[MUD-Dev] RE: The Price of Being Male

[Castronova]

From: "Richard A. Bartle" richard at mud.co.uk

> There's a survey by Katherine Wright
...
> The Roberts & Parks paper I referred to earlier in this discussion
> also had a section on why people say they cross-gender play

Surveys of opinion are bad sources of data. Self-selected surveys of
opinion are worse.  Self-selected surveys of opinion about sensitive
topics are worse than bad, they are lie collectors.

Go up to a male gamer, identify yourself as a person doing a study
on men playing women avatars, ask him a bunch of questions about
that. Of course - of course - he is going to say a bunch of bland
things. I'm sorry, but in my opinion, much of that kind of research
isn't citeable. It doesn't get at the truth of people's motivations
any more than my study did.

Evidently people disagree about what it all means. We only have our
own opinions based on our own experiences. We can't advance the
discussion any more without trying to unpack what proper treatment
of males and females is or would be, and that's a topic for another
list I think.

Thanks for all the discussion,

Ted
********
Edward Castronova
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