride his ass almost every raid. He was never prepared with spell components, would frequently stealth afk, and he wouldn’t know aggro control if it choked the life out of him. Everyone else had given up long ago, as had I, but anger and frustration would get the best of me and I spent a good portion of our raids in tells, either complaints from other guildmates or trying to slap some sense into him.

To no avail, of course. So, the one night, after telling me to fuck myself for the 15th time, he told me that he knew the reason I was always riding his ass was because he’s black. (Am I allowed to say that? Think so, cuz he did.) Ya, ok. The obvious … how would I have any idea he was black, and, the not so obvious … how did he know I wasn’t?

After boggling to myself for a few beats, I told him that I rode his ass because he was fucking around every night (duh) and until that moment, I had no idea about his racial background. He called me a liar, I knew because of his character name (which, by the way, was DJSomethingorother). ???

I’m that out of touch? Apparently so. I admitted defeat … I had no response to that. Speechless.

Next raid, we fell back into our usual routine of him fucking around and me /sigh’ing in his general direction. Chalk one up to interracial understanding. Maybe.

I had similar experiences with other EQ players — some Korean guildmates, a rogue from Miami, my frequent duo partner from Detroit, and a handful of players in the U.S. military — I should have guessed their facial features. I’m still not sure why I needed to know, much less take guesses. (Am I even allowed to say that?)

Fast forward several years to the present. With the proliferation of TeamSpeak and Ventrilo, we have at least a fighting chance to guess other players’ real life genders. And when I say “chance”, I mean that I’ve guessed wrong at times. This is the voice of experience: takes A LOT of apologizing to move past one of those mistakes.

Some day, we may game while webcamming and that will put an end to all the guessing.

For now, we just have voice. Not to brag, but I’m fairly skilled at picking up on the East Coast accents, the Southerners, sometimes I can distinguish a Texan, the Irish are easy to i.d. of course, the Aussies too. The West Coast and the Midwest are a little tougher, but still clearly American accents.

I can also guess, with a good degree of accuracy, player age. That’s not so much the voice as the conversation: Talks too much (college or younger), talks too much about drinking (college or lying high schooler), everything is mofo-this, mofo-that (post-college), not much talk but bitches in /tells alot (30s), rarely speaks on Ventrilo (40s … can’t remember which is the push-to-talk hotkey). (I KID!)

See race anywhere in there? Despite my psycho EQ guildmate’s claims that I should have known, we are no closer to knowing much of anything about the person behind the character. Our gaming is still blissfully free of racial misunderstandings, stereotypes, and expectations. (Am I allowed to say that?)

That’s not really progress, per se, as it’s more a result of anonymity than anything else. But it is something. (I’m pretty sure I’m allowed to say that.)