20 Questions about Role Playing and Gender
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Introduction
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As the title suggests this is a questionnaire about roleplaying and
the performance of gender in MUDs (I am using the term broadly here,
pointing to all the different forms of Multi User Domains that are out
there). This questionnaire is part of a research I am conducting to
write my MA thesis for Cultural Anthropology at the University of
Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
The data I will gather from this questionnaire will be used as
background information for the more detailed information I am
gathering from interviews and "participant observation" as
Anthropologists call it. The results from this questionnaire will not
be used to make statistical inferences about online Role Playing or
Mudders in general. I am aware that the results will only reflect the
opinions of a small proportion of the Mudders that read rec.games.mud
who care to respond. As I said, the results from this questionnaire
will be used to inform my research and will provide a context in
which to place the indepth interviews.
I'd really appreciate it if you can help me out with answering
this questionnaire.
Some notes
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Please answer the questions clearly and succinctly, but feel free to
go into detail if you think it will clarify your answer. After each
question I have provided you with a prompt, but I just couldn't get it
to blink ;-)
If you don't feel comfortable answering a question, just leave it
blank.
If you have multiple characters, base your answers on your main
character. If you are playing a cross-gender character but this is not
your main character, please refer to your (main) cross-gender
character in the questions that refer to cross-gender roleplaying. If
you feel that giving information about multiple characters will
clarify your answer, feel free to do so.
Two weeks after this posting I will post the initial results (as
far as they are quantifiable) from the questionnaire back to this
newsgroup. I will also repost this questionnaire then, and one month
from this initial posting I will post the final results of the
questionnaire back to this group. The results will also be uploaded to
my homepage.
If you have any questions regarding this questionnaire you can
e-mail me directly (frank.sch...@student.uva.nl) or, if it is really
important, you could e-mail my thesis advisor, Anna Aalten
(aal...@pscw.uva.nl).
Anonymity
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All information will be treated as confidential. Information gathered
from these questionnaires however will be presented in the following
fashions, eg 'x percent of respondents is male' or 'one respondent
answered "blah blah."'
If you would like to remain totally anonymous then you can use an
anonymous remailer to submit your answers. How to do that is explained
below, at the end of the questionnaire.
MAKE SURE YOU DON'T REPLY TO THIS MESSAGE IN THE NEWSGROUP BUT SEND
IT AS E-MAIL.
The easy questions
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1. What is your real life gender?
2. What is your real life age?
3. Where do you live in real life? (City, country)
4. How much time do you spend roleplaying? (Hours per week)
5. What type of MU* do you spend the most time on? (eg Social
[Lambda style], Roleplaying [Pern/StarTrek style], Adventure/MUD
[AD&D derived, often Diku or LP based])
About Gender
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6. Did you ever or do you currently play a cross-gender character?
(ie a character of a gender other than your real life gender)
7. If no, why have you never played a cross-gender character?
8. If yes, did your character succesfully pass as the gender you
chose to play your character?
9. Was the performance of your cross-gender character ever questioned
on its gender? If so, what gave you away and how was that
situation resolved?
10. What do you think is crucial to convincingly play a character of a
gender other than your real life gender?
11. What are the qualities of a character that you pay particular
attention to regarding the character's gender? (Both in describing
your own character and looking at another character. Think about
physical description, clothing, language use, body language, etc.)
12. While playing a cross-gender character, did you ever get into an
affectual/sexual relationship with another character? If so, what
was the gender of the _character_ that your character got involved
with?
About Gender 2
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13. Do you consciously make an effort to present your character as
male, female or other (Neuter, plural, etc.)?
14. Were there ever situations where you had to give the gender of
your character extra thought, where you had to think about whether
the actions or things your character said or was about to say were
appropriate for its gender? Can you give an example?
15. For you personally, what is the significance of the fact that (at
least online) someone can portray a person of a gender other than
her/his own gender, possibly without you ever knowing?
In General
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16. When you're roleplaying, do you take the other character(s) for
granted (ie you're not trying to find out anything about the
players OOCly) or do you, more or less consciously, try to figure
out what kind of person the player is OOCly?
17. Are real life (Out Of Character) and roleplay (In Character)
closely connected for you? Can you give an example of how real
life roleplaying influence eachother?
18. Are there any things you have learned and/or applied in real life
from the way your character has fared? Can you give an example?
Conclusion
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19. Is there anything you'd like to say with respect to this
questionnaire?
20. Are you interested in helping me out with an online interview? If
so, please state your e-mail address here.
Using a Remailer
----------------
There is an anonymous remailing service available at
<remai
...@replay.com>. Information about this service is available
from
http://www.replay.com. If you want to submit anonymously, follow
these steps:
* Send your mail To: remai...@replay.com
* Enter a Subject: re: research
* Then enter as the very first line of your message two colons
* and as the second line enter: Anon-To: frank.sch...@student.uva.nl
* Then leave a line blank and paste the questionnaire and the answers
in
The header of your message would look like this:
To: remai...@replay.com
From: y...@your.domain.com
Subject: re: research
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::
Anon-To: frank.sch...@student.uva.nl
text of questionnaire and answers...
