[MUD-Dev] Re: Male and female brains

[Valerio Santinelli]

Robin Cloutman wrote:
> On Monday, 05/05/2003, Valerio wrote:
>> Koster, Raph wrote:

>>> There's an article to be found here:

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

>>> discussing how male and female brains tend to have different
>>> attributes on average--more males tend to have "systematizing
>>> brains" and more females tend to have "empathizing brains." 
>>> Along with the article, there's a couple of tests to assess the
>>> "systematizing quotient" and the "empathizing quotient" of your
>>> brain.

>>> 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).

> Naturally enough I found it funny that my 19 EQ and 53 SQ showed I
> probably had auspergers (which I in fact do), so I'm an S type.

> I'd like to take this one step further - what do people with any
> of the autism range (most likely auspergers) actually do in MUDs
> and other RPGs?

I assume that people having an heavy form of autism do not play
MUDs, but this is only an assumption based on the fact that the
autistic persons I know personally do not play computer games at
all. I would really like to find out if other do.

And it would be intersting finding out what people with Ausperger's
Syndrome play, like which classes, races, etc.. and what kind of
players they are based on Richard's scale.

>>>   -- 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.  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'm an Explorer, though if I'm tense or stressed I tend to become
> more of an Achiever. From the descriptions given of Auspergers (
> http://www.nas.co.uk has a good info page) I think that's what
> most people with Auspergers would say - any comments?

> I also found that I *very* quickly moved from wanting to play
> MUDs, to wanting to code for them, but without losing the
> enjoyment I gained through playing, even when I knew the exact
> code used to produce a certain effect ;-)

This is the same for me. I started playing games and then wanted to
code them. It's been like a natural step to me, something I started
doing while I still was a kid (I think I started writing my own code
at the age of 6 after being copying hex strings into my VIC20 for a
year or two).  In my case it's been probably due to the influence my
father had on me. He used to bring home computers for work and I was
fascinated by them since the beginning.

>>>   -- 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.

> As a corollary - do people with autism also change, and if so how?

> In my personal experience I've become better at dealing with
> people (with an EQ of 19!) as I've had more experience dealing
> with them - but it takes mental "oomph" instead of being
> instinctive.

> I feel that people will probably become better at reading other
> people over time, as they gain more experience at it, so if the
> shift is in the EQ getting higher, rather than the SQ getting
> lower, could the amount of socialising have a part to play, be it
> at work, rest, or play.

I think this is just like gym. If you practice something a lot, you
get better at it. I noticed this with musics and guitar playing. If
you learn to focus on something and apply to it each day, you can
achieve major improvements, not only practically speaking but also
emotionally speaking.

--
Valerio Santinelli
One Man Crew Gaming Community (http://www.onemancrew.org)
My Lab (http://tanis.hateseed.com)
HateSeed.com Founder (http://www.hateseed.com)
In Flames Italia Webmaster (http://www.inflames.it)



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