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

[Richard A. Bartle]

On 01 July 2003, Edward Castronova wrote:

> you know, here's one thing i haven't heard from any man in this
> discussion, here or elsewhere: "Your study is wrong. I like
> playing female avatars. Being female is more fun and less hassle."
> Some have said they like playing females to look at the avatar's
> nice-looking body. Others have said females get gifts and are
> groups, so they should be better off. But no man has said that
> they actually do play a female avatar because, on the whole, they
> like how gameplay is when you're female. But quite a few women
> have said that about fronting as male.

There's a survey by Katherine Wright at womengamers.com that looked
into the reasons that men play as women in various games (including
virtual worlds).

  http://www.womengamers.com/articles/gender.html

It's not extensive (she only had 33 full respondents, with another
31 partials), but some of the responses are along the lines of ones
you say you haven't seen. Players often cited several reasons for
playing as a female character, with gameplay advantage way in the
lead at 60% (presumably from the non-MMORPG players). So just
because you haven't heard any man say he plays as a girl for
gameplay reasons, that doesn't mean other people who've cared to
look haven't.

Other answers (remember they could give more than 1 each, so this
adds up to more than 100%) were:

  - 16% played as female because other players give them goodies

  - 11% did so to get a psychological edge over male players

  - 25% did it because it added to the roleplay experience

  - 19% cited gender exploration as a reason

  - 23% liked the visual stimulation (ie. sexual aesthetics)

  - 14% preferred the modelling (ie. non-sexual aesthetics)

  - 13% felt it added variety

  - 6% preferred the sounds female characters made

  - 6% did it because they were entertained by the reactions of male
  players to them

  - 6% did it because once they started it became a habit.

OK, so Wright's not a huge survey, but nevertheless it does show the
kind of reasons that some guys like to play as gals.

The second part of her survey has some interesting results
concerning how the role-players themselves are perceived
(eg. sexuality) http://www.womengamers.com/articles/gender2.htm but
it also includes a question about whether those men who play as
female characters consider the treatment they get to be better or
worse than when they play male characters. Again, this goes against
the hearsay evidence that is typically bandied about. The results
(for RPGs only):

  - 45% said that female characters are treated better than male
  ones

  - 21% said there was no difference

  - 9% said they were treated both better and worse, depending on
  who's doing the treating

  - 3% said they were treated worse as female characters than as
  male ones.

You also mention that "hassle" might be a factor in why people
switch gender. This is indeed the case, but it's nowhere near as
important as people seem to think. Women aren't, in general, hounded
into playing as male characters because of the chauvenistic
behaviour of male players. When they play as male characters, they
do so mainly for other reasons.

Here's the evidence...

The Roberts & Parks paper I referred to earlier in this discussion
also had a section on why people say they cross-gender play (in
MOOs, with roughly 50/50 gender split between respondents).

For current gender-switching players (again, split roughly 50/50
along biological gender lines), they found:

  - 24.0% said it allowed for more role-playing possibilities

  - 13.5% were curious about gender

  - 12.5% said it was fun

  - 7.3% did it to avoid sexual harrassment

  - 7.3% saw it as a challenge to their role-playing skills

  - 5.2% did it for sexual fantasy reasons

Note that this does not mention gameplay at all, but then since it
concerns social and role-playing MOOs that's perhaps not entirely
unexpected. What's interesting from the point of view of our
discussion is that only 7.3% of respondents cited harrassment as the
main reason for playing a character of the opposite gender. Even if
all of these were female, it would mean that fewer than 15% of women
who switched gender did so because they were being harrassed. This
is still 15% too much, of course, but the point is that it's not a
key reason why women play as men; sadly, this doesn't stop it being
reported as such anecdotally.

OK, so these surveys don't reduce the probability that your
examination of avatar prices indeed accurately reflects attitudes of
sexism. However, it does suggest that the defence you gave (that I
quote in the first paragraph above) is inadequate.

Your paper produces good, hard evidence that there's something odd
going on with avatar prices, but the anecdotal evidence being
provided in the rush to furnish an explanation that favours one
particular interpretation of this evidence is obscuring your
original accomplishment.

		Richard
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