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

[Tazzik]

On July 10, 2003, Richard A. Bartle wrote:
> On 02 July 2003, Tazzik wrote:

>> Taking these simple truths, I fail to see how the price
>> difference could be a surprise to anyone:

>>   1) The majority of men prefer to play as male characters.

>>   2) The majority of players in these games are men.

>>   3) Greater demand equates to a higher price, especially in an
>>   auction setting.

> Your point 3) doesn't account for supply.

> Suppose 10 men are looking to buy a male character on eBay.  If
> there were 8 candidate male characters for sale, the auction
> mechanism would raise the prices until 2 players dropped out of
> the bidding. However, if there were 12 candidate male characters
> for sale, this wouldn't happen because everyone can have what they
> want by bidding the reserve price.

> In practice, there may be some competition because the players
> know what the supply is but don't know what the demand is, but the
> prices paid would in general be expected to be lower if demand was
> below supply.

It is true that I left supply out of my comments, and I agree that
it will certainly have an effect on the price.  However, given the
extreme disparity between the population size of men and women
playing these games, I felt that supply itself would have little
effect on the comparative differences in pricing.  While a greater
supply would certainly drive down the price of both types of
characters, it is my belief that we are still a ways from reaching
market saturation.

I feel the current situation compares more towards the rare
collectables in that finding the exact character you want is not all
that common.  If you miss your chance when you do find it, you have
to know it could be quite a while before you get that opportunity
again.  I have yet to see a situation where I could simply go to a
site and pick out the character to my specifications.  It has always
been a case of trying to find something that gets as close to what I
would like as possible, and then placing an arbitrary value on it
relating to just how close it is.  We have yet to reach the point
where these characters are mass produced to the degree where supply
can become as important a factor as demand.

>> It looks to me as though we already have a pretty clear cause and
>> effect for this situation, without trying to force some
>> inferences of sexual discrimination in there.

> I think perhaps one of the problems we're seeing here is that what
> people have come to understand by the term "sexual discrimination"
> has overtones that go beyond the actual statement itself.

> When two equal-ability characters are available for purchase, the
> player must differentiate between them: this is therefore a
> process of "discrimination", in the sense that if you wanted to
> buy a jacket and there were two that were suitable, you'd have to
> discriminate between them using features beyond the functionality
> of their being a suitable jacket. If one of the factors players
> use to choose between characters is the gender of thosee
> characters, that would be a form of sexual discrimination,
> ie. they're making a distinction between characters based on the
> gender of those characters. The phrase "sexual discimination" is
> loaded with all manner of implications of unfairness and
> prejudice, though, none of which necessarily apply in this case.

I agree with you in a sense here.  While discrimination may have a
definition of "the quality or power of finely distinguishing," it is
much more commonly referred to as a means of unfair prejudice.  Does
anyone really care about discrimination in regards to a toy?  If a
young girl states that she would rather have a Barbie doll than a
Ken doll, is that really something we would categorize as "sexual
discrimination"?  Last time I checked, that Ken doll was completely
lacking in regards to any true sexual organs, as is a given avatar
in a computer game.  Comparing the treatment and preference of a toy
to the real world wage gap for women seems a bit of a stretch to me.

As a side note in regards to the jacket purchase, what if you took a
group of male players into a room and offered them all a selection
of men's and women's clothes?  Those women's clothes may fit just as
well, and keep them just as warm, but I seriously doubt you would
get many of them interested in making such a purchase.  Sure, you
may find some willing to buy them at a discounted price (perhaps for
resale value, to give to a friend, etc.), but I would not expect any
bidding wars over that hot pink mini-skirt.  Is this a case of
discriminating against the female clothes?  By the definition you
referenced, yes it is.  However, is it really something we should
attempt to compare to true discrimination between men and women?

> Ironically, it could be that players paid more for male characters
> than for female ones simply because they hadn't realised that they
> could get female ones cheaper. Ted's paper may alert them to this
> fact, and we may therefore see more people buying female
> characters - thus driving up the price, while relieving the
> pressure on the price for male characters.  I wouldn't bank on it,
> though...

I would not bank on it either, although I would be willing to bet
that the majority of female characters are still being purchased by
men.  How the percentage of men creating male characters differes
from the percentage of males buying male characters is something
that could be interesting to see.  It is my guess that the price
difference between the two could possibly be a contributing factor
to a higher percentage of men buying female characters than creating
them from scratch.

Brendan
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