Hidden Levels: Choose Your Player (Side Quest)

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Amory, I know you're not a gamer, but from your Hidden Levels episode about the history of the joystick, I do know that you have played Mario Kart. I have. I have played Mario Kart once in my life and did not win by a long shot. Which character did you choose when you started your race? I was Ludwig. Does that mean anything to you? I'm not a like modern Mario person. So I like it's Yoshi, Princess Peach, Toad, Wario, Mario, Luigi.

Bowser, Donkey Kong. Those are my options. Ludwig, I'm less, I don't know as well. What made you choose Ludwig? Honestly, I just loved his flowing blue hair. He has blue hair. I didn't know what he really looked like until later. A much later Google reveals that he's got like a dinosaur body and he has a single tooth. He's got like a Tom Cruise center tooth.

Pointy center tooth. But it's that blue hair, man. Well, that flowing blue hair is relevant because this episode, our side quest from Franny Monaghan is a special one to me. Our series is about how video games can change the world beyond video games. And when we think about how video games can offer you the opportunity to choose identities that are different than the one you're experiencing every day, you can imagine some possibilities that go way past picking

Ludwig because of blue hair. Here's Franny's episode, Choose Your Player.

Hello, little buns. Hello, everybody. Hello, whoever you are. Thank you for joining me on my YouTube channel. My name is Steph Saniotti. I am a former makeup artist. Steph Zaniotti is a content creator on YouTube, a transgender advocate, a makeup artist, but beyond all else...

I'm a hardcore gamer, and I'm a big fan of World of Warcraft. And I am here today to bring you a World of Warcraft War Within inspired makeup look, of course, inspired by the new expansion that's coming out in a couple of days. It's already in early access. of Steph's makeup content is super influenced by various video games. Sparkly and colorful Pokemon inspired looks to dark and smoky ones from the Witcher game series.

Today's tutorial is for a bright metallic orange and purple style inspired by the game that changed her life, World of Warcraft. And while we blend... Let me tell you why I love World of Warcraft. I have been playing World of Warcraft since I was nine years old. I'm 29 in November, so it's been 20 freaking years. It's the 20th anniversary of the game.

For anyone who hasn't played World of Warcraft, or WoW for short, the game is set on the fictional planet of Azeroth, a fantasy world filled with mythical beings and magical quests. I originally got into World of Warcraft because my brother was into World of Warcraft and I loved my brother and I wanted to always be around him and do the things that he was doing.

When Steph followed her brother into the world of Azeroth, she got to leave behind the small conservative town in Ontario where she grew up. When I was like 9, 10, 11... I was going through a lot of bullying at school. The thing that I struggled with was even prior to knowing I was queer, I was born with a genetic mutation called Wardenburg syndrome.

Wardenburg syndrome has a few distinct physical characteristics. For example, Steph has wide-set eyes that are this bright blue color. Ever since she was a little kid, Steph has also had a natural streak of white hair at her forehead. She's also deaf in her left ear, which is another symptom of Wardenburg. So even from a very young age, it wasn't physically possible for me to blend in with my peers. And being able to, in a digital world, have a choice.

about how I showed up and how I appeared was extremely powerful at a time when I resented the way that I looked for so many reasons.

In Azeroth, you can be whoever or whatever you want. Orc, dwarf, elf, human, gnome, etc. In the game, these are called races. There's currently 25 to choose from. You also choose a gender, male or female. And you can customize your character's appearance however you want. Hair, facial features, skin color, clothes.

The character at the center of Steph's story she created when she was 11 years old, about a decade before her transition. A beautiful male blood elf she called Lays because she was eating Lays chips at the time. I remember choosing the Blood Elf specifically because they were so beautiful. And often at that time period in the world of Warcraft and in the culture around the game, there was a lot of jokes made about how...

Blood elf men are mistaken for women by other people in the world, or that they're actually too feminine. It felt more in line with who I was than all of the other extremely... very buff and very muscular male sort of archetypes that you could choose from. The blood elves, following the will of their crazed leader, Kael'thas Sunstrider, channeled dangerous, chaotic magics.

Blood elves are a tall, slender, and elegant subclass of elf with glowing green eyes. They were added as a playable option in the 2007 expansion of World of Warcraft, Burning Crusade. As one of the remaining blood elves. You must fight to protect Quel'Thalas and help redeem the soul of your ancient people. Steph still remembers the morning Burning Crusade dropped. As she describes it, Expansion Drop Day is basically Christmas for nerds.

Her dad waited outside of Walmart before opening to score not one, but two collector's editions of the expansion for her and her brother. There was supposed to be a rule that it was one per person, but he said, look, both of my kids really want this. Please let me have two of these. And they did. And then he got home and they let us stay home from school and play through that very special first day of the expansion, which is.

Huge. When Burning Crusade came out, Steph's brother, Tony, also created a male blood elf character. The community had a sort of understanding of them as a bit, maybe not queer coded, but... there's definitely a bit of a disdain for them amongst people who didn't play them when i first played a blood elf male

i was a little insecure about it probably you know i i was kind of like yeah you know well these guys are the only ones that could be paladins and i'm not you know i don't really play it because i like being a blood elf or whatever but i i did like being a blood elf and i i'll admit that A paladin is a kind of holy knight or warrior. It's a class of character within World of Warcraft. After picking your race, you also get to pick a class, which is basically like your fantasy job.

Some other options include Demon Hunter, Monk, Warlock. Blaze the Blood Elf, Steph's character, was a rogue, a kind of super stealthy assassin, ideal for sneaking around unseen.

My choice of the rogue for my Blood Elf character was very specifically at that time, I wanted to not be receiving attention that I didn't want. At school... I know she was bullied quite a bit for being a bit more effeminate. Trans people just weren't very visible at the time. She didn't fit in very well. But when we got on World of Warcraft, you know you are your character and you can go out and...

sort of express yourself how you want to. Again, Steph hadn't realized that she was trans yet. Back then, she didn't even know there was a word for how she felt. I had no idea. what trans people were. But I know the earliest that I could understand was, based on the knowledge I had, was that I was gay. And I think I figured that out around 11 years old, around the same time I started playing the Blood Elf Rogue.

And if you can remember the early 2000s, being a queer kid during that time sucked. The earliest I actually heard about gay was... with slurs and insults. So my introduction to the world of queerness and to what queer people were was, you know, hate speech, slurs. personal attacks, and also Jerry Springer with, you know, that was not good trans representation. So my experience with queer identity for the first several years of being aware of it were very frightening.

and very traumatic. But in an online game, no one really needs to know who you are or what you look like in real life. And if you happen to meet a jerk, you can just block them. So in Azeroth, playing as Lay's, Steph was free to be herself. My mom and my brother specifically were asking, like, why do you spend so much time with this game? Why is it so important that you play this character? And I said...

because I get to be beautiful. I always remember the way that I felt when I said that because it was the most honest thing I'd ever said as a kid. I felt my heart ripping when I said it. It wasn't about... a peak physical beauty that I wanted. I just wanted to feel good about myself. I wanted to feel at home in my body. And I only really felt that way when I saw myself through the lens of this blood elf, this feminine character. And...

Interestingly, over the course of the following years, I started taking steps to reflect that in the real world. Steph says she was forcibly outed as gay in high school, which made most things a lot harder. But there was also no reason to hide it so much anymore.

I decided I'm just going to lean into myself because they're going to treat me horribly one way or another, right? So I started presenting Extremely Femme. I wore the clothes that I wanted. I did my makeup every day. I practiced with makeup constantly. And, you know, in a similar vein to my dad going out and getting those collector's editions, he actually built in my closet a beauty studio for me, which I remember with so much like that.

feel so grateful that he was so supportive of me because a lot of queer kids did not have that. Tony remembers the hostility his sister faced in their hometown, especially as Steph began expressing her femininity more outwardly.

i know there were some parents who just refused to let their children talk to stuff anymore things like that um there was one time that my mother's car was vandalized uh with slurs and things like that so there was definitely it brought a lot of negative attention on her locally

When I was afraid walking down the school hallway, because I faced violence and harassment every single day without fail. I discovered this in therapy many years later, but I would kind of conjure this blood elf rogue character for myself. The blood elf was quick and evasive and could even turn invisible. Steph started darting swiftly between classes as a way to avoid too much unwanted attention. And I did that every day at school.

The day after Steph graduated, she moved out of her small town to Toronto. She got a job working at the makeup counter at Shoppers Drug Mart, Canada's largest pharmacy chain, and started vlogging about her life, makeup, and of course, gaming. Around this time, something happened that caused Steph to really begin questioning her own gender identity. She met a woman named Christine. The first time she came in, she was presenting male.

And she was asking for help with a full coverage foundation. So I thought that she was a drag queen. And so I asked her like, oh, is this for like a drag thing? And she said something like that. But the next time she came in, she came in presenting Femme. And she had a wig and she had her makeup done. And she asked me for help with her makeup. And it was that moment that I understood, okay, this is not drag. This is her. And I felt this...

empathy that it felt bigger than empathy that I'd felt before. But it was only through being in her presence and hearing her talk about her own experience that I realized, okay, this is my experience. Like, I feel this. What does that mean for me? Is this what I want to do? Is this who I am? And the answer just kept coming back, yes. And I was really nervous, but I did it anyway. Because to me, it was like there's no choice here. It's I do this or I die knowing I didn't.

Hi everybody. I had a plan for this video and it was very intricate and it was very artistic and what ended up happening was I just kept on reading and reading what I wrote. And I felt it was just going to distract from what I wanted to actually say. I've come to understand that I am transgender. I've come to understand that I've always been uncomfortable with my maleness, not my masculinity. And now that I see it that way, the rest of my life makes...

much sense my child hi everybody i'm back it's been just about two weeks on my t blockers and i have a little bit of updates for you nothing i started documenting my transition on youtube shortly after and then my career kind of took off in tandem with my transition.

from that point it has been two months since I started my estrogen pills so I have a lot of updates to bring you it has been nine whole months on estrogen that's like an entire baby that's an entire fetus development But all the while, I was still returning to Azeroth and playing World of Warcraft.

By now, Steph stopped playing as Lays, a character she had spent hundreds if not thousands of hours with since her childhood. After all, Lays was a man, and that's not who Steph was. Before 2020, there was a paid feature in World of Warcraft where you could change a character's gender. It was only 15 bucks, but something kept Steph from taking that step. I guess, again, it was this apprehension, like, do I make this choice?

So Steph made new characters, ones that explored different parts of her femininity. I played a blood elf paladin named Akania. I played her and I role-played her, I guess, in a way that was different from my rogue, where she was very... Brienne of Tarth, sturdy, very walking into danger, headstrong, very confident. I would embody a certain feeling when I played the character, right? And for me, that little paladin was always very...

self-assured and ready and capable. And it was a different feeling. So that's what I played a lot of during that time. I also played a night elf warrior woman, very Amazonian, very like feminine rage. It was a different expression of... where I was at was I wanted to feel this feminine strength and confidence, and I wanted to feel secure in my body and in my mind, and I wanted to feel confident and safe, right? And so I played characters that made me feel that way.

Steph's online empire grew to well over half a million subscribers on YouTube. She kept posting makeup and gaming videos. She vlogged through her facial feminization surgery. She also started an in-game club or guild within World of Warcraft called the Bread Squad, which was made up of her growing fan base.

Steph's brother, Tony, joined in too, leading raids for the Guild. For several years, Steph's original blood elf, Lays, remained in suspended animation until finally she was ready to take the leap. And that was around the time that my transition was really kicking into gear. So I was like, okay, this is working. This is correct. I feel good about this. Let me make this heart character, this soul character, like this original reflection of myself. I want her to reflect me again.

Steph changed her character's gender. Lay's became Layerin. Steph's story of discovering herself through video game avatars is just one of many, especially within the trans community. I've had conversations with other trans people about the whole, oh, yeah, I played a female character in a fighting game when I was a kid because it made me feel, you know, more represented. And definitely the experience of...

Using video games as a vehicle for the exploration of gender is very much a thing. It's very consistent. It is not unique to me.

I am Sheen Rivera. I am a psychiatrist and psychoanalytic therapist located in Columbia, South Carolina, and my pronouns are they, them. Dr. Rivera works primarily with LGBTQ youth and young adults using virtual spaces like video games. It's almost an inevitability for... anyone doing clinical work with LGBTQ youth.

that they are going to encounter video games as being a part of their lives. And that recent surveys have shown through GLAAD that nearly one in every three players between the ages of 13 and 17 identify as LGBTQ. Dr. Rivera started noticing the therapeutic benefits that gaming, and specifically game avatars, can have when a client of theirs brought up the life simulation game The Sims.

She was creating this avatar that became another version of her, that she was able to finally, finally... play with different types of style of clothing and haircuts and makeup and not be afraid that this is something that was going to be discovered or found out or used to clock her and therefore be her a victim of violence. Little by little, she herself started to try out different things that her avatar did.

different types of makeup, different types of clothing, until she settled into this style that was much more her rather than a preconceived notion of masculinity or femininity. And as that happened, she felt... or like herself. There's a famous 20th century psychoanalyst and pediatrician named Donald Wood Winnicott. He believed that play in and of itself was a form of therapy. He said that

It is in playing and only in playing that the individual child or adult is able to be creative and to use the whole personality. And it is only in being creative that the individual discovers the self.

Basically, through playing, we're able to access the truest version of ourselves. To Dr. Rivera, there was a clear connection between the experiences of their clients and Winnicott's theories. His theory here is that... A part of us becomes annihilated and lost when we are threatened and can't fully play and discover our true selves.

So, playing with something like gender norms can't really happen if you don't feel safe to express yourself. Unfortunately, that's an experience shared by a lot of people in the LGBTQ community.

Play can't really happen under threat of violence. So when we think of the young child for whom it is... really hammered in very early on that any kind of gender non-conformativity for example is going to be met with punishments that if a boy doesn't act like a boy or a girl doesn't act like a girl and whatever those

behaviors entail, that that will be rebuked. Where else can they truly think about the various roles that they might occupy or the possibilities of who they might be and who they are? The virtual space allows for an element and a cushion of safety to explore that.

Winnicott also recognized the importance of certain items outside of ourselves that he called transitional objects. Transitional objects are important developmentally because not only do they provide comfort and emotional security, They also help a child to distinguish between me and not me. Think a little kid's favorite blankie or stuffed animal, something that she might drag around everywhere that helps her feel safe.

but that she also knows is different from her. Dr. Rivera thinks that we use video game avatars in a similar way. We kind of have to have transitional objects to... be our playthings, that these are these other things that are not us, but have the capacity to carry aspects of us that we want to explore. So I might make an avatar using character customization, for example, to make something more like me. But when I'm doing that...

I might be doing any number of things. I might actually be making it who I want to be. Or maybe I'm making it who I think other people want me to be. Or maybe I'm making this into a... well, wouldn't it be interesting if this was me? Or funny or humorous, what have you, in this way that really triggers the imagination to be fully exercised.

Dr. Rivera says that as a kid, they also played out these theories through video games. I used to play Super Smash Bros. competitively. And when Super Smash Bros. Melee came out, Zelda and Sheik appeared as a character. And I was instantly drawn to them. Zelda, as in from The Legend of Zelda, the iconic Nintendo video game franchise that is widely considered one of the best gaming series of all time, which I, Franny Monaghan, would personally have to agree with.

Anyway, for the uninitiated, Princess Zelda is not, in fact, the protagonist of these games. She usually plays the part of the damsel in distress, whom the game's hero, Link, must rescue. But true fans will know that there is a lot more to Zelda than that. She often aids Link throughout his various adventures. For instance, in the 1998 game Ocarina of Time, spoiler alert here, Zelda disguises herself as Sheik, who appears to be a mysterious boy who coaches Link through much of the game.

In earlier versions of Super Smash Bros., the Nintendo Cinematic Universe battle game, players could switch back and forth between Zelda and Sheik forms during a match. Later, Sheik became a separate, playable character. For me, it was really important that I always played equally as chic and transform back into Princess Zelda during these matches. When I connected now into my current experience of myself and my gender...

As somebody who is transfeminine and non-binary, I very much see myself in a state of flux and transformation, that I see these parts of the feminine specifically as being much more important to who I am and how I express myself. turns out I knew that all along as a child and I was playing that out in the game was something that took me by surprise.

Steph, our World of Warcraft gamer and the hero of this story, says that her relationship to her avatars and what they do for her sense of self has evolved over time. Being able to say, well, I want to feel beautiful, or I want to feel strong, or I want to be perceived in this way or that way. That was important to me then.

And nowadays, it's important to me to represent myself as close to reality as possible, actually. Like I look for characters or ways that I can express Wardenburg syndrome on my digital avatars or to have my white hair variation or my, you know, wide set eyes. I look for... ways to do that. In the last few years, Steph has left her stealthing rogue days behind and has stepped into a new light. She primarily plays as a priest now, a healing character, which she told me...

just feels right. I may not be choosing characters based on my gender identity, but certainly embodying the priest and being a raid leader and all of these things, there is an identity that I'm connecting with as a leader, as a healer. as a guide you know this is this is where i'm at in my life and i'm making choices in the game that reflect that and also nurture it

It's not just like, I feel this in reality, so I make it happen in the game. It's a relationship. It's a dynamic between the real world and the digital one where there's an exchange and the identity grows as a result of that.

Gender and gaming is a historically fraught relationship. There are still pockets of the gaming community that are very associated with exclusion. I mean, what does a stereotypical gamer according to popular media look like? Probably not Steph. or any other woman for that matter. But still, it's not just trans people. You know, when I think about the white cisgender heterosexual man that plays a video game, his avatar is important to him as well.

Remember Tony, Steph's brother, in his Blood Elf character? At the time of creating his Blood Elf, Tony wasn't looking for the same representation as Steph. He was just trying things out.

he was this very sort of flamboyant villainous character that i would sort of play and it was just a different side of me i guess in much the same way as steph was using it to you know try out identities and things it was similar for me in that you know we grew up in a very conservative town in ontario and i had really learned you know you have to behave a certain way to fit in and you have to

you know, be masculine and not effeminate and you can't behave this way or whatever. But online, you could try whatever. Until recently, Tony identified as a straight man. However, in the past few years, his spouse, whom he met on Burning Crusade, that same 2007 expansion of World of Warcraft, has come out as trans. Today, Tony identifies as being in a queer relationship.

I think what games do of any kind, and especially video games, is that they force all of us to question who we are. In a particular way, those who grow up LGBTQ... by not really meeting the standard of what is considered quote-unquote normal, we grow up with this constant questioning. But that in some ways, that can also be the thing that makes us versatile and flexible and creative in a way that, frankly, sometimes people who are cisgender or heterosexual

might be deprived of because there is the assumption of being the norm. When you are put into a virtual world and you're suddenly in some ways forced to inhabit an avatar that is a different race or a different gender. You become them in some way and they become you. It does suddenly allow you to question everything.

And I do think that's a mindset that can benefit anybody. In 2020, Quantum Foundry, which is a game analytics consulting company, did a survey about character gender preferences. They found that 29% of male gamers prefer to play female characters. Only 9% of female gamers prefer to play male characters.

The researchers suggest that one reason for this might be because men tend to be more harshly judged by society when they deviate from gender norms. For someone who wants to explore another side of their identity, A virtual world, like a video game, can be an anonymous and safe way to do so. Everybody has an identity. Everybody has a gender identity, frankly. You know, but everybody has an identity beyond that, too.

And there's lots of people that live every day in fear of stepping into who they want to be because they think that they shouldn't or they can't. I think that... Ideally, we get to a place where all of us can pursue our identity in a way that's healthy and kind and that isn't limited by these restraints that are in our head. that are placed there by culture when we're so young. Like, we don't need to be restrained by that. Video games are one place to explore that.

That episode came from Frannie Monahan. Our next episode in Hidden Levels, our series with 99% Invisible, is coming right up. It's about how the video game world has changed the world of cinema. Take a listen. Bye. Support for WBUR comes from the Boston Pops, bringing you a spirited October at Symphony Hall with Disney's Hocus Pocus in concert with live orchestra and the spooky 1925 silent film, The Phantom of the Opera. More information at bostonpops.org.

Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken? A podcast from the Mehrotra Institute at BU Questrom School of Business. A recent episode explores the norms behind self-regulation. Sometimes they're almost infused in our culture. So if you think about when you go to dinner in a restaurant, You feel compelled to tip. There is no official rule. Follow Is Business Broken wherever you get your podcasts and stick around until the end of this podcast for a preview of the episode. you

Hey, it's Roman Mars from 99% Invisible, the podcast about the unnoticed architecture and design that shapes our world. And it's Ben Brock Johnson from WBUR's show about online communities, Endless Thread. And we're bringing you a brand new limited series that we made together. It's about how the video game world has changed the world beyond video games. From the history of the joystick to one of the strangest games

that Sega ever made. We're calling our series Hidden Levels, and you can get it in the Endless Thread feed or the 99% Invisible feed. Hit start wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was written and produced by Franny Monahan. It was edited by Meg Kramer, mix and sound design by our production manager, Paul Vykus, who also wrote a bunch of the original music for the series. And our theme music was composed by Swan Real and Paul Vykus.

Shout out to Hidden Levels managing producer Chris Berube for his input on this episode. The rest of our team at Endless Thread is Grace Tatter, Dean Russell, Amory Sievertson, myself, managing producer Samita Joshi, and Emily Jankowski. Hidden Levels is our series co-produced with 99% Invisible about how the video game world has changed the world beyond video games. Jump over to that feed or keep listening right here to go to the next level. Endless Thread is a podcast about the blurred...

between the bread squad and real life. Have an online mystery, untold history, or other wild story from the internet you want us to tell? You can hit us up, email us at endlessthread at wbur.org. What are your holiday traditions? Putting up a minimum of six trees, decorating every room with a different theme. Whatever it is, here's one way to make those traditions extra special. Start the season with Etsy.

On Etsy, you'll discover original pieces from small shops to help you celebrate your way. Shop Etsy for holiday decor that makes you feel seen. Special starts on Etsy. Tap the banner to shop now. Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken? A podcast from the Mayrothra Institute at BU Questrom School of Business. Listen on for a sneak preview of a recent episode on self-regulation.

We live in Boston. You can walk around the Charles River. It is clean. You can go windsurfing on the Charles River. It used to have... Tremendous pollution, and we had the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act. Those things were incredibly beneficial. It's one of the reasons why cities, plus the catalytic converter law, are now livable. People didn't want to live in the cities.

They want to live in the suburbs because it was clean. Now the cities are largely clean, and they've become extremely expensive places to live as a result. Because they're in high demand. They are in high demand, and they're high demand because now life in the city is attractive. you know, covered in soot and smog and this kind of thing. Those regulations used to be nonpartisan. The Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act passed under Richard Nixon. Those ideas, I think...

are important ones. And you now see regulation being government regulation attacked on all fronts. You see the abundance movement talking about how, you know, where is my flying car? I should have a flying car. And regulation has gotten in the way. And you see... People on the right pushing it and saying there's been too much gravel regulation and slowed things down. It's a worry for me. You know, we need a free market works well when it is well regulated. And I fear that.

Self-regulation is great, but it can be used as a means to just destroy all kinds of rules. That's super interesting. And I might not have guessed it. from some of our previous episodes. Me? Yeah. I'm a complex... Yes, you are. Yeah, you contain multitudes, Andy. Find the full episode by searching for Is Business Broken wherever you get your podcasts and learn more about the Mehrotra Institute for Business, Markets, and Society at ibms.bu.edu.