June 2003

• Damage and Stuff (Math and Code) Ben Chambers
• MMO Launch issues ruining potential segments of the market. Derek Licciardi
• • MMO Launch issues ruining potential segments of the market. Mike Shaver
  • • MMO Launch issues ruining potential segments of the market. Mike Shaver
  • MMO Launch issues ruining potential segments of the market. Daniel Anderson
  • • MMO Launch issues ruining potential segments of the market. Matt Mihaly
    • MMO Launch issues ruining potential segments of the market. Luca Girardo
    • MMO Launch issues ruining potential segments of themarket. Ron Gabbard
  • MMO Launch issues ruining potential segments of the market. Chris Holko
  • • MMO Launch issues ruining potential segments of the market. Matt Mihaly
    • • MMO Launch issues ruining potential segments of the market. Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
  • MMO Launch issues ruining potential segments of the market. Justin Coleman
  • MMO Launch issues ruining potential segments of th e market. Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
  • MMO Launch issues ruining potential segments of th e market. Jeff Fuller
  • MMO Launch issues ruining potential segments of the market. Matt Mihaly
  • • MMO Launch issues ruining potential segments of the market. Tess Snider
  • MMO Launch issues ruining potential segments of the market. Luca Girardo
  • • MMO Launch issues ruining potential segments of the market. Tess Snider
    • MMO Launch issues ruining potential segments of the market. Matt Mihaly
    • MMO Launch issues ruining potential segments of the market. Jeff Fuller
    • • MMO Launch issues ruining potential segments of themarket. Chris Holko
      • • MMO Launch issues ruining potential segments ofthemarket. Scott Jennings
        • MMO Launch issues ruining potential segments of the market. Jeff Fuller
• New Column by Dave Rickey "Engines of Creation" Now at Skotos Christopher Allen
• Announcing Shadow Door: an NPC Control Interface for Neverwinter Nights Robert Zubek
• ADMIN: So, what has been happening? J C Lawrence
• [Meta] Forward of moderated message J C Lawrence
• New Here MIKE MacMartin
• • New Here Mike
  • • New Here MIKE MacMartin
    • • New Here Miroslav Silovic
      • • New Here MIKE MacMartin
• Looking for a GUI Mud Development program Snicker Furfoot
• • Looking for a GUI Mud Development program Ben Greear
• ADMIN: List archives are now restored. J C Lawrence
• The Price of Being Male Rayzam
• • The Price of Being Male Sasha Hart
    [Rayzam cut and paste from
    http://bilskirnir.blogspot.com/2003_06_01_bilskirnir_archive.html#1056
    34264776316268, which was quoting bits from Edward Castronova]
    
    > US economist, Edward Castronova, has discovered that female
    > avatars, from worlds such as EverQuest, trade online at an average
    > 10 per cent discount to their price were they male-designated.
    
    It takes an awful lot of interpretation to get from this to
    discrimination.
    
    The returns are via Ebay. How many people is it realistic to suppose
    are actually selling characters on Ebay? Now how many are working to
    sell characters from the beginning?
    
    Suppose that Ebay price differences are an important, realistic, not
    perverse index of 'how much a player's time is worth' (e.g., by
    adopting a crude instrumentalism that regards the value of
    everything as its literal market value, and the market value of
    everything as the price you will tend to get on Ebay). Lower prices
    for female avatars are very different from lower prices paid to
    female sellers. Less preference for a female avatar per se does not
    constitute sexism since female avatars aren't people but (at best)
    ciphers standing for people. Disliking the word 'women' doesn't make
    you a misogynist, though we might wonder what was wrong - but not
    wanting to have 'woman' on your character sheet is even more
    arbitrary. This is 100% about labeling and appearance in a game (and
    of course the value of these will be affected by any resultants,
    like a judgement that goblin characters are too short).
    
    So it looks like there is some sort of preference, at least among
    boys and men (who make up a majority of EQ's population), for male
    avatars. This could be about similarity to self, discomfort with
    cross-gender play (perhaps perceived as deviant, exploitative,
    misleading, resulting in ridicule or potentially leading to easily
    discerned breaks in character). They could easily be about how well
    a male character is perceived as fitting into the game, e.g. because
    it's in a genre which is usually about heroes crushing skulls. I
    don't see how any of them (particularly self-similarity) are
    particularly implausible, nor immoral or indicative of real
    discrimination.
    
    It is not even vaguely plausible that it is because men 'like being
    with other men' or 'like to appoint male successors' because an
    avatar isn't a man, nor a successor, but a game-piece. People don't
    choose the little car in monopoly because they think cars are good
    company, and they don't choose the little hat because they like to
    appoint hat successors. Nor does the same apply to half-elves or
    assassins. A ten percent discount is easily within the range one
    might expect one race or class to have relative to another, whether
    for economic or innocently preferential reasons (I'll leave out
    anti- goblin discrimination, though the rhetorical strategy applied
    here could be amusingly applied in that direction).
    
    You still have to spin the tale of cultural woe yourself, and the
    content of such a tale will be mostly made-up (whether or not it
    also happens to be true).
    
    The real wage gap[1], by contrast, is large, consistent, and highly
    resistant to controlling for plausible sources of difference: amount
    of work done, education, seniority, childbearing, and so on[2]. A
    wage gap for real work done has important ramifications, and we have
    no explanation for this one. So one explanation that works decently
    is that there is discrimination being applied (though the size of
    the gap is so variable that it is clearly not the same prejudice
    being uniformly held by all and having a uniform impact on wages; a
    handful of specific professions are missing the gap entirely, and
    certain specific levels of income etc. show a reversal, though for
    interesting reasons which don't effectively discount discrimination
    there or in general). In any case, it is important and it is obvious
    and there is no other plausible explanation for it. None of these
    are true of Castronova's apparent speculation given here.
    
    [1] I am judging by my own explorations in US census data (GSS),
    which are not authoritative and certainly don't count for the
    whole world without qualification. Also, I give no actual numbers
    since this level of technical detail is totally irrelevant, I have
    them filed away, and you can go get them yourself from the horse's
    mouth. But look for yourself, and I am pretty sure will see the
    same things I saw. Of course, even provided this my conclusions
    are /in the limit/ only as good as the data.
    
    [2] I have seen it claimed that you can make the gap disappear by
    controlling by common-sense variables like these. Controlling
    several of the variables actually increasedd the size of the gap
    (for example, try looking at education; men seem to get a much
    bigger advantage from jumps in education level than women, so the
    gap increases). Another part of the problem is that while
    controlling for A (only looking at people who meet criteria A)
    might turn up a smaller gap than total population, and the same
    for B, only looking at people who meet A & B may actually show a
    larger gap. In other words, just because each criterion reduces
    the gap doesn't mean that their union reduces the gap by an amount
    equal to the sum of A's and B's reductions.
  • The Price of Being Male Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
  • • The Price of Being Male Rayzam
    • • The Price of Being Male Byron Ellacott
      • The Price of Being Male Dr. Cat
    • The Price of Being Male Castronova, Edward
    • • The Price of Being Male Boyle, Paul
      • The Price of Being Male Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes
      • • The Price of Being Male Rayzam
        • • The Price of Being Male Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes
          • • The Price of Being Male Rayzam
            • • The Price of Being Male Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes
        • The Price of Being Male Marian Griffith
        • • The Price of Being Male Paul Schwanz
          • • The Price of Being Male Rayzam
            • • The Price of Being Male Paul Schwanz
              • The Price of Being Male Vincent Archer
              • • The Price of Being Male Rayzam
        • The Price of Being Male Castronova, Edward
        • • The Price of Being Male Sasha Hart
          • The Price of Being Male Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes
          • • The Price of Being Male Amanda Walker
          • The Price of Being Male Richard A. Bartle
          • • The Price of Being Male Castronova, Edward
            • • The Price of Being Male Richard A. Bartle
          • The Price of Being Male Tazzik
          • • The Price of Being Male Richard A. Bartle
            • • The Price of Being Male Tazzik
      • The Price of Being Male Richard A. Bartle
      • • The Price of Being Male Marian Griffith
        • • The Price of Being Male Sasha Hart
          • • The Price of Being Male Tom
            • The Price of Being Male Marian Griffith
            • • The Price of Being Male Sasha Hart
              • • The Price of Being Male Marian Griffith
                • • The Price of Being Male Sasha Hart
          • The Price of Being Male Richard A. Bartle
        • The Price of Being Male Castronova, Edward
        • • The Price of Being Male Richard A. Bartle
        • The Price of Being Male Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
      • The Price of Being Male Paul Schwanz
      • The Price of Being Male Daniel Anderson
      • • The Price of Being Male Travis Casey
        • • The Price of Being Male Paul Schwanz
          • • The Price of Being Male Travis Casey
          • The Price of Being Male Chris Holko
          • • The Price of Being Male Travis Casey
            • • The Price of Being Male Sanvean
              • • The Price of Being Male Sasha Hart
                • The Price of Being Male Tom
                • • The Price of Being Male Sanvean
                  • • The Price of Being Male Tom
  • The Price of Being Male Paul Schwanz
  • The Price of Being Male Amanda Walker
  • The Price of Being Male shop@isparkinson.co.uk
  • The Price of Being Male Boyle, Paul
  • The Price of Being Male Ola Fosheim Grøstad
  • • The Price of Being Male Sheela Caur'Lir
    • • The Price of Being Male Jeff Crane
• Are gold pieces taxable? Koster, Raph
• • Are gold pieces taxable? Boyle, Paul
  • • Are gold pieces taxable? Amanda Walker
  • Are gold pieces taxable? Thomas Leavitt
  • Are gold pieces taxable? Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
• Functors / Loki (was: New Here) Eli Stevens
• Architecture Peter "Pietro" Rossmann
• • Architecture Peter "Pietro" Rossmann
  • • Architecture ceo
    • • Architecture Peter "Pietro" Rossmann
• SW:G this is so unfair Marian Griffith
• • SW:G this is so unfair Marc Bowden
  • SW:G this is so unfair Martin Bassie
• Players policing themselves (was: MMO Launch issues ruining potential segments of themarket.) Derek Licciardi
• • Players policing themselves (was: MMO Launch issues ruining potential segments of themarket.) Marian Griffith
• Q&A with Ken Troop, Lead Designer at Turbine Michael Tresca
• • Q&A with Ken Troop, Lead Designer at Turbine Threshold RPG
  • • Q&A with Ken Troop, Lead Designer at Turbine Mike Shaver
    • Q&A with Ken Troop, Lead Designer at Turbine Chris
• Architecture (Cell Rebalancing) Peter "Pietro" Rossmann
• • Architecture (Cell Rebalancing) Zach Collins {Siege}
  • • Architecture (Cell Rebalancing) Peter "Pietro" Rossmann
  • Architecture (Cell Rebalancing) Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
  • • Architecture (Cell Rebalancing) Peter "Pietro" Rossmann
    • Architecture (Cell Rebalancing) Rossmann Peter
    • • Architecture (Cell Rebalancing) ceo
      • • Architecture (Cell Rebalancing) Peter "Pietro" Rossmann
        • • Architecture (Cell Rebalancing) J C Lawrence
          • • Architecture (Cell Rebalancing) Peter "Pietro" Rossmann
            • • Architecture (Cell Rebalancing) J C Lawrence
          • Architecture (Cell Rebalancing) Rossmann Peter
        • Architecture (Cell Rebalancing) Rossmann Peter
        • • Architecture (Cell Rebalancing) J C Lawrence
          • • Architecture (Cell Rebalancing) Peter "Pietro" Rossmann
      • Architecture (Cell Rebalancing) Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
      • • Architecture (Cell Rebalancing) Peter "Pietro" Rossmann