[MUD-Dev] DGN: Reasons for play [was: EmergentBehaviorsspawnedfrom...]

[Sean Howard]

"Michael Sellers" <mike at onlinealchemy.com> wrote:

> Bold, but once again inconsistent with reality.

I think you'll find that reality is what we make of it. We used to
think that wood burned because it contained fire elementals. How do
you know that your current appreciation of reality is any more
correct than fire elementals? Inconsistent with reality = thinking
outside the box.

> Boys in the west, especially the US, over the age of about seven
> (and probably younger than that) respond to media differently than
> do girls.

I think it is extremely important to point out at this juncture that
what this dicussion is truly about is correlation and causation. Do
boys respond better BECAUSE they are boys?

I read this book called Freakonomics. Great books. It suggested that
our recent lower crime rate is because of legalized abortion in the
70s. Not a connection one would immediately make. You'd be more
likely to suggest that an increased police force and more prisons
contributed to it, but when you control for those factors (ie
increased police force didn't work in many cases), you are left with
a puzzling conundrum of the failure of common sense.

We see correlation all the time, but we all too frequently confuse
it with causation. Gender is an obvious differentiation. We can
measure it rather simply because it's a little checkmark beside
either []Male or []Female.  However, just because we can measure it
doesn't mean that it is the causing factor.

The idea is really simple, since we can't choose to be male or
female, and we can't change it, then it obviously must be a
grounding case. It must be the foundation for other decisions we
make. I'm not so sure. I think the decisions we make are far more
localized to the brain BEFORE gender is actually involved.

Let's say that 84% of males like to play videogames. That's really
overwhelming, but you've still got 16% of males that don't. Is the
solution ignore or otherwise overrule that other 16% (they just
aren't male enough or something) OR find a solution which includes
100% of the population. The male/female divide, at least as far as
learned behavior and decision making are concerned, doesn't exist at
the level you think it does.

> Over the age of about twelve these differences become more
> pronounced.  By late teens/early twenties, the effect appears to
> maximize.  By the early thirties, gender effects are still present
> in how men and women respond to media and marketing, but other
> more common effects (family, career, etc.)  begin to rise.

The fact that it changes over time indicates that it is a learned
behavior rather than a built in one.

> Males and females respond differently to various forms and
> indicators of acquisition and material possession, though this
> area is often not as clear-cut as the others.

The other behaviors you mentioned (aggression, sexuality) are actual
chemical differences between males and females - ie testosterone,
estrogen, etc. This behavior can actually be changed based on your
diet (chickens feature a bunch of estrogen to make the meat tender,
meaning that people who eat only poultry and not red meat may have
more trouble growing facial hair). It's partially innate, partially
environmental.

This behavior is made at the brain level, and I'm not convinced that
the chemical imbalances factor into it at all. You are using the
criteria for one behavior to define another behavior, which is why
it doesn't fit (much like the Bartle online gamer types). It's not
as "clear-cut" because your trying to define a behavior by
correlation and not causation.

> There are many ways in which both genders subdivide as well, for
> example in terms of early vs. late adoption of marketing themes.
> But within these groups, there are persistent and consistent
> differences in response according to gender.

As mentioned earlier, we can measure gender. We can't measure
temperment.  As they say, when you have only a hammer, every problem
is a nail.

> Given this, it's irrelevant whether these differences arise from
> biology or culture (though clearly both play a part).  These are
> the marketing conditions that any commercial game developer needs
> to be thinking about.

When talking solely about marketing, any leverage you can find, be
sure to take. But we're not just talking about marketing (well, I
don't think we are). We're talking about why people play game, and
why people do not or even can not.

> Saying "you can make ANYBODY buy ANYTHING" is true but facile:
> it's like saying you can program anything you can imagine.
> Theoretically true, but it glosses over many of the troublesome
> realities that tend to get in the way of actually doing it.

I don't think so. My point in saying you can make anybody buy
anything was simply to underline the point that marketing is not a
proper indication of the needs or true wants of a population. You
can't say, for instance, that women buy razors with rubber handles
because rubber handles are a female selling point - it's actually
selling point for what the razor will be used for (shaving legs),
which requires holding the razor in a different manner. That females
shave their legs and (most) men don't says something about the
cultural aspects of gender - genetically, both of them have hair on
their legs.

So in that regard, using marketing as proof of genetic functionality
is a mistake. It's too broad and isn't defined on the genetic level
at all, and in the very rare situations where it is (ie tampons,
birth control pills) usually involve the basic physical differences
between gender and nothing hidden from the eye worthy of
discovering.

- Sean Howard
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