Category Archives: Social

I Like ‘Em Fiesty

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Part 2 of Tropes vs. Women in Gaming

I hope you understand the ridiculousness of the title of this post.

Anita Sarkeesian, the target of such a massive outburst of ignorant male aggression of which there is no comparison, has part 2 of her video on sexism in gaming.  Sexism isn’t the right word as it really doesn’t do the series justice.  Tropes doesn’t work either, since they are simply used to denote a cliché.  No, there’s a word for this but I think it’s one of those words that’s applied retroactively, once people look back and go “holy shit, we did that?“.

Do I agree with her individual points?  No, not really.   There are some serious flaws in many of the detailed arguments but holistically, when viewed as a serial issue, the problem does become glaring.  She addresses that weakness, which makes it more relevant I find.

Spinks has a good thread on this topic.  She has mentioned in the past that she sees herself as a feminist, and it’s a particular viewset we gamers lack in general.  There’s a reason so few women enter the field, so few actually game.  The games themselves are certainly at issue but it is the universe of gaming that is really polluted.

How many times have we seen abuse in games and done nothing?  How many women simply will not use voice chat due to the immediate “stalker” reaction?  It’s really hard for gaming to be taken seriously when we’re by far the most immature art form on the planet (and yes, I think rap videos are better than XBOX live).

Everyone has a daughter, a sister, a mother or a friend.  No one would ever want them to be treated the way that the gamer population treats women.  If we want society to respect gaming, we seriously need to start looking at respecting ourselves.

[edit: fixed link]

PvP for the sake of PvP

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Darkfall: Unholy Wars launched a few months late but those who waited apparently enjoy what was given.  It does sound like a lot of fun and reading through that post gets me thinking about what I do like about sandboxes and what I don’t like about FFA PvP.  (To Syncaine’s credit, he has a fairly detailed post about a PvE sandbox that I would love to play someday.)

What I like is being able to do what you want to do, when you want to do it and never really having a schedule.  There’s no common ride and everyone’s adventure is slightly different than another’s.  I really liked that about UO and early SWG.  Community had a big part in it but the ability to socialize to consume PvE content was where it was at.  Killing dragons or liches, treasure hunting, animal taming, building a craft store – it was all great fun.

What I didn’t like was the open/FFA PvP aspects.  One person could ruin 20 or 50 other player’s nights for no other reason than griefing.  Goal-based PvP makes sense and it’s always around controlling PvE access.  I can’t remember a game where you hunted people for their ears in order to make a coat but there are plenty where you keep people away from a resource spawn point so you can craft better gear.  UO private shards all have this problem and typically move towards extremely aggressive PvP controls.

The thing that lacks most in PvP games is the moderation of the activities.  In the real world, there are laws and law enforcement.  Typically these two combined will keep the general population from attempting a PvP activity (theft, harm, etc…) and those that do are tracked down and punished.  This doesn’t exist in games for a few reasons.

First, players are not online, their characters are and not 24/7.  I could play Jim as a PvP dink and Paul as a savior and most people would never know the difference.  There should be tools to identify a player based on all their characters.

Second, law enforcement is a thankless job, with little bite and no compensation.  When a griefer does it for the lulz, there is no in-game punishment possible to stop them from doing it again.  Short of removing all their skills and gear, or simply access to the game, why would the stop?  Moderation then requires a higher level of authority and then you get into the “god complex” issues.  Mind you, League of Legends has a decent system, even if there are still hundreds of horrible people playing.

The sheer lack of social restraint in these games is incredible.  No one would walk down the street and say “wow, that’s a nice car” and then proceed to break the window, hot wire it and proceed to row down a street full of people.  No, what happens is that you approach the driver, compliment them on the car and have a quick conversation.  I mean, I can’t imagine anyone on this planet thinking it’s acceptable for a group of people to simply walk around town, shooting everyone and then say “it’s to teach them buggers a lesson that crime is always around”.

I get PvP, I do.  It’s the reason we have MMA, boxing or any other combat sport.  There’s a primal need to compete against live people.  There’s a superiority complex that makes us strive to be better, to improve.  What I don’t get is some people’s need to intimidate or harass other players and their ability to find enjoyment in it.

Social Framework – Part 2

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To follow up on the previous post about social frameworks, I want to get back into the gaming space.  When multiplayer games started nearly 20 years ago, the mechanics were such that the people you played with were in the “Friends” group.  You had acquaintances, certainly but rarely did you ever have anyone outside your monkeysphere.  In UO for example, I knew my server’s top PKs and guild leaders and most dungeon runs were with the same set of folk.  It was a community.

A few people are posting about social fabric and the need to “focus on the multiplayer foundation” in order to avoid the 3 month life span most games are seeing today.  First to compare – other than the MMO sphere, no genre has ever lasted more than 3 months in the commons.  If they do, they are super niche.  In fact, today’s general gaming includes many MMO-like services (Diablo 3, SimCity, CoD, etc…)So while we can posit that MMOs are only keeping our attention for a small time span compared to previous, we can perhaps assume that this is due to them becoming more like other games – a convergence of styles if you will.

That being said, if you were to take the thesis to the end, you would have to revisit not only the structure of games of the past but the actual environment they were played in.  If I wanted to play with friends on a Monday night, I had to drive to their place to play.  Other than MUDs, which were highly inaccessible, in the year 2000 we had 3 options for MMOs.  Ultima Online, Everquest and Asheron’s Call.  Not really a whole pile of choice here.  When WoW launched in 2004, the landscape had expanded to a dozen or so choices, still pretty bare ground.  When the Looking for Group (or LFD) tool was launched in WoW in 2010, debatably the death of grouping, the market had grown exponentially.  Today’s market is even more crowded, what with the F2P games that allow zero investment players.

If you were to take a solid look at these games and found the core players, I would bet a year’s worth of salary that the total amount across all MMOs would exceed WoW’s peak numbers.  You have the same amount of players with deep investment, they are just spread out across more games.  I know a lot of my friends from the EverQuest days went to EQ2 while only a small handful went to WoW.  The Syndicate, the largest online guild in the world, has presence in dozens of MMOs, all with deep roots in the game.  The flipside to this is that a larger percentage of players are just tourists, trying out a game to see if they like it then moving on.  If only 20% of your base is invested, and you need to supply for 100%, you’re going to have trouble.   EvE succeeds because nearly everyone is invested.  WoW does it through sheer subscription numbers.  SWTOR couldn’t do it without turning the game into a casino.

To sum, it’s simplistic to state that MMOs have to focus on multiplayer.  Of course they do.  It is better to state that they need to focus on getting players invested in the long term through meaningful, non-punitive multiplayer foundations in order to covert as many tourists as possible into core players.

Social Frameworks

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I want to talk a bit about social investment in terms of relationships.  There’s an old adage that says a marriage is like a bank account, you have to put something in to get something out.  All healthy relationships are like that.  There is a term called Dunbar’s Number (or perhaps more commonly as monkeysphere) that posits that any person can only maintain a stable social relationship with a set number of people – around 150.  Outside of this number, you ability to empathize/socialize is practically null.  This post will be about how both of those intersect.

My hypothesis on social structure is that an individual is only capable of a certain amount of social investment at any given time.  Their choices determine where that investment is made.  Below is a representation of social classification, in terms of relationship and their proximity to the individual.

Circle of Confidence

 

If you were to assign a 100% value to the entire set of groups, the heaviest weighting should be from left to right.  You should put more investment in yourself than in your Closest Ally and a whole lot more than in any acquaintances you might have.  In this I mean that all things being equal, given the choice between yourself and someone else, you should pick yourself (altruism aside).  This part really isn’t up for debate, as it’s a social construct that humanity has employed for a very long time.

What is up for debate is the quantity of people in each group, the investment in a given group and the ratio across the spectrum.  If you have 20 people in the Closest Ally group, you are unlikely to have any energy left for the remainder.  Ideally your immediate family is part of your Closest Ally group (spouse/gf/bf included).  You likely have a few friends in there as well.  Your extended family comes next, then a social group of friends you see on a regular basis.  Finally the Acquaintances bucket.  This is where people you know but don’t have any vested interest in are located.   There are people outside of this bucket but as the monkeysphere theory indicates, it’s unlikely that you have the need or want to acknowledge their state.

If you find yourself hopping from group to group and never really finding the time for quality social interactions, odds are you have too many people in your Friends group.  If you only have 3 people you consider friends, then likely you have invested too deeply in the Closest Ally group.  If your cell phone has hundred of contacts, odds are you have too many people in your Acquaintance group.

The flip side to this is that if you identify yourself as being heavily invested into a certain group, then you have a social profile.  Heavy on the left side and you’re likely introverted, focused and invested – maybe even smothering.  Heavy to the right and you’re likely an extrovert, unfocused and shallow.  It’s hard to have quality relationships if you’re at either extreme as you’re likely to have a distorted social framework to rely upon.  Either your sample size is too small and therefore unable to cope with change or it’s too big and you don’t have enough time to invest.

When most people leave school, they are on the right side of the structure.  A few will be on the left but next to no one leaves in a balanced state.  It takes years (sometimes it never happens) of conscious effort to find the proper balance and keep it balanced.  Sometimes your Closest Ally in school moves to be an Acquaintance, sometimes the other way around. Likely, you will find yourself with less people you call friends and more people you call acquaintances.  No matter what happens, embrace the fact that you’re going to change and that change is a good thing.

 

Buying a New Set of Wheels

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With 2 squirts making a family of 4, our little Toyota Echo is getting cramped.  Pretty sure I won’t be able to fit a set of golf clubs in there anymore.  With the better half on maternity leave, this leaves us at an economic disadvantage.  To sum, we need something bigger and we need to pay very close attention to the price.

Given that we both enjoy the outdoors and that our eldest seems to feel the same way, we’re more or less road warriors.  That means cargo space + fuel efficiency.  I have a dislike for mini-vans, in that 90% of the time you’re in one, it’s just wasted space and therefore wasted fuel – even with a variable engine.  There’s certainly a stigma attached to it, and if memory serves, actual mini-van sales are on a crazy decline.  SUVs, in general, are giant pieces of crap.  They are often put on car frames, let you load up on passenger space but provide less cargo space than a box of donuts.  Plus their fuel efficiency is horrible, they drive poorly (due to the perceived notion that farther from the ground = better) and they are priced way above value.  All that to say we boiled it down to two main options – Subaru Outback or Golf/Jetta Wagon.

Being Canadian, our pricing structure is special like a snowflake.  Market value is based on suggested retail value (MSRP) and no one knows the invoice price (unless you pay for it, like CarCost).  This means you’re negotiating at an artificially inflated price with all the power in the salesperson’s hands.  The US market by contrast, provides invoice pricing to the public, giving them more negotiating power.  This also means that they are more options (trim if you will) when it comes to a given car.  In Canada, there are 5 variants of the Outback.  The US has at least 10 that I’ve found.  In the end, we found out that there’s essentially a 20% markup in Canada.  When you’re looking at a $30K+ vehicle, this isn’t chump change.  Another nice thing to consider is that the warranty coverage is usually the same in both countries.

One final caveat.  If a car is manufactured is not manufactured in Canada or the US, then you pay a 6.1% tariff on cross-border purchases.  The Golf/Jetta is not made here or there, so I’d have to pay.  The Outback is made in Indiana.  That’s ~$2000.

Now we get into the math and my love of spreadsheets.

If I buy the Outback here, the MSRP is about $34,000.  If I buy it in the states, the invoice price is $27,000.  I’ll be charged 200$ at the border to transfer the vehicle.  I won’t pay the state tax due to not being a resident but I will be charged the HST once I come back home.  I would pay HST here too.  Subaru is currently offering a 1.9% interest rate for 4 years.  Buying in the US means cash only and the bank is looking at giving me ~5%.  The Canadian dollar is at par (or better) lately, so that comes out more or less a wash.  Tabulate all that together and we get.

Total cost of the car in Canada: $39,000.  With interest: $40,500.

Total cost of the car from the US: $30,900.  With interest: $34,100

I save $8000 if I pay cash for both or I save $6400 if I wait 4 years.  Even if I had looked more at the Golf/Jetta, I would have saved ~$5000.  Hello!  Why would anyone buy a car on this side of the border with that type of saving?

Here are a few resources to help you out:

RIV – the Canadian government site

Monsieur Maggots – a step by step view of the process

Clickity Clique

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A clique is a group of insular people with not much concern with the outside.  A stereotypical clique is one that shuns anything outside of that group.  Everyone has either been in one or seen one in their life.  School is made up of cliques.  This is based on a primal need to belong and the instinct to fear something different.  I didn’t enjoy high school all that much.  Cliques were certainly a part of it but they were a bigger problem for me in primary school.  Our high school had a dress code, which gave a fair bit less power to the cliques – but there was certainly one particular group who rose to the top.  From what I’ve read about those members since then, none have actually gotten anywhere in life.  “4 touchdowns in a single game” syndrome I guess

When I was a teen, working in a grocery store, we had our own little clique or sorts.  We had a lot of fun and I’m sure people looked at us with a “what a weird bunch of folk”.  Insular I would say but not so much shunning of outsiders as to be honest, we were a bunch of outsiders ourselves.  You don’t work and associated yourself with co-workers in a grocery store if you’re cool right?  It was good times. It was social growth.

As an adult, I am certainly subject to cliques.  I have a group of friends, all extremely bright, and that intimidates most people trying to fit in.  If you have an ounce of self-doubt, I can assure you that you will feel it grow exponentially.  My wife loves to remind me of the first time she met the group as a whole during a party.  It was getting a bit late, we had a few drinks and we decided to play a drinking game, but a quiz-type based on numbers.  Most games would be something like “name 7 colors” or “name 5 sports with balls”.  Not this game.  The first question out of the gate was “name 7 countries that assisted in the invasion of Iraq”.  The odd thing was that there wasn’t much drinking done during that game.  We haven’t played it since.

The round-about point I’m trying to make here is that at a very basic level, cliques serve a useful social purpose.  They breed familiarity and comfort, allow like-minded people a place to share ideas and provide a foundational support structure for social endeavors.  It’s like an extended family if you will.  There is a tipping point however, where familiarity leads to isolation and near xenophobia.  Different is shunned rather than explored.  A lack of trust with the outside world starts to permeate every discussion, seeming to create conspiracy theories everywhere.

It’s easy to point out that type of clique from the outside but near impossible to do so from the inside.  From that perspective, everything seems like an attack and a relatively low sense of self-worth, combined with a need for acceptance can make even the most cheerful of people aggressive.  That’s the key if you think about it – people within the clique need a better sense of internal self-worth.  If they need someone else to tell them they are good and that’s the only positive stimulus, why in the world would they drop it?  Maybe Stuart Smalley had it right all along.

The Journey of Distance

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Warning – Introspection ahead.

As a father of two young children, girls in fact, I find it difficult to separate the real world from the one they live in.  There is a psychological “shelter” factor that comes into play, more instinctive than I would have thought previous to parenthood, that wants to keep these packages safe from harm.  I do realize that this is a temporary state as one day they will fly from the nest and it’s my responsibility (well my wife and I) to ensure they are properly equipped to survive.  This isn’t a new thought as I had pondered this exact statement for nearly the entire term for my first child and holding her within seconds of her birth.  What has set the idea home however is my second child.

There is a piece of a child that lives in a world of wonder.  That piece is akin to a flower and it requires all the love and attention you can provide it.  I will not lie and say this is easy, it isn’t.  As the child grows, it becomes more self-aware and by its very nature, more likely to self-harm with experimentation.  My eldest daughter knows of no fear and while I cringe at the things she does, I also have to sit back and be amazed at her freedom.  She has had scraped and bruises since before she could walk and each tumble was followed with a smile – as if you say “Did you see that?!  That was awesome”.  I have difficulty understanding how I can keep that sense of eternal awe within her – but I can relate to her.

My second child is still quite young but has since birth smiled for what seems every minute of every day.  She is much more emotional than her sister and leaves it out to bear.  If her sister is upset or loud, she starts to cry.  She needs a shoulder to snuggle upon.  It’s like watching a piece of tissue paper float in the wind and always, always with a smile.  I could have the worst day and to come home to that just makes me forget everything.  Now, my wife and I smile a fair amount.  It’s infectious really.  But I don’t think I can properly related to the concept of always smiling.  It almost makes you feel petty in that you can’t always find something to smile about.

To sum, as a Dad, I find it the most difficult to be at the right distance from my children.  I want them to grow up to be productive members of society, with a core set of values, as do most parents.  I also want them to learn about independence and self-worth and I that is not something you can teach, it must be experienced.  Finding that balance of hand holding and letting go is by far the most difficult journeys I have ever undertaken.  But I’m ready for the trip.

Moral Development

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As a father to two young children, and having a personal passion for social psychology, I find the concept of morality (or social integration) fascinating.  Parallel to this, I find that the vocational schools live nearly entirely on this aspect.  Teachers, doctors, lawyers, religion – they all provide a particular value or input into society’s definition of morality.

There’s a simple test to show that morality, for a very long time, is defined by outside sources and not from the inside.  Ask a child if it’s OK to steal a loaf of bread to feed a hungry family and the majority will say no.  Same question to teenagers will have a split answer.  Young adults tend to say OK.  Older adults are going to be all over the place because their moral development may or may not have progressed.  The answer itself isn’t important so must as the justification.  Your personal experience and knowledge will directly impact that answer.

According to Kohlber’s stages of moral development, there are 6 stages that people may pass through.  The first two are focused on the individual and can be seen as being selfish.  We would typically associate this behavior with a child or youth trying to find their place in society. I do know a lot of adults that remain here.  This typically reflects the inability to show respect or compassion for others – a typical narcissistic behavior.

The next two are where conformity to the masses enters the picture and found in teens and many adults.  Society has expectations of performance and people measure themselves to it.  This is the main reason reality TV is so popular, since it gives people the feeling of moral superiority.  This is where politics and laws operate as they work at a fundamental level for society.  If effect, society is telling you what is or is not acceptable.  The majority of adults live in this space.

The final two are based on individual principles and the capability of finding individuality in society.  Rules change based on evolving needs – the core principle of democracy.  The highest form is more akin to empathy/compassion in understanding the other’s position.  Preventative measures, rehabilitation are key concepts where the previous tier focuses more on punishment.  I know of very few people that are at this level and by definition, it should be a small amount.

It’s an interesting challenge for a parent to guide a child along this path, especially if they never really exceeds the self-interest level.  I know I had to look outside my home to find progress.  I realize that I only have so much time with my kids and that the two groups of people my children will see more – their friends and their teachers – will need to be aligned with our goals.  The former I have some control over currently and hopefully we can provide enough guidance that when they get older, they pick “quality” friends.  The teacher portion though, that’s out of my control unless I change schools.  It does mean however, that I need to have a social contract with each teacher, so that we can all work jointly to provide not only an academic learning experience but also a social and moral one as well.

Social Psychology

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Taking a break from your regularly scheduled (and often missed) gaming blurbs, I wanted to expand a bit on the concepts of psychology and how it works with social interactions.  Granted, you could spend your entire life talking about just one part of the topic and I can do little justice in my tiny blog, but consider this an experiment in wall pasting.

Preamble.  I am a people watcher.  Introverted overachiever, never really had to work hard to get through in life, not much I’ve ever had a whole lot in common with the, ahem, common person up until I reached the adult workforce.  I mentioned this in a previous post a while back but I don’t really remember being a child and worry free, nor was there ever an “aha!” moment of adulthood.  It just sort of was always there.  The adult workforce is very similar to school, in terms of skill sets.  The difference is experience and wisdom.  I’ve been lucky enough to meet the right people at the right time to move ahead at a rather quick pace.  I get to work with incredibly smart people on a daily basis.  I like the challenge.

So if you’ve read that you’ve likely come to some very basic conclusions about me.  If you read between the lines, you’ve likely applied certain psychological templates to me as well.  This is good.

For most people, when they meet someone new, they come to some quick judgment if they “like or don’t like” the other.  Most attribute this to a gut feeling.  Quite right!  This gut feeling is a personal metric system we use to gauge relationships, and the likely return on investment.  Or more plainly, we ask ourselves “is this person worth my time?”.  While we’re teens, we are learning to set a baseline for this metric and it will continue to be tweaked until the day we drop.  By the time you’re in the 20s, you’ll have a pretty solid baseline for all future relations.  Here’s the tricky part, the health of that baseline is impacted by psychology.

Your personal experience is the largest factor.  A single child is looking for something different than a child of 5 just as a broken home is going to provide a different mindset than one that is not.  Maybe your baseline is simply “will this person give me attention” or “will this person provide good discussion”.  If you’re a person of eternal optimism, then you’re likely not going to get a healthy relationship with a pessimist.

While everyone goes through a period of triage in their social circle, it’s important to realize that you can build new criteria over time.  This is more or less a testing phase, where you find a particular item you might not be interested in but give it a shot to see what comes of it.  With practice, you get better at handling that type of personality and you can try it more and more often.  You diversify your social abilities so that you have a different toolset for people that have type A personalities and those that have type B.  Along the way, in order to get better at this diversification, you learn more about those personalities and their driving forces.  “Why does that person need to please everyone?”, “why are they an adrenaline junkie?”, “why are they always smiling?”

I said earlier that I liked watching people.  Without meeting someone, I tend to find the common traits of character that they provide.  So for example the other day I saw a lady walking down the street.  Power skirt, 5 inch heels, ankle bracelet, no wedding band, blouse and jacket, straight shoulder length hair and a few other features.  So while I might not be 100% correct, based on my experience and location (world customs differ, naturally), I could deduce that she worked with people, was a middle-aged divorcee with at least 2 kids in their teens, a heavy smoker, a francophone, in need of attention and likely to respond positively to a flirtatious conversation.

To continue on the thought, it’s not that I like or dislike the person at this point; it simply gives me a reference point as to how I could start a conversation.  I’m not going to start with a story about a sports team but a chat about a night at the bar is probably going to work.  I do it so often now that I don’t even think about it.  It makes meeting new people a whole lot of fun since I don’t ever feel like I have nothing to say.

There really isn’t much of a closing statement here just that the concept of social interaction is factored by thousands of small and big factors and that our brains are able to take all of that data and within a few seconds, determine if we like or don’t like someone.  While we call it a “gut” reaction, it’s really one of the most complex decisions you’ll ever make without realizing you’re making it.

One day I’ll talk about how this social model works in cyberspace, where you lose 90% of the social cues due to not having a visual.