Gender Bias in Games

http://www.slis.indiana.edu/research/working_papers/files/SLISWP-03-05.pdf

This is a study by Anna M. Martinson from Indiana University regarding gender bias in games. She attempts to explain the general male proclivity and female indifference towards video games and proposes ways to expose girls to games in ways they would enjoy. Martinson believes that video games have always been considered a male domain, and therefore women are underrepresented in every aspect of game design. Some of the examples she gives include the ridiculous ways in which female characters are often portrayed in games in terms of physical proportions and clothing selection, and the often pathetic, background roles they are given. She also claims that since game designers are mostly white, middle-class males, they unintentionally design games with themselves as the target audience. Finally, she explains how girls may look for different things in games than do boys, and that the current game market does not have much to offer to girls. Some of the things she lists as desirable to female players are “a creative component, … female player-controlled characters, realistic setting, positive, unsolicited feedback, slow or variable pace, predictable rules, clear explanation of rules, absence of violence, absence of killing, absence of evil characters” (page 15). Most of these factors are absent from most games on the market, especially the complete absence of violence, and creative component. Martinson concludes that much like sports, video games, once a male-dominated domain, could become more equal and enjoyable to both sexes, if more games are made with women in mind.

I agree with the author that most of today’s games are not made for women. Even though many games now have important female characters, and most MMORPGs and other open-ended RPGs which allow the player to make their own character have options to make characters male or female, the games’ content is generally more male-oriented. Most games are heavy in combat and competitive elements, and lack creative elements or realistic settings. There are, however, games that fit Martinson’s requirements on the market. For example, the Sims has just about everything she wants in a game. Other games, such as Final Fantasy X-2 revolve around female heroines who are anything but helpless and pathetic (though as a side note, I was only able to endure about 10 minutes of the game as it was far too feminine for my tastes, and I don’t think this is what Martinson is aiming for). Furthermore, of the girls I know, the vast majority never played video games when they were young, and it is a lot harder to pick something up and be good at it if you did not do it from an early age. I spoke with two female friends before writing this entry to ask their opinion on games. Both replied with virtually identical answers: they thought video games were cool, but had never played them when they were young and therefore were not good enough at them to really enjoy the experience. Conversely, almost every male of my age group that I know played video games from the time they were in elementary school (even though some stopped a long time ago). I believe that as time goes on and computers and video game consoles become more common household items and less of a male-only activity, there will be an increasing number of female gamers and female game designers, which in turn will bring about an increase of female-oriented video games.

More on Latency

http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1103599.1103624

I am not going to summarize this study, as it is fairly similar to the first one I did. However, as a point of interest, this study found that 120ms was the average of players' ideas of maximum tolerable latency in WC3, the same number I gave from my own experiences without having read this paper at the time.

Table-Top Video Games

http://grouplab.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/papers/2006/06-Multimodalgames-Tse-PerGames/06-Multimodalgames-Tse-PerGames.pdf

This paper by Edward Tse, Saul Greenberg, Chia Shen, Clifton Forlines attempts to demonstrate the benefits of developing a technology that would allow video games to be played on a digital tabletop by multiple people, using speech commands and gestures to control the action rather than the usual input devices such as keyboards, mice, and game controllers. According to the researchers, this would be a good addition to home gaming because it would allow users to see and hear each other (unlike multiplayer computer games) and give users the same perspective of the action and allow to look at one another instead of a TV screen (unlike multiplayer console games). To demonstrate their technology and its benefits, the researchers ported two single-player computer games to their tabletop system: WC3, and the Sims, a “life simulation” game where the player controls the lives of on-screen avatars when they are at home, and attempts to make their life “better” by upgrading their house. This allowed two users (in their scenario) to collaborate over the games, even though by default these games could only be played by two people if one looked over the other’s shoulder or they took turns.

While this system may be a good idea for the future, in my opinion it is not quite feasible yet. Furthermore, the researchers had some misconceptions regarding current multiplayer games. For example, they assumed that all multiplayer console games use a “split-screen” perspective wherein each player has a custom view of his/her in-game environment. This is not the case. While a split-screen perspective is the norm for console multiplayer FPS games, it certainly does not apply to all multiplayer console games. For example, games of the fighting genre and most sports games (with a few exceptions such as golf, which involves taking turns) show both/all players’ avatars on the screen in the same place at the same time, forgoing the need for the split-screen. Furthermore, all game consoles that have come out since 1999 with the exception of the As to the use of speech in multiplayer games, many systems now come with built-in voice communication, or use third-party programs to achieve this. Examples of this include Microsoft’s Xbox Live, which allows users to speak into headsets to other people in their game, Half-Life’s built-in button-activated voice-chat, and Ventrilo, a free program that allows users to do the same. Everyone who plays multiplayer online games that use teamwork (which is most games) at all competitively uses some form of voice chat to collaborate with their teammates. While this is not quite the same as just pointing to something on a tabletop, it is far more versatile. The biggest problem I saw with the tabletop system is the lack of possibilities it provides in terms of games able to be played. Though the researchers attempted to demonstrate the “variety” of genres one could play on their system, both games they ported had a bird-eye perspective and involved management of many things at once on a map (be it an army base and its soldiers, or people and their furniture). I fail to see how this system would work with any game that used a first person perspective (FPS, racing, many Role-Playing games) or even a third-person perspective focusing solely on controlling one avatar (fighting games, sports games, many other RPGs). Even if it were possible, controlling an FPS through a table would involve standing over the table with a finger constantly pointing somewhere, which would be far more tedious and tiring than the traditional method. This eliminates nearly all game genres, other than Real-Time Strategy (RTS), such as WC3, or other top-down simulations, such as the Sim series of games, and games of global expansion, such as the Civilization series.

The tabletop gaming system is a novel idea overall and may be fun to use, but would require games to be made specifically for it, and that is not likely to happen considering how competitive the game market is. I believe it would be best to play table-top games on a table (and there are plenty of table-top games on the market) and leave video games to their own realm.

The Effect of Latency on RTS Gaming

http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/970000/963901/p3-sheldon.pdf?key1=963901&key2=9663941711&coll=GUIDE&dl=GUIDE,&CFID=14398107&CFTOKEN=29806142

This paper is a description of a study done by 5 Worcester Polytechnic Institute students regarding latency (lag) in Warcraft III. These students split WC3 into three basic categories (building, exploration, combat) and tested the effects of lag on each of these using simple maps they custom-built for the experiment. They concluded that even at extremely high latencies (500ms-1000ms) combat and building were almost unaffected, and only exploration became much harder. The system by which they judged how much lag affected the game was rather vague: it compared different users playing together and took averages of game scores with different levels of lag. As far as I could tell, there was not a standard setup for who was the “host” player (no latency) and who was the “lagger,” and there was no compensation for player skill (or lack thereof).

I saw a number of problems with this study, which, perhaps, were more apparent to me as a player than would be to someone looking at the study through a strictly scientific approach. First and foremost, the researchers assumed that a “divide and conquer” approach was applicable to this study. They took what they perceived to be the three important aspects of the game and studied each one separately. I strongly disagree with this approach. The maps they used (page 6) for the study were ridiculously simplistic, and not at all like real WC3 multiplayer maps. Real maps combine all three aspects and more, and speed matters quite a bit. Even if a player with 500ms latency could compete against the 0 lag player on such a simple map, this is not an indicator that they could compete on a full WC3 map that includes so much more. Furthermore, they made no indication as to the skill level of the participants of their study, or how many different players took part in the study. For example, they even admit that their results for the exploration map are skewed because the player learned the map after a few tests (page 9). Overall, this study does not represent an actual online experience in the least. In fact, pings as high as those tested in this study never even occur in real gameplay because the game would be completely unplayable. I host games on Battle.net (WC3’s gaming server) almost daily and check pings before I start the game. Pings in the 200-275ms range are the high end of the spectrum; most fall far short of that, between 25-100ms. In fact, if a player pings higher than 200ms, other players usually clamor to have that player kicked from the game to prevent lag, even though it mostly affects only the actual player himself. Generally, players with pings over ~120ms will complain about lag being a problem and blame lag for any poor performance. I can personally attest that playing with ~150ms is not very much fun, and anything above 300ms is completely unplayable. Someone playing with a ping like 500ms is unheard of, and I’ve never even seen a ping above ~600ms. As a result, I have a hard time attributing any relevance to this study. Though the authors argue that lag is not a big deal in Real-Time Strategy (RTS) games like WC3, as opposed to FPS games, I strongly disagree with their conclusions. Due to the high level of micromanagement involved in a typical game of WC3 or DotA, the lag restrictions are virtually identical to that of an FPS game like CS.

Background

To begin, I thought I’d write a brief history of my gaming experiences and the reasons for my interest in interaction in competitive online multiplayer games. My first serious online gaming experience began when I was 14. The game was Turok 2: Seeds of Evil (henceforth, Turok). This was a fairly standard First Person Shooter (FPS), with progressive net coding which allowed people with even very bad internet connections play without much detriment to their experience. However, the game had sub-par graphics for its time, and never had good support from the publisher. As a result, the community was never as large as many of the more popular online games, and dwindled progressively as the game got older. What the community lacked in size, however, it more than made up for in closeness and enthusiasm. This resulted in people staying with the game far longer than would be expected. I played Turok for about 2 years before moving on. My next game of choice was Half-Life: Counter-Strike (CS). This was initially a free, fan-made modification (mod) of Half-Life which quickly surpassed the official game in popularity. Its community was proportionally gigantic, and most times I played, I played with people I had never seen and would never see again in a game. I stopped playing CS about a month before I came to college. Though I still played occasionally, mostly with hall-mates who also played the game, this was limited to one or two times a month, not even close to the amount I played during high school. For the next two years I played mostly console games with my friends, and stayed away from online gaming. However, for my 20^th birthday (September 2005), two of my friends bought me Warcraft III (WC3), so that I could play with them. Since then I have, fairly actively, played another fan-made mod of WC3, called Defense of the Ancients: All-Stars (DotA). This game has a much larger community than did Turok but not nearly as big as that of CS, striking a good balance and rounding out my online gaming experience. Interactions with other players have been different in each game as well, but I will write more on that at a later time.