> I'm not a computer game player to any extent, so please put up with me.
> How does this early dislike of hacking and slashing, and wanting to
> interact with others, connect up with your current experience, which
> seems to be almost the other way round?
>
That's a really interesting question & I hadn't thought about it until you
asked it, in fact. I was never really into MUDD-style of hack & slash
mostly because I could think of things I'd rather do in a text-based world
than type hit monster over & over. On MOOs & MUDDs I was involved with
the RPG aspect of things more as a builder. I built a lot of MOO & MUDD
environments & also wrote dialogue messages & monster messages &
descriptions for friends who were programming MUDDs & the RPG portions of
assorted MOOs. I played some, but mostly either wrote places or wrote
bodies for myself, argued MOO.politics (on LambdaMOO) or had
theoretical/philosophical discussions about virtual life (on DhalgrenMOO),
& talked to people.
With MMORPGs, which are essentially graphical MUDDs, it's different for
me. The experience is more visual, the communities are so large as to be
fairly unwieldly in terms of making a name for yourself in the way you
could on MOOs. I suspect a lot of it is that words aren't as primary as
well as that you can't change or interact or develop the environment in
the same way that you could on MUDDs & MOOs. It's all pretty much
pre-scripted/pre-designed/pre-programmed. You can play within someone
else's enviroment, but aside from avatar personalization & some individual
character customization in terms of skills & attributes you don't get to
change the world. I can't log into AC & build a quest or a new place,
although I will be able to do that in Neverwinter Nights which should be
really cool.
I think the social aspect is less important to me because my life is
pretty different now than it was a number of years ago. I'm more
established with people of like mind who live here in Seattle than I was
when I first came online so the social aspects of it all are less
important. I also got really burned out on the social aspect of
MOOing. I had 3 different lovers that I met on the MOO & lots of friends
who I also saw in RL, traveling to assorted MOOBashes & other events. I
also knew a lot of MOOers because I was active on LambdaMOO's mailing
lists (particularly the now-defunt *social-issues) & was later on the
Architecture Review Board. I'd reached a point where the noise for me
online was too much. I also felt that I was becoming increasingly sucked
into this incestuous little world & I wanted some quiet & a break from it.
There's a social aspect to the gaming I do now, though -- definitely. I
game either with or in the same room as my boyfriend/partner. A number of
our friends are also gamers & we play some games together. There's also
the aspect of always having something to talk about at work that I
mentioned in my post (heh) -- something that isn't football, that
is. Abbey (my boyfriend) & myself & some of his gamer boy friends are
planning to play Dark Ages of Camelot together when it comes out. They're
all guys he's played pen & paper D&D with for years who've accepted me in
their online gaming adventures -- mostly, I suspect, because I'm as rabid
a gamer as the worst of them & also a very effective melee fighter. We're
planning to settle in Midgard & I'm gonna play a female Viking berserker
which should be fun.
I suspect that I'll probably play Neverwinter Nights less than I write for
it (since that's a possibility). Abbey & I plan to host a server & to
write content for the game which should be a lot of fun. I guess if I can
create/build I'm prone to do that, but if I can't I've become okay with
just killing lots of stuff. ;>
> in terms of the book, its useful to remember the publishers are worried
> that people may not understand computer stuff, so it would be useful to
> specify what these questions were for you . After all they might be
> different to what they were for me :)
>
I think the Net brought home to me the idea of life as storytelling & of
the games we all play with masks. Doing theatre (acting & directing) had
started me thinking about this, as had reading Thomas Kuhn in college
(oddly enough), but the Net made the transient nature of personality or
personhood or reality (or whatever you want to call it) much clearer to
me. I was suddenly very much in a place where everyone you met was in one
or another inventing a self or selves & some of us were talking about it,
as well. It was all very curious in the beginning -- living a life that
was one foot in the physical world & one foot in the virtual (almost
purely textual) world. There weren't many of us & our family & friends
tended to look oddly at us. A lot of people thought they could separate
themselves from their meat in this place, although I was never one of
those people. At heart I suspect I'm too much of a sensualist to ever
want to rid myself of the physical. Words are very physical to me -- they
have sound & shape, of course, but also taste & smell & feel & color & so
forth, in my head they do anyway. There were all kinds of interesting
essentially political questions being asked & discussed, as well, as more
women came online & began to interact in a world that had been almost
exclusively male. This was particularly true on MUDDs & MOOs which had
been populated primarily by male computer scientists with a few women. At
the time I came online both sorts of communities experienced an influx of
women who weren't computer scientists or engineers or even anybody's
girlfriend. Many were artists of one kind or another or academicians or
students & we things changed after our arrival. Some of these
non-computer types who came online were also male & I think it was
probably just as difficult for the old-style folks to interact with them
as it was to get used to us.
There were gender clashes on mailing lists, as well. Women got more
involved &, when they got flamed, for the most part had issues with the
perceived male-dominated language of many lists & flamewars. Some of us,
on the other hand, found that our language fit better in these places,
discovered the competitive & aggressive joy of writing a good flame or
winning a mailing.list argument. I've always been much more direct than
most of the women I've known & for me these spaces were very comfortable
-- more comfortable than trying to interact with my at-the-time
secretarial co-workers who tended to look askance at me when I didn't
pussyfoot around things. A part of me loves a good flamewar because it's
an arena I'm able to be competitive & aggressive in without regard to my
stature or gender. I'm smart, write well, & enjoy the turn of a good
phrase enormously & that's what counts in a good flamewar. When I say a
good flamewar I mean one in which real argumentation occurs along with
creative skewering as opposed to the kind of flamewar where everyone
basically types YOU'RE WRONG in all caps.
On LambdaMOO we were asking the question: can a virtual society run as a
democracy? & discovering that for most virtual communities fascism is the
way to go. My server, my mailing list, my MOO, my programming time, my
admin time -- my way or the highway. This was an interesting discovery &
troubling, as well, to those of us who considered ourselves good left
wingers & promoters of freedom for all. Heh. Offline I'm still that, but
online I'm an unrepentant fascist. I'm not sure I've completely resolved
the contradictions there yet, but maybe I don't need to at this
point. Some things you just accept as they are.
Then there were the questions about what it might mean to develop deep &
intimate relationships with people you'd never met. What did it mean to
fall in love with someone's words on a screen? What does the fact that
that happens say about the nature of love? This is not to mention all the
questions that arise from net.fucking -- what does it mean to experience
real physical desire & even orgasm from text on a screen? & soon enough
we all started learning what it meant to translate these relationships
into relationships that spilled over into real life as more & more of us
met in the flesh. I've met more MOOers than I have people from my mail
lists, but know the oddity of fleshmeets. There's this funny instant
where the idea you have in your head of a person from your online
interaction with them & their actual physical reality have a battle with
each other for primacy & then, somehow, the two forms (if you
will) coalesce. After you meet in the flesh, however, it's all
different. Neither real life interaction nor virtual interaction is ever
the same &, in my case, it's typically the virtual interaction that lost
out. Alan's actually the only e-mail list person I've ever met (& that
briefly) in the flesh & I know our relationship is different now than it
was before we met. In our case, I think we're more comfortable & easily
intimate with each other than we were before. Alan & I have owned this
list together for a number of years now & sometimes go months w/out
talking, but I always feel him out there & we connect at wonderfully odd
synchronous moments. Sometimes it feels like we're an old married couple
that lives far apart by choice, but still connects in all the old ways
when the occasion merits -- Sarte & Simone de Beauvoir, perhaps, although
the relationship is definitely less toxic.
For me personally, the questions had to do with who I wanted to be having
trashed my whole life & begun from scratch. MOOing was, in fact, a big
part of my trashing my life. I got divorced while online & a lot of the
courage I needed to end my marriage was a direct result of my online
experiences. The vast majority of the emotional support I got, as well,
came from folks I knew online who were always incredibly giving &
dependable in ways that still amaze me. My first lover after my marriage
broke up was a (much younger) fellow MOOer & the person I next fell in
love w/was yet another fellow MOOer who drove 1300 miles on a long weekend
just to meet me because he thought my words were amazing (one of the most
romantic things that ever happened to me, particularly since I hadn't even
said he could sleep on my couch much less become my lover). I used these
stages to reinvent myself -- still do, I guess. The person I am now is
the person I imagined I'd like to be when I became a MOOer. The life I
lead now is a direct result of that experience -- from my career (I became
a support engineer/sysadmin & started making a lot more money than I ever
had) to having my writing published (thank you, Alan -- my biggest & most
helpful fan) to having the confidence to just be myself & stop trying to
be who I thought I ought to be. Being online & the acceptance I found
here helped to birth me.
> Interesting. If i may digress into offline Roll playing memorabilia. I
> remember that in a game i was running a woman refused to play any
> character type other than a healer and not get involved with the
> violence. However, by chance she was chosen by a magical sword, which
> teleported her into the middle of combat and such. eventually she became
> as gung ho as the sword could wish, and ended up founding her own conbat
> oriented religion with herself in charge :) (This was Runequest II)
>
> I'm wondering how many people have noted a tendency of female gamers to
> fight from the back lines? I not so sure it happens in offline RPG, but
> that might be because in the fantasy games i've played begniners usually
> are told to play a fighter as its simpler and requires less rule
> knowledge, thus everyone gets some experience of this almost
> immediately.
>
In my experience, women tend to play ranged fighters or support mode
characters. Women who play pure melee fighters are much more rare,
particularly at higher levels. I see lots of female high level life mages
(who heal & cast protects & buffs) & archers on AC above level 40 & very
few female sword or ax fighters. As I said in my previous post, once I
hit level 40 male players just assume I'm a guy & usually call me
"dude" or refer to me as "he" even after they've been told otherwise. I
know there have to be more women out there playing melees, but I don't
seem to run across them. I've never had much interest in playing a
support character & play archers & spellcasters & other ranged fighters
relatively poorly. As a friend says, "I like my killing direct & hands
on." I don't, actually, think it's easier to play fighters -- at least
not at higher levels. There's too much of melee fighting that requires
quick tactical decisionmaking (not to mention the sheer bravado or steely
nerves or just pure love of adrenalin it takes to get down to 4 hit points
before the battle's won).
I suspect women have tended to choose support characters because, in
general, women are taught that supporting others is our place in
life. We're encouraged to be caretakers & team players & to let the other
guy win & discouraged from what are usually considered more male kinds of
risktaking, selfishness, & competitiveness. I think this may be less true
for women younger than me (I'm 38), but the cultural expectations are
still there & still difficult to surmount. Gaming is one place you can be
an aggressive woman & be pretty much guaranteed some level of positive
attention from the guys who play with you. For instance, in the real
world I have a long history of difficulty with interaction with other
women. I just do better with men. As I said, some of that is how direct
I am, some of it is just that I've always been more interested in the
things the boys/men I've known were interested in. If I have a job
interview & the manager is female, I won't get the job. If the customer
is female, she'll take offense to something I say or the way I say things
& is likely to both argue with me about my expertise & complain to my
manager about my customer service. If I interview with a male manager, I
get a job offer. If the customer is male, they may argue with my
expertise, but usually I win them over & they almost alway write to my
manager about how wonderful my customer service skills are. I don't know
if this is related to why I play melee fighters, but I suspect it could
be.
> Just an aside, and i'm wondering if its just my friends, but in every
> game i've ever played it was almost always impossible to distinguish the
> lawful good types from the lawful evil - they always ended up killing
> people on principle in huge quantities. But then this seems to be a
> feature of the world as well :)
>
Heh. I tend to agree, but that's why I'm chaotic neutral -- or so I'm
told. My boyfriend & most of his friends are pretty purely lawful good &
tend to be shocked when the chaotic neutral among us do things like kill
all the guards to get a quest done while they're trying to negotiate. I'm
not sure it's nicer to kill everybody in the name of expedience than it is
to kill in the name of principle, but it's different, anyway. I'm told
most D&Ders like at least one chaotic type in the group if only for the
entertainment/shock value. ;>
> what is the kind of interface these games have if they are not somehow
> similar to first person shooters?
>
It's not so much interface as orientation. First person shooters tend to
be all about killing everything that moves. RPGs can be about that, but
also tend to be more adventure/quest-oriented & to have a relatively deep
backstory or mythology that governs play. I tend to like to kill
everything, but in pursuit of some quest or the solution to some in-game
mystery. I still kill everything, but I get to tell myself a cool story
about it all. I've never managed that in first person shooters which
always seem to be more about the efficiency of my twitch response than
anything. I did like Duke Nukem a lot, but it was a bit weird as first
person shooters go with lots of ironic parody in-game. Still, playing
that game I spent most of my time perfecting moves. In games like Diablo
or AC I'm perfecting moves, but I'm also interacting with the story & the
world & developing my character within the contexts that get thrown at me.
I may feel differently about this in a few weeks. Since I'm out of work
at the moment, I'm planning to install Alice (a first person shooter based
on a mad Alice in a demented Wonderland) & play through it. I'll let you
know how it goes.
One other difference in first person shooters is the prevelance of cheat
codes & god mode abilities which render the player indestructible & are
veryvery hard not to use once you know about them or how to find
them. There are exploits in MMORPGs, but they're somewhat different &
don't usually enable one to become indestructible in the same way. I'm
likely to cheat in first person shooters & unlikely to take the trouble in
MMORPGs. The reasons for this have to do with the fact that the first
person shooters I've played have been single player so my cheat isn't
impacting anyone, but me. In MMORPGs I don't cheat because I think cheats
& exploits in multiplayer games have a negative impact on the community &
I'm not interested in being that sort of grief player.
> This is your current kind of work with computers?
> I think that it is possible that some kind of time frame might be useful
> in following your account
>
I'm currently out of work, but am probably going to get an offer from a
Web hosting company I'm interviewing with (last interview next
week). My most recent job was as a Support Engineer for a software
company (not a good fit), but before that I did escalated troubleshooting
& was a sysadmin for an Internet Service Provider. One of the reasons I'm
hoping for the job with what is essentially a server farm is that it'll
put me back in the world of network.geeks who are pretty different than
software-oriented geeks, particularly the network.geeks of the Unix
denomination or flavor. I love the complexities & weirdnesses of
networking & plan to get Cisco-certified because I want to get deeper into
routing from a hardware perspective. I've been a DNS administrator &
consequently have a strong understanding of networking & TCP/IP from more
of a software perspective & I want to know more about translating the
principles into hardware. Routers are fun toys. ;> My big &
not-so-secret dream is, however, to eventually work my way into content
editing for a gaming company & I hope to get there, but in the meantime
networking is a good way to pay the bills & even have money left over.
> does it also make doing the work easier? or collaborating with others at
> work easier?
>
Both. That I'm a gamer & am as good at & as enthusiastic about the games
my male coworkers play gets me over a lot of the humps I tend to encounter
because I'm frequently the only woman who does the same job they do &
often the only woman they know who's into computers. It helps make me
"one of the guys" which makes it easier for me to get the respect I need
to do my job (& deserve). I don't have to prove myself quite as
much. I'm still a girl, mind you, but I become "their girl" & things just
get easier over all. Collaboration is easier & many of them are lot more
eager to share their knowledge with me (they know I'm actually listening &
interested -- typically unlike their girlfriends, sadly) & to share my
knowledge with them. Bypasses the hazing, if you will.
> why is he so uninterested? and why do you find it so engrossing? Is it
> simply the connection with his friends?
>
I'm not entirely sure why he's so uninterested with the game. I think
it's primarily that it's a game that you have to devote a lot of time to
in order to succeed & he likes to jump around from game-to-game. Since he
tends to play several games at a time, he's never gotten an AC character
to a level as high as mine & nowhere near the levels of his friends & so
it's difficult to really play in a group. He's too underpowered & they're
too overpowered & everybody ends up pissing everybody else off. He's also
impatient with the way that Turbine/Microsoft (AC's developer & publisher
respectively) don't enforce their Code of Conduct & tend to create an
atmosphere where exploits & in general annoying behavior can
proliferate. I turn most of that off with little effort, but he's not as
good at tuning other people out as I am. I got engrossed in the game
because it's the closest thing to MUDDing/MOOing I've come to w/out having
to start up MUDDing & MOOing again. Although it's graphical & I can't
create in the way I could in MUDDs & MOOs, it still has the feel of a MUDD
& that's something I've found I've missed. I'm irritated, in general,
with the ways that the games tend to be run (which seem too permissive of
behavior that spoils other people's good time) -- most of the problems I
see in these games were solved on MUDDs years ago -- but I'm also amused &
tend to ignore things that irritate me that I know I can't change. I
guess I'm sanguine about being on somebody else's server & dealing with
things their way. I don't play with his friends very often, but I do chat
with them a lot about the game & one of them has been really generous with
armor & whatnot for me & impressed with my gaming ability & rabidness.
We're all planning to start a new MMORPG, Dark Ages of Camelot, together
when it comes out in July. We'll see how that goes. The plan is to each
have a character that we only play when we play as a group (which we'll
try to do more regularly than now). That'll allow the 3 of us that are
the most rabid to play the game obssessively, but still enable more equal
group play without having to devote all of one's extra time to the sole
occupation of playing this single game. This should work out better for
us, in theory, but we'll see how it goes in practice. The best solution
may end up being Neverwinter Nights where Abbey (my bf) & me will have our
own server & he'll be essentially the dungeonmaster (DM). He's a truly
amazing DM in pen & paper D&D &, since Neverwinter Nights is based on
AD&D, that may end up working out ideally. I'll keep you posted.
> Macro?
>
What I view as a truly stupid activity which is setting up your computer
to do certain activities for you so that you level up your character
without actually playing. In AC, for instance, most of the better content
is for higher level characters (or that's the impression a lot of people
have, anyway) so lots of people macro characters up to higher levels
before they actually play. I think it's amazingly stupid to have your
computer play your game for you & also impractical in terms of survival
once you do play the character. Part of leveling up a character is
learning how not to die. Macroing was generally outlawed on most of the
MUDDs I played & is outlawed in Ultima Online, as well (I dunno about
Everquest). I also think it's a huge waste of server resources & know it
contributes to lag which is unmannerly behavior in my opinion. It's one
thing for the server to lag because lots of people are actually playing &
another for it to lag because lots of people are watching TV while their
computers play. Lots of folks will argue with me about this & there's a
wide range of opinion, but that's mine.
> Ultima online?
>
Yes. Ultima Online. I was in the beta test for the game, but never
really got into it. The graphics weren't good enough for it to be as
interesting to me as the text-based worlds I was playing in & it got too
quickly populated with k3wl d00dz who weren't role players. MUDDers &
MOOers tend to be dedicated role players. Lots of the UO folks were
mostly interested in running around & killing other players & generally
being a pain in the ass & I just couldn't see doing it. AC solves this
problem by having a PK (player-killer) server with the rest of the servers
being "carebear" servers (non-PK). I play on a carebear server so I don't
have to deal with 13-year-olds killing me every 5 minutes. I don't play
on the AC PK server because it's just about impossible due to the number
of folks hanging around killing newbies. I've played on MUDDs that are
PK, but there are typically consequences for killing other players unless
the killing is done within the roleplaying context of the game &
enforcement tends to be pretty good. So far, MMORPGs haven't solved this
problem. For one thing they're bigger which makes community policing more
difficult & for another everybody's paying to play which people tend to
think allows them to behave however they want. My hope is that developers
will get over thinking that & think, instead, of their responsibility to
maintain a game where everyone is more able to have fun.
Dark Ages of Camelot will be PK, but only within the context of wars
between realms. You won't be allowed to PK other players within your own
realm & I have hopes for this solution. The game is being developed by
some folks who run a text-based MUDD & I think they may have a better
handle on some of the issues (like PKing & enforcement of Codes of
Conduct, etc.). It'll be interesting to see, anyway. Certainly
everything I've read about the game has the feel of a MUDD, more so than
AC, & that's got a big appeal to me. I'd like to get more involved in
that community, although I still want to be able to solo play. Everquest,
for instance, encourages more community involvement, but that happens at
the expense of your ability to solo play. Past a certain point, Everquest
pretty much requires that you play with a group & I don't want to have to
do that all the time. AC's much better for solo play, but doesn't do
enough to encourage community happening so it mostly doesn't. We'll so
how the new game does with all this. Again, I'll keep you posted.
> What kind of issues here?
>
As I said, above, mostly issues related to mannerly behavior -- exploits,
random player killing, etc. On a MUDD or MOO any behavior that impacts
the ability of other players to play the game is unmannerly & subject to
assorted penalties, including banishment. There are also issues related
to sexual harrassment in these games, although I've had less trouble on AC
than I had on MUDDs & MOOs. I've been hassled somewhat, but not nearly to
the degree I've been hassled in the text-based communities. I probably
deal with it all better since I've got more experience, as well. I, for
instance, don't hesitate to squelch annoying players where some women I
know resent having to do that & try to either change the other player's
behavior or make someone in authority change their behavior. I don't have
any faith in anybody's ability to change the behavior of assholes (cynic
that I am) so I just squelch 'em & wish I could do it in real life.
> This is a little unexpected, given that people usually form groups as
> soon as possible, any ideas as to why?
>
I don't really know. I know there are some other grrl gamers on this
list, any of y'all have any ideas? I suspect it's because it's our secret
pleasure, but I wouldn't want to swear to that.
> How do you feel about this body of writing? does it say anything about
> your experiences or do your experiences contradict it, or elaborate it?
>
>
To be honest, I haven't read much of it. I've done a fair amount of
reading & writing about MOOs, but not about gaming. Again, I probably
take words more seriously than I do graphically based activities & tend to
be more intellectual about them. It's a lot like the difference between
radio & TV -- MOOs are more like radio & allow me to engage more of my
imagination, MMORPGs are more like TV & engage the part of my brain that
wants to escape & turn off. I definitely think & strategize in the games
I play, but it feels less intellectual than the thinking I did when I was
MOOing regularly. In fact, this is the most I've thought about my gaming
experience. I'll probably do some reading & then I'll have a better
answer for you.
> thanks again
>
You're welcome! Thanks for indulging my lengthiness which is somewhat
antithetical to net.posting, in general. I'd apologize for it, but I'm
too happy with the things I'm thinking about & too secure in the knowledge
that you all know how to use a delete key to bother.
cheers,
c.
--
***************
Subject: Bit More on Grrl Gamers
Date: Sat, 26 May 2001 03:15:18 -0700
From: Caitlin Martin
To: CYBERMIND@LISTSERV.AOL.COM
I put together a small survey & posted on the Asheron's Call boards for
other female gamers who might be interested in answering some
questions. I'm focusing on AC players since I'm primarily interested in
comparing my experience with that of other women playing the same
game. I've asked that they be female in real life although their AC
characters don't have to be. I may decide to talk to male gender benders
at some point, but for now I want to talk to other women. There is, of
course, no way to tell if the people who respond are female, but I'm gonna
trust my instinct about gender & assume that most people won't bother to
lie all the way through a survey & leave it at that. I'll let y'all know
what I find out once I've finished -- I figure a couple of weeks from
now. I'm hoping to get answers from women both older & younger than me
since I suspect that the experience is different if you grew up at
different times. My prediction is that younger women will have had an
easier time getting into gaming & will play a wider assortment of
character types, but since I don't know that for sure it's worth it to
ask. I'm not gonna drudge up my eons-ago anthro grad school training &
even attempt a "scientifically valid" survey so results won't mean much
statistically, but then one of the reasons I left grad school was cuz I
thought 2 stories were worth as much as 5,000 carefully statistically
balanced & collated answer sheets any day of the week.
cheers,
c.
--
*************
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