[MUD-Dev] Boys and Girls - was (Re: MUD-Dev digest, Vol 1 #163 - 25 msgs)

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

----- Original Message -----
From: <amanda at alfar.com>
> "Caliban Tiresias Darklock" <caliban at darklock.com> writes:

>> I think it's rather obvious what it *is* about the game that
>> females enjoy, myself, but being male I may be missing the point
>> and just latching onto something irrelevant.

>> Boys like to win. Girls like to play.

> Chuckle.  OK, There may be something in this, although it could
> probably be argued indefinitely about whether this is inhereny or
> socially ingrained.

Where is fancy bred... in the heart, or in the head?

I don't think it's particularly productive to argue the whys of male
and female gaming, because to be honest I don't think it
matters. Certainly we could spend days arguing over whether this is
a girl thing or a boy thing or an environment thing or a rebellion
thing or whatever. But in the end, a "girl thing" is a thing that
girls do and a "boy thing" is a thing that boys do. Who cares why? 
All we need to know is what. What are the boys playing, and what are
the girls playing? Whatever they like to play, they will like a game
that provides that.

Of course, what it is that their game provides is not always
obvious. I had friends when I was younger who liked playing with
chemistry sets, so they could mix various chemicals together. A
naive observer -- or someone who asked -- would have thought they
liked chemistry sets because they were creative and encouraged
experimentation. In actuality, their primary concern was how to make
stuff that smelled gross or burned holes in things or blew up,
usually in the furtherance of some nefarious scheme to shut down the
school for an extended period of time without getting in
trouble. Without the typical boy-centric element of destruction and
conspiracy, the chemistry set wouldn't have been fun. So anyone who
created a wonderfully accurate chemistry simulation and tried to
sell it to these boys would probably have been confounded by their
lack of interest.

The productive questions about male and female gaming, IMO, are:

  1. What games do boys and girls like to play?
  2. What do they REALLY like about those games?

Having defined what boys and girls really like about the games they
play, we end up with a reasonable map of what kind of elements to
use in games targeted toward one market or the other. I think the
major problem so far has been in failing to recognise that subject
matter is largely irrelevant -- I don't think anyone would have said
"girls would like a game about roller coasters" in a million years
-- provided the gameplay is there.  People seem to forget that in
any game, the play's the thing, and a game that didn't attract your
target market before is certainly not going to attract it now that
you've added different sounds and graphics. ("Barbie Team
Gymnastics" is basically a repackage of "Parappa the Rapper" or "Um
Jammer Lammy", neither of which did squat with the preteen girl
market that BTG wants.)

> I'm much more interested in creating content for people to enjoy
> than in keeping score.

I've occasionally wondered whether it comes down to the question of
objective and subjective. Most MUD players go for objective
goals. They want the sword with the best stats. But some few people
go for SUBJECTIVE goals.  They want the sword with the coolest name.

Largely, this boils down to male and female divisions. While there
are some few women going for objective goals, the overwhelming
majority seem to be going for the subjective goals. Men, the
opposite. While you certainly can't say that the objective goals are
for men and the subjective goals are for women, they certainly tend
to break down that way. The subjective goal people tend to be in the
minority, but not because subjective goals aren't desired -- more
because those who want subjective goals will go where there ARE
subjective goals.

Another note... a subjective goal, to be appropriately subjective,
must also present a broad area of effect; there have to be enough
separate-but-equal solutions to let people select the one they
personally find most palatable.  There has to be room for
subjectivity. If you have fifty different swords with varying names,
those names have to be sufficiently varied to make a difference in
what people think of them, and the stats have to be sufficiently
similar for your selection to make no "real" difference in game
terms. Otherwise, the descriptive terms become mere identifiers for
objective measurements, making the pathetically ineffective "ruby
sword" pale next to the massively damaging "turd club" even if you
adore rubies and find the concept of fighting with turds despicable.


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