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9:26 am
November 19, 2008
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Gotrek
| | Australia | |
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Not that it really matters, but is it just me or is the female breed of mudder even rarer than a female gamer in general?
I'm interested in finding out your thoughts on the matter, whether or not you have any female mudders on the MUD you play/run.
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9:31 pm
November 20, 2008
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george
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I think the simple answer is female gamers are not rare in general; from my experience the male/female ratio on a game depends a lot on what kind of game it is. Sometimes most of the players are women, sometimes most are men.
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5:27 pm
November 23, 2008
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sryth
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This question pops up on every mud forum I've ever read for some reason.
There are a lot more female mudders than people generally think, quite often they will not admit they are female however, for reasons that are obvious if you think about it.
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12:44 pm
November 24, 2008
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Arvik
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We generally have a 50/50 mix of male / female. There are days when more males than females, but also days whem more females are on.
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8:19 pm
November 29, 2008
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Fire
| | Austin, Texas | |
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The first MUD I ever played on had a high-level Imm that I knew in RL. His brother played the most popular female character in the game. I asked him why he would do such a thing, and he informed me that people are much more likely to give free assistance to a female character than to a male character, that if only I could put my exceedingly-large male ego aside for a moment, I would realize that the benefits are worth it.
Of course, I never took his advice, especially after seeing some of the social and intimate situations that he was often forced into. It did, however, make for good theater for those of us in the know…
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 Genius without education is like silver in the mine – Benjamin Franklin
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1:41 am
December 3, 2008
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Gotrek
| | Australia | |
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I've encountered that situation on more than one occassion Fire. Enough so, that I could come to dislike people setting out to do that to gain the benefits. On the other hand, I've known people to do the opposite and just roleplay females for the sake of it.
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12:42 am
December 6, 2008
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Fizban
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I believe 4 Dimensions's playerbase is slightly more female than male actually, if not it's very close to 50/50. I think in general hack and slash MUDs have a larger percentage of male players whereas Roleplay MUDs or MUDs with many quests and puzzles have a larger percentage of females.
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11:16 am
December 6, 2008
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Fire
| | Austin, Texas | |
| Member | posts 53 | |
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Fizban, that's an interesting assumption.
I realize the whole thing is about psychology and the differences between male and female psychology is something that people have based entire career's on.
What truly fascinates us is when someone goes against the grain and bucks the system. America's current fascination with gay marriage is a great example of this. On the whole, we pretend to be tolerant and appreciative of different lifestyles, but underneath it all, when someone does something we don't expect, we tend to stare and point fingers.
A female gamer is just such a creature. We don't expect a female to be aggressive, and we assume that any game, MUDs in partiular, is an aggressive pastime. I think there are several things wrong with this: (1) Anyone who thinks females are not aggressive has either never attended High School, or forgot about their experiences there. (2) Not all games are aggressive, and some go out of their way to gloss over their ingrained violence. Case in point: Sonic the Hedgehog, he wasn't destroying the evil creatures in his path by jumping on them, but by physically jumping on them, he broke the cute and cuddly little creatures inside the evil shell out, effectively setting them free. It was violence, but not of an objectional sort. (3) Putting labels on anyone and classifying them by these labels is a flawed method of looking at the world. To say that someone will be masculine just because they are male will lead one to a very rude awakening, the same could be said in reverse as well. It is the same as saying that someone is prone to violence because of the color of their hair or skin. In the end, you are attempting to classify individuality (think about that one for a bit).
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Genius without education is like silver in the mine – Benjamin Franklin
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1:20 pm
December 6, 2008
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Gotrek
| | Australia | |
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There may or may not be anything wrong with it Fire, but Fizban's assumption seems to be correct. There hasn't been any evidence to the contrary.
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4:02 pm
December 6, 2008
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Fire
| | Austin, Texas | |
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Before this turns into a flaming war, which was not my intent, I would like to point those of you interested in the subject to this page:
http://www.magespace.net/rat/female.html
It contains a very nice monologue (rant?) on the subject from a female gamer, who shares my point of view, though she may be a bit more aggressive about it…
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Genius without education is like silver in the mine – Benjamin Franklin
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4:13 pm
December 6, 2008
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Gotrek
| | Australia | |
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No one was turning it into a flame war Fire. (Or, I know I wasn't anyway) My post was just pointing out something. Judging by your avatar and name, I'd think you'd be right at home in a flame war. 
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4:22 pm
December 6, 2008
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Gotrek
| | Australia | |
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I read that link you posted… I'd dare say its somewhere between a monologue and a rank, it drifts between the two, but thats besides the point. It was an interesting read none the less and provided a very good insight into the reason why I brought this up in the first place; to try and understand the female gamer psyche.
PS. And to find out good places to hit on them. Seems like 4 Dimensions is the place to go. (No, I'm not being serious.)
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2:45 am
December 9, 2008
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Fire
| | Austin, Texas | |
| Member | posts 53 | |
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I actually love a good flame war, however I rarely participate. If you visit mudconnector, you will notice that I have one of the oldest accounts on the site, I think that I'm the third or fourth oldest (not counting the admin). In all of these years, I've attempted to be a calming voice in the community. For the most part, that means not using my voice at all. The good news there is that when I do say something, usually it gets noticed. The bad news is that I often can't say anything, despite having many opinions.
When I do step in, I find that it often leads to a war of some sort, whether one of "my idea is better than yours!" or one of "you are a big, dumb… dumby-head!", either way I try to avoid it myself and take a few days off.
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Genius without education is like silver in the mine – Benjamin Franklin
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4:52 am
December 9, 2008
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Gotrek
| | Australia | |
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I only observe on TMC. Apart from my account being deleted years ago (probaly from inactivity) I've never really had any desire to sign back up. I half did recently but for whatever reason it wouldn't let me sign it up. Yes flame wars can be fun (I'm guilty of enjoying one here and there) but not when a fairly serious topic discussion degenerates into one.
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1:39 am
December 10, 2008
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Orrin
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My experience has been that there are a lot of female mudders around. I know a few people who've gotten together, married and even divorced people they've met on muds.
As far as males playing female characters goes, that's very common. I am pretty sure I read once that Raph Koster always plays female characters, and I know Richard Bartle does too. I guess it's true that female characters probably get more assistance and with graphical games there is also the argument that the female avatar is more pleasing to the eye.
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12:07 am
December 12, 2008
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ShadowsDawn
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I love threads like these.. they always make me laugh. It's amusing to see how people are unsure how to handle us and such. I applaud that rant that was linked to. It pretty much sums things up nicely.
I started with MUDs some 12 odd years ago, playing MajorMUD on a local BBS. One of the most powerful characters, and well known players on the board was female as well. I played that until the time that was on the BSS had expired.. there were several months prepaid on it when the account was given to us. After that I was hooked.
I stumbled upon Realms of Despair, and then later a game called Hillsfar, which was Smaug based as well. It was there I got a taste of the PKill. I recall people laughing at my race/class choice, as it was written off as being a poor choice (Drow Thief) for a Deadly. However, as I climbed the levels faster than most of them had, they started to notice.. some felt threatened and came after me. Sure they killed me a fair bit, but ti wasn't long before I caught on, and started killing them… a lot.. and them being a fair bit higher than me in level. It ended with me being one of the best PKers on the game.
This actually got tested too, as due to someone figuring out my password and causing trouble with my IMM char, I lost a fair bit. My thief was in the most powerful Clan in the game, and when I loged in I was booted, and hunted down by the best PKer on the game. Gave him the biggest run for his money, and nearly was able to take him out.. but I still lasted longer than anyone had ever lasted against him.
Alas, my PK days are behind me, after several fun times like the above. It was fun while I was doing it, but now I'm on to other interests.
While it may seem like a female gamer is so rare that people want to treat us differently. Truth is, we don't need the coddling, or special treatment. We are perfectly capable of kicking butt with the rest of the gamer community.
Since those initial years of playing, I continued my exploration with computers (which started a couple years before MUDs), as well as my interest in the games. Now I'm an indie game designer (current and long term project has had interest expressed in it twice for potential grpahical commercial stuff, but it never went anywhere), as well as being responsible for more servers than most people can imagine. Sure there's only three women in the department I work in.. but you best believe we have the respect of our male co-workers, not because we are female computer geeks (and gamer in my case), but because we hold our own without their aide and quite often showing them a thing or two.
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