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

[clawrenc at cup.hp.com]

In <199709200915.18994.hridil.ifi.uio.no at ifi.uio.no>, on 09/20/97 
   at 02:21 AM, Ola Fosheim Gr stad  <olag at ifi.uio.no> said:

>Marian Griffith <gryphon at iaehv.nl> wrote:

>Anyway my
>personal belief is that any society/group where the female (or male)
>population drops below 25% is unhealthy and less interesting in the
>long run.  So getting those women interested in a world is worth some
>extra effort.

FWLIW my view: Nice when you got it, not worth defining as a goal, and
potentially very destructive to chase as a goal.

>If gender research has anything going, I would expect a cooperative
>world, to be more attractive to women. Wheras a powerstruggle world
>ought to be more attractive to men.

In isolating that point alone it might be worthwhile to do a gender
comparision for the game Diplomacy, especially the gender breakdowns
for the carebear and cuthroat camps.  

Fo non-dippers: While the definitions of carebear and cuthroath are
amorphous and ever-rewritten, carebears tend to concentrate more on
alliances and determination of the goals and motives of other players.
whereas cutthroats concentrate on winning and thus pay attention to
alliances etc to the extent that they can further their victory
chances.  Its worth noting that negotiation, cooperation and alliances
are __vital__ to surviving even a few moves in Diplomacy, and that
backstabbing, threats, bully-tactics, insurrection, and treachery are
almost as vital to win, let alone survive a little longer.

Aside: I've been doing a lot of reading and examination of Diplomacy
games, especially some of the variants like Backseat Driver
(Fascinating variant!).  For those looking to do political systems,
and even city/nation states and their inter/intra-competition. there's
an incredible value to be learnt from Diplomacy.  If even a portion of
the quality of a standard Diplomacy game could be embedded in a MUD...

--
J C Lawrence                           Internet: claw at null.net
(Contractor)                           Internet: coder at ibm.net
---------------(*)               Internet: clawrenc at cup.hp.com
...Honorary Member Clan McFUD -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...