[MUD-Dev] [DGN?] It's just a game (?)

[Richard A. Bartle]

On 21 May 2001, Sharon Mock wrote:

> And how much of a difference does it make that MUDs are still
> perceived to be a "boys' club," and that Bartle's quote on women in
> MUDs is still considered to be a safe guideline?  "If you see a
> persona with a female name, it's a male.

[rest snipped]

Before too much is read into that remark (which I have made several
times), I feel I ought to provide some more context.

The advice, which is of the "jokey but with a grain of truth" sort,
was aimed at lonely male players who were all too susceptible to being
hoodwinked by other male players (for whatever reason) into believing
they were making romantic progress with a woman. Today's players may
be more sophisticated in many ways, but there are always going to be
lonely guys being suckered by other guys.

Paola Kathuria, in whose article the quote appears
(http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/cpdec89k.htm), was asking from the point
of view of a woman who was having trouble convincing people she was
female online. I suggested that part of the reason was that too many
men had been badly burnt by making mistakes before (and we'd had some
serious incidents), so they had collectively evolved the "whatever
they say, they're male" approach as a defence mechanism.

While online games remain anonymous, which surely they must as it's
one of their greatest strengths, the increase in the number of "real"
female players is not going to put an end to this practice of
suspecting people (not that I'm arguing one way or the other that it's
a practice to which an end should be put). This is because: the more
female players there are, the less suspicious the mere existence of a
female character (played by a male) becomes; tricking women into
thinking you're female is just as much fun for a lot of these men as
tricking men into thinking you are.

As to your assertion that MUDs are perceived to be a "boy's club",
well obviously that must be true to some degree otherwise you wouldn't
perceive it. I don't think that my "it's a male" quote supports you
though. Rather than arguing for a male-oriented view of the game, it
argues for a gender-neutral one. The idea of a "boy's club" looks
decidedly odd when we're talking about female characters.  If it were
truly a "boy's club", not only would the players be assumed to be
male, but the characters would be male, too.

As always, once the discussion turns to gender issues it's very hard
to say anything at all without appearing either sexist or very
sexist. If, for example, there were equal numbers of female players as
male players and there was just as much chance of a female player
playing a male character and hitting on other female players as there
is for men, then the advice of treating everyone like a "person"
(which is essentially what the "it's a male" point of view argues, at
least from the male perspective in which it was first conceived) would
be universally sound. However, at the moment men outnumber women in
online games, and seem far more relaxed about gender switching than
women are.  This means that those women players who want to be treated
as women rather than people face an uphill task that those male
players who want to be treated as men rather than people don't
face. This is unfair.  Whether it is something that will balance
itself out over time or whether it's borne of deep-routed differences
in behaviour between the sexes, I'm not qualified to answer.

I will say that I'm pleased it's still OK for people to play cross
gender in MUDs and other online games, having deliberately arranged
MUD1 so this would be the case there. The problems arise when you go
up to a character of gender X and say "are you X in real life?"  and
they lie.

Richard
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