[MUD-Dev] Male and female brains

[Marian Griffith]

On Mon 05 May, Valerio Santinelli wrote:
> Koster, Raph wrote:

>>   http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/story/0,13026,937913,00.html

>> discussing how male and female brains tend to have different

>> I personally scored as a "type B" brain, meaning that I had a
>> balanced quotient--fairly high in both, actually (52 and 43).

> I'm a B too, by a few pixels.. a few pixels from being an S brain
> (36 EQ, 39 SQ).

I guess I am disproving the case, seeing that I scored E, bordering
on the extreme E :) ( 55E and only 14S :)
Interesting thing is that the systematic questions were much more a
very much yes or no case, while with the E side of things there was
often a lot more  "well I guess so, but I am not quite certain that
I understand what he means" in the questions.  I wonder if that was
deliberate, or if that shows that I am indeed very much not system-
atic?

>> I wonder:

>>   -- would we find a correlation between type E or B brains in
>>   males and their preference for female avatars?

I do not know. I tried to play male characters in games but found I
am so horrible at it that nobody was fooled. Usually picking a gen-
der neutral name and not advertising being female helps keeping the
unwanted attention away. Much as in real life actually.

> I'm a type B but I don't like playing female avatars. I think I
> only played a female avatar once in a game where I could choose
> the gender, and never in online games. Probably E brains are more
> likely to be playing female characters.

Considering that  they are supposed to be female  I think that is a
fair assumption :)

>>   -- would we find a correlation between typical behavior
>>   patterns in online worlds and brain type?  -- say, Nick Yee's
>>   facets study?  http://www.nickyee.com/facets/home.html -- or
>>   the Bartle Quotient?

> Yes, that's very likely to be. And looking at the graphs on Nick's
> site it seems that males are good achievers and griefers while
> females are best at relationships.  Looking outside the online
> games world, many female players that own a PC or a PS2 (or the
> one of their boyfriend) are more likely to play games like The
> Sims or classic adventures (alla LucasArts) or social games like
> board games ported to PC.

I think it is dangerous to infer things like that. We had this dis-
cussion before  and I still maintain that there is such things as a
"girls like this" or "boys like that" possible. Considering the way
games are marketed almost to the deliberate exclusion of girls,  it
is a surprise to find any girl playing games at all.  Of those that
do they are conditioned in two directions. By the game that strong-
ly focus on violent competitive subjects with a high degree of spa-
tial coordination (which boys tend to excell at)  while society and
culture strongly disapprove of such an interest in girls.  I do not
know if girls play The Sims  because they enjoy it or because it is
one of the few games  that is socially acceptable for them to play,
and  that is actually marketed towards girls as well.  It is one of
the few games  that I have seen advertisements for  outside of  the
specialised (and boy oriented) games magazines.

> That's my experience in the field. This does not mean that my
> girlfriend does not like to beat me at Soul Calibur 2 :)

I tend to think that all girls are not the same, and that girls in
general like a lot of things, when given the chance. They might in
fact even like several very different things at the same time that
society does not think girls should like. Like. e.g. beating their
boyfriends at Soul Calibur ;)

>>   -- would we find, I wonder, in research, that male brains tend
>>   to shift from S brains to B brains as they age? There's evidence
>>   for this shift in playstyles among male players, according to
>>   Nick Yee.

> This really would need some more research on the
> subject. According to Nick I would agree with you, but I don't
> know if there's any clinical reason for such a shift.

I doubt as the fundamental organisation of the brain gets fixed at
an earlier age. However, I would expect that over time playing pu-
rely for achievement or exploration pales, given that those are in
essence play styles with a definite endpoint  (when the top of the
list is reached  or everything has been explored).  If however you
have acquired friends  you can continue to hang out with them  and
occasionally play a bit, but that is a definite E type of play and
might be responsible for the shift that Nick Yee noticed?


Marian
--
Yes - at last - You. I Choose you. Out of all the world,
out of all the seeking, I have found you, young sister of
my heart! You are mine and I am yours - and never again
will there be loneliness ...

Rolan Choosing Talia,
Arrows of the Queen, by Mercedes Lackey


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