[MUD-Dev] games gender bias (Re: Affecting the world)

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad <olag@ifi.uio.no>]

Marian Griffith <gryphon at iaehv.nl> wrote:
>
>> Maybe so, but I suspect that those 5% female (or male) in those
>> studies have a lot of selfconfidence, which helps regarding negative
>> behaviour from the others.
>
>Well no, the result of that study was that, contrary to the expectation,
>negative behaviour towards women occured far less in those classes where
>they were an obvious minority than in those classes where they not imme-
>diately apparent in minority.

Well, then my experiences from male dominated studies (as well as the
army) are exceptional.  From what I've seen those females were able to
"kick back", "ignore" or "adapt" which ended the thing before it got
somewhere.  In what was comparable to highschool, 2 out of 3 quit! :-/
Maybe it works differently in groups with more mature men and less
focus on male "dominance".  Maybe with enough women, men don't feel a
need to correct fellow men, because the women team up? *shrug* I'm
lost.

>> I do agree that to obtain the same
>> "attraction level" with genderneurtral activities is the best
>> solution, but I'm not totally convinced that that will be enough in
>> the long term.
>
>On the contrary, for a game to be attractive to both male and female
>players the only solution in the long run is that it is neutral with
>respect to gender.  Currently muds are strongly geared  towards male
>interests.  There are also games  that are less male dominated (e.g.
>pern mush).  Currently there is no game (!) that I am aware off that
>is strongly female oriented.

But as there are game companies that are specificially targetting
female buyers the competition will be there in a couple of years.  You
don't want them to get your "customers", so that may eventually force
others to follow.  I guess "totally convinced" was a bit strong... :)

>> I'm not sure what the current status of the computer is among kids of
>> today?  Profecy of the century: the day will come when most women do
>> more with computers than wordprocessing and email.
>
>What's wrong with that? It's about all I use my computer for nowadays.

Nothing wrong, just a bit limited.  And as computers will become more
important -> affect the future etc...

>Believe it or not, not all women enjoy to design clothing :) I do agree
>however that it would be nice to be able to walk around on a mud less
>ridiculously in a mishmash of weirdly named armour.  A game where you
>could purchase your own style of clothing would be fun,  but hardly a
>reason to play it if it was the only thing to do on that game.

Then again, there is few things in a mud that makes it worth the
effort just by itself, in the long run.  So well, maybe I just agree
with you about gender neutral activities, and say "let's add features
that are genderbiased"...

>> In commercial productions, yes!  With huge upfront expenses you want
>> that 90% of the market if you can get it.  I guess only about 1 out of
>> 10 games break even and that the top 10 take most of the
>> profit. *shrug*
>
>I admit not being terribly interested in computer games. They look all
>the same to me and none too appealing.

Yeah, but developing multiuser communities that lasts, is easy to use
and attractive for a wide audience will unfortunatly cost a lot... :-/
Or so I believe.

>Oh you know, you just want to make me write it...

Yep.

Ola.