QBlog has a thorough examination of that crossgender play paper that came out a few days ago and is getting widely reprinted. It’s not pretty.
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Bartle dismantles that crossgender paperPosted on March 7, 2008 by Raph
I agree with his frustration. Heck I’m a relative neophyte to these worlds. But all I needed was a few misguided guesses at that old site for the smarter to point out what’s been said and shown for many years priors 🙂
Trouble is, there’s no self-correction in mass media, no two-way interaction. It’s like old school game publishing: you guess, you write, you export, you sell. And that’s as much you care.
I keep hoping the Internet would be enough of a check against this nonsense. Unfortunately, much of the media treats the internet as the electronic paper that much of it audiences seems to enjoy consuming.
Mature men play female characters because they enjoy controlling women… Yes, men are inherently sexist, it’s just not something one can publicly admit.
Women play female characters because they aren’t so shallow that they think can control men by playing one. Or actually, they play female characters because they like to dress up as women.
Boys, and men who perhaps have insecurities which they fight off with masculinity, also seem to spend some effort on that with male characters, I’ve noticed. And these types tend to think it is sick to play a female character…
So much for my gender theories.
I’ve never understood that percentage of players of MMOs who have issues with other people using a cross-gender avatar.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. And swapping genders in a game is just to get a different experience or perspective of how people react to the character, and to see what differences the dev’s may have built into the game.
Here’s a thought experiment: If a game gave you a choice of being African / Asian / Caucasian, would people react adversely if they found out you were playing a race that wasn’t your real life race?
Interesting point VPellen, however we don’t as humans seek out, pursue, or form bonds with others specifically because of their race. I think that’s somewhat at the core of what bothers people about cross gender play in games.
When a player who’s represented gender is one you are attracted to (how’s that for PC?) shows interest in you by talking to you or otherwise wanting to socially interact with you, it can kick in some pretty deep human/animal physiological and psychological responses. One begins to form attachments and attractions to the imagined person behind the avatar, and the natural model to use is the avatar itself.
On the other hand, to actually play someone of another gender doesn’t really kick in many deep responses. Maybe a bit of fantasy, but you don’t build attachments to this imagined avatar. You don’t wonder about the person behind the avatar – because it’s you. So as a cross-gendered player, you potentially don’t see the impact it can have.
Actually Tim, a lot of people do just that, especially when different languages are spoken. In ATITD, with just a couple thousand players, the playerbase rather segregated itself into the German camp and the French camp.
I’m assuming you mean racial bonds in MMOs, because in real life we all know racial bonds are as old as the human species. 😉
My current theory is, we don’t really play our characters. We make up fictional characters and tell their stories through the MMO. A PK doesn’t really seek to kill his opponents; he’s creating the story of someone who kills other story characters. (Story is of course used very losely here.) Some men find the story of a female character develop, and vice versa for women and their male characters. Something like your “controlling” theory Ola, except I’m maybe adding onto it.
I interpreted race as essentially skin color and other body characteristics that make the nature of ones origin apparent. Language is another matter, which wouldn’t be an issue at all if nobody talked. Gender on the other hand is readily apparent (except in female dwarves!) without someone moving, talking or otherwise emoting.
I’m not buying the 70 percent f2m stuff, I just don’t see it. It’s just not there. To be sure, f2m is much, much more quiet and often doesn’t reveal itself, but please, it’s nowhere near 70 percent.
Richard Bartles says an odd thing, however. He says if it were true that there was so much sexual harassment in games and worlds as females, then no males would play the females.
Except…a male playing a female is simply not going to perceive the unwanted and aggressive attentions of his fellow males as harassment. That seems not to have dawned on Richard Bartle.
There is a horrible amount of sexual harassment and a truly vicious amount of hatred and attacking against transgendered. One of the forms this takes is when anyone who suffers these sorts of attacks and reports them, a slew of hateful harpies descend on them and bash them for taking “a game” seriously or not understanding the horrors that real transgendered people experience, as if it somehow diminishes their status as victims, or diminishes the crimes against them, to report on and condemn the same type of behaviour in a virtual world. It’s all part of that blame-the-victim mentality, and the undermining of the victim’s case and further victimization. It’s really quite a sick dynamic.
And these theories are pretty sexist too 😉
Why men are inherently sexits and not women? I hear in the mouth of many womans sexist comments about the mens, and in conservative womans sexist comments about the woman (and men) position in the world and family.
I’m men and have many female chars how mains in the most MMOs I’m playing, but I never had that need of control a woman, perhaps many mens have that need but no all, and I doubt that this be the main reason behind the fact near 1/2 of mens having female chars.
I am more with theory exposed in the Bartle article, womens are less inclined to try other gender character because are more conscient of her bodys, and in the other hand perhaps many womens dont want try masculine chars because have more social presure to control her own bodys than men, and are afraid of lose some control over her body trying that, or have sexist prejudices against how a men must act, a woman can think: “all mens are agressive and need control other people, I, how woman, dont want be agresive and dont want control other people, and in the end dont want have a male char with all these negative connotations”
For me sexist in womens are have much more difficulty to be publicly admit in the actual society that sexist in mens.
Speaking from experience, I can tell you that yes, they absolutely DO perceive it as harassment.
It’s also worth noting that Richard Bartle is also speaking from experience, not speculation.
Speaking from experience, I can tell you that yes, they absolutely DO perceive it as harassment.
I can corroborate that, more than aggresivity is the constant unwanted and ridiculous attentions of some men. After that experience I understand many women reactions in real life.
[…] male avatars, I was incredibly suspicious. That did not fit my observations at all. So thank you Raph Koster for pointing me to Richard Bartle’s blog post taking apart this idiotic attempt at […]
Prokofy Neva>Except…a male playing a female is simply not going to perceive the unwanted and aggressive attentions of his fellow males as harassment. That seems not to have dawned on Richard Bartle.
I have 3 level 70 characters in World of Warcraft, all female. How do you think I perceive the unwanted and aggressive attentions of my fellow males?
I speak with some experience in this area. That does not seem to have dawned on you.
Richard
Just to third that point, men playing female avatars definitelly do feel harassed by male attention. Interestingly, in my experience female avatars seem to get less hassle if they’re guilded as opposed to unguilded.
I imagine that some men feel a paternal instinct to look after lone females and that some men feel that lone females are easier targets for their affections. Whereas a guild member is more likley to get support from their guild members or get their guild involved if they feel the t harassing male is crossing a line.
Vpellen, Anarchy-Online does indeed let you play caucasian/african/asian… From experience I know that many follow western ideals… unfortunately. E.g. play mainstream beauty caucasian, irrespective of their own etnicity, perhaps to escape the racism of everyday life and become celebrity look-a-likes? While others select african/asian and play them in stereotyped ways which some might think of racist, although the roleplay is probably just meant to be fun, I would guess that they are caucasian… But those are just on the extreme ends.
Ingrod, the statement about women not being shallow was meant as a joke. I am not at all certain that women are more bodily connected than men. Men spend a lot of time doing body-building. Well, after giving birth women might be, female artists seem to do so, but not before, I think. Women do more of the dressing-up game though.
I play mostly female characters and never feel harassed, my characters does though, which is just another layer of gameplay… Men approaching me only makes me feel bad when they actually fall in love with my character, for real. I suppose that is a mixture of guilt and err “wait, I’m not homo?” sensation.
Then again, I seldom experience any cause for feeling harassed or offended at all online…
Slyfeind: Some men find the story of a female character develop, and vice versa for women and their male characters. Something like your “controlling” theory Ola, except I’m maybe adding onto it.
Oh absolutely! As a man I am certainly fascinated by women and what it means to be a woman. Playing one is one way of molding and shaping and twisting the “image” of a woman and feeling like one too. Not exactly like sculpting, but still related, male artists tend to create images of women. So why shouldn’t we create images of women in games? Of course we do. We like to have women in our hands and kindle the flame of feminine qualities… 😉 Women tend to seek the safe harbour of a man so why would they play a man? For art and psychology, sure? But perhaps the needs are different on a rather foundational level. Men tend to get more out of porn, imagining that they get to dominate her just by looking at the images… Virtual worlds let you get one level deeper. (I hardly ever do cybersex, but I think this is an area where they shades are gray, not black/white).
Wonder what would happen if you released a game on two servers, where one server was first person view and one server was third person view. What kind of characters would be created on the respective servers?
Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:
Following that logic, I guess people play Counter-Strike because they enjoy murder, right? Ridiculous bollocks.
Raph wrote:
Likely that males can more easily recognize the intentions of other males toward females. Vice versa. I wonder if confidential data on reports of sexual harassment in the workplace correlate (i.e., do males report male-female harassment more than females?)
Ola, I mainly disagree with the concept that mens playing female char do that for have the feeling of dominate a woman, for me is a very alambicated argument, same that a men seeing porn do that for dominate womans, when a more simple reason (sexual excitation and admire the woman body seeing nudes) can be more strong for explain that. Of course that a great percentge can have that need, but the domination fetish in porn is that, a fetish for a minoritary group of mens.
Applicated to virtual worlds for admit that argument we must admit in first place that the main reason behind create a any character is dominate then how a puppet, and that this reason is more important that have a character for play the game or roleplay. You not are you character, but you are indentificated in some degree with you char, because in the end you do the actions that your character do. For that reason is more difficult apply that gender theory to games.
Inclusive the need for dominate a character how a puppet can be more strong in woman for a simple reason: dolls. The most of the boys dont play with dolls, but girls have an absolute control about her dolls, they dressed the doll with the clothes that they want, etc. accepting playing with dolls how a institive training for be mother, get care of a baby implicate have control about all his needs, order what must do for be a good boy or girl, etc For most woman games are in the most relacionated with dolls that with anoy other thing, and geme avatars only are a most sofisticated version of dolls.
Also is a bit innacurate negate the bond of a woman with her body, they have the period or need anticonceptives every moth for control that body function, commonly men only get care of his bodys for illness, sports and body building are exceptions, and mens do that for election not for be mens, how in the case of womens. Of course that are generalizations and things can changue in the next future with long duratin anticonceptives and other things.
It might be less intensional. In the context of nude art and porn, it may be that image processing is emphasized in male physiology. In the context of games, it may be an outcome of gameplay where domination games are emphasized.
Do any of you who build female characters that win combat contests take pleasure in that? Do any of you who are defeated by female characters take particular umbrage at that?
IME (as long as we are big time stereotyping), sexism is far stronger and more difficult to overcome than racism.
Ingrod, I think there are many factors that contribute, not a single one. Certainly, we enjoy the lines of the female body. I personally find it delightful to handle a wonderfully animated female character in 3rd person view. And more so than watching other people’s characters, so there is an element of control/possession, getting her to do your bidding. Then there is the more hardcore RP aspect of “becoming a woman in your fantasy”. Men enjoy watching porn involving lesbians. Women don’t understand why we enjoy that. (Mature and open) men enjoy semi-erotic RP between their female characters. They find it emotionally interesting and to some extent arousing. So, yes it is about more than control. It is a complex phenomenon. E.g. one factor is that by taking on a female RP character we get to become more emotional, which is more strongly associated with female behaviour, you get a richer palette. Another factor could be that you get to stereotype what makes women (your ex) frustrating in your own life, which makes it particularly fun to RP unreasonable women or overdo it (like drag-artists do)…
Personally I RP female characters primarily because just being a new version of myself becomes extremely boring in the long run (amplified by the fact that I find the MMORPG game play extremely boring). I often start male characters, but then find it less interesting. It is more fun to create an image based on what I find interesting about women and keep that image glowing. I don’t find men as interesting, so there’s less fun in doing the same with a male character… Btw, my female characters tend to express that they find men distasteful and below her. I like to keep the male-female conflict going. It is fun to RP male-hating women, as a man, the satire…
My point? There is an element of access/possession/control in all of this.
Thanks for the link I hadn’t seen it. I’ve posted it to the SLED (Second Life Educators) mailing list as I do a bit of work with an educational group in Second Life, anf from what I’ve read on the SLED list it is absolutely apparent that many (but certainly not all) academics currently working in SL have come to it because of recent media attention and have little to no awareness that virtual worlds and the research associated with them didn’t simply arrive last year!
Personally speaking I’ve always played a mix of races and genders. If I can do it then why shouldn’t I? Fortunately I’ve never suffered harrassment of any kind in any game, so research into this is always good reading since my experiences are uniformly positive.
I know some (probably many) games provide racial bonuses to your character. Do any do the same for gender? It seems that game designers in general prefer to keep gender selection a level playing field even though they happily assign racial differences.
Morgan: I guess people play Counter-Strike because they enjoy murder, right?
Of course they do on a rather fundamental level, but they’ve been conditioned by society into thinking that violence is not ok, so they get past that because computer games aren’t violent… Not all societies are like this, however… Fighting to death was once the most honourable thing to do. We all have the genes to enjoy the thrill of the kill… If we didn’t then such games wouldn’t sell or would have had different imagery.
len: Do any of you who build female characters that win combat contests take pleasure in that?
Oh, I’ve taken pleasure in beating macho-players with my female characters. I love turning stereotypes up-side down. I found male players whining about me being sexist because my character killed male characters who offended women particularily amusing… Yes, it is fun to be accused of being a sexist feminist when you actually are a man…
Some points of science and speculation. Dressing up for cross-gender play is not the same as crossing the gender. Despite the effects of harassment, etc., this is still a male/female controlling a female/male avatar. The player doesn’t process information as a female/male and despite the visual attraction, one could guess that inter-avatar transactions are not reproducing the actual experience of a gender-mediated behavior. It would be interesting to test for that to see if there are tests that would select for fakes, sort of a Turing Turn-off.
When working on HumanML, I had to read a large body of literature on the differences between the sexes for brain functions affecting emotional processing and other stimuli processing. The outcome was the model became very thin because there are so many contrasting theories. What was interesting is they did tend to converge on the topical areas, so a vector model was obvious if simplistic. One would use the schema to set the domain attributes (mostly, intensity), then fill objects into the subdomains and let signal routing and filtering do the rest.
What would it mean to the cross-gender preferences if the user were constrained by the platform to build avatars that automatically preset the known or conjectured differences between the sexes with regards to physiological information processing? Would the player be able to adapt to the constraints or learn from them?
Some reads:
http://www.livescience.com/health/050120_brain_sex.html
Injuries to female avatar frontal lobes should be more damaging.
http://www.cerebromente.org.br/n11/mente/eisntein/cerebro-homens.html
Depending on the size of the hypothalamus and presence of hormones, brain development and sexual preferences vary.
http://bjp.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/full/186/1/48
How’s your amygdala hanging?
Ola said, Then there is the more hardcore RP aspect of “becoming a woman in your fantasy”. Men enjoy watching porn involving lesbians. Women don’t understand why we enjoy that. (Mature and open) men enjoy semi-erotic RP between their female characters. They find it emotionally interesting and to some extent arousing. So, yes it is about more than control. It is a complex phenomenon.
Self-control? 🙂
Yeah, but…
“Scientists find it very interesting that while men and women use two very different activity centers and neurological pathways, men and women perform equally well on broad measures of cognitive ability, such as intelligence tests.”
and…
“Interestingly, when we deliberately change sex-role behavior — say, men become more nurturing or women more aggressive — our hormones and even our brains respond by changing, too.”
The fact -and I can corroborate for own experience- is that men and woman can understanding each other, and both can have empaty for the other gender. MAC and PC brains process diferent but in the end both can use very similar prograns and have the same games functionalitys. Dispite brain differences men and women living in the same planet.
The fact is that a great women percentage are good in maths or aggresive, and a great men percentage are good in litherature or get care of a child. Perhaps many men cant react equal to harassment than a woman or understand the woman reactions, but other men can do that and inclusive best that some womans (a great litherate can reach the both genders souls).
If I suffer some form of harassment in a game I can understand because is molest for a woman, in the end harassment is harassment, and the final response in both genders is very similar.
In the other hand game developers want be very political correct with the genders, very few games or none have different stats for genders, in next MMORPGs only the Warhammer Online have some differences: Green Skins dont have female avatars and dark elves have some gender based class restrictions, but the Age of Conan devs insists in that both genders avatar will have the same stats and game opportunities, dispite the fact that they know that the most of the female game avatars will be created by mens. Perhaps will be interesting if in the future developers tried to introduce more or more defined gender differences in their RPG games, based in fisical trends or in cultural/factional differences.
Ola wrote:
You’re assuming that human society is distinct from human nature. They are inseparable; therefore, as society evolves, so does our nature. You’re also wrongly asserting that capability implies performance. As for the “genes to enjoy [murder],” I’m certain that the human genome hasn’t been sufficiently mapped for such a claim to be validated.
Your initial argument invoked a logical fallacy. A male playing the role of a female character does not necessarily imply sexist intentions. In fact, female characters were once only played on stage by males due to governmental regulations (read: kingly decrees). When females were permitted to act, they chose roles of either gender, and so did males. Gender play is a creative endeavor.
An additional problem with your initial argument is that you failed to account for the plethora of possible motivations for specific choices. Your argument is absolutist and incomplete. Are transexuals motivated to “reroll” their gender traits by an innate desire to control the opposite gender? Highly doubtful, but possible. Are players motivated to play the role of their opposite gender by a similar desire? Highly doubtful, but possible. Personally, I play female characters for apparently misguided reasons of software and network performance optimization.
An exception to a rule makes a rule not a rule at all. Your suggested rule, and paired disdain of gender play, is ultimately irrational, resting upon a weakly constructed foundation.
This isn’t a query about politically correct responses to questions about the equality of the sexes. I’m not mating. I barely care. 🙂
What I was speculating on is if the introduction of automation in the avatar/character that mimics the basic physiological differences would affect game play and player choices over time and frequency of play.
Debates about PC/Mac or gender vs gender don’t interest me much. These are mainly stereotyping and dismal as a basis for experimentation. They are poliCSexRituals. It is more interesting to determine how modifications to the instrumentality affect behaviors. It is one thing to play a woman on TV. It is quite another to experience sagging breasts or erectile dysfunction. If a female character has a distinct disadvantage when whopped in the pre-frontal lobes, or male characters tend to be less disease resistant after some number of plays, would the choices be the same.
Games are fantasy play. That is fine. I am not my avatar. On the other hand, ultra-realism (say extreme virtual world) and ultra-fantasy (say WoW) might result in very different statistics. Neither the original article nor Bartle’s rebuttal are very impressive in terms of science but I’m not exactly sure what either are trying to prove or suggest.
But are they playing the same games for the same goals? Remember, these differences are statistical, not instanced. I’m curious about the choices given the statistical advantages and disadvantages, and could one set those up in a game and that game still be *fun*.
Morgan, you play female characters for network optimization reasons?
What do you mean by “sexist”? I have nowhere suggested any “rule”. I’ve suggested one of many factors. Another factor would be that men have fewer opportunities in society for living out their “feminine” sides, while women have to live up to masculine ideals at work. I could go on listing factors of course, but if women don’t genderbend and men do then it must be because men have some needs related to women that they can fulfill online.
This is the quote of interest to me:
In short, behavior causes physiological changes is the claim and it is supported by evidence. How much, at what level of fidelity, and what is the model for measuring it? A man using a female avatar that is strictly polys is still a man projecting his own perceptions of being female and vice versa. What does it mean, or literally, what is measured to determine some amount or rate of feminization/masculinization using gender role play in a game or virtual world? Is gender play a form of transvestism? A transvestite can change clothes, but the center of gravity, the shoulder width, etc., is still the same. The introduction of hormones and operations on genitalia cause deeper effects but this is not transvestism. Unless the avatar is similarly constrained, it is only a projection and the changes are not necessarily in the direction of the gender portrayed.
I think, topic aside, this is another example of the question asked by serious gamers: what are the relative strengths of degrees of modeling fidelity coupled to role play as a change agent on the players?
That it fascinates or arouses some is a different topic. Obviously, it does and at different strengths for different people. That is a degree of freedom. Years before the web was implemented on the Internet, someone asked at a luncheon at Alamden why we thought porn would be a big market online. A fellow in the room answered, “No brown bags.” And that was pretty accurate as it turned out.
Ola wrote:
https://www.raphkoster.com/2008/03/04/new-crossgender-play-stats/#comment-134879
https://www.raphkoster.com/2008/03/07/bartle-dismantles-that-crossgender-paper/#comment-134903
Those sound an awful lot like attempts at making rules.
I’m male, I’ve often played female characters because it lets me express a part of my personality that doesn’t get so much expression “in the real world”. I can roleplay them as cute, cuddly, ebuliant, etc. and other players respond more positively to a female avatar that does that than a male one. I’m not that flamboyant in real life. (Yeah, in WoW you’d find me playing a little green-haired gnomette. They’re short and have huge round eyes, what’s not to like?)
When I play male characters, I find that I don’t play them with that sort of personality at all–instead I end up roleplaying a dull, boring personality a lot more like my real-world persona. I think for me, it’s just not as much fun to be male in a virtual world. I’m not exactly sure why.
Oh, but I didn’t say “X do Y ONLY because of Z”. I believe those two factors are important though.