Robin Mayne
Web Team Manager
Joined: 15 Oct 2001
From: BioWare |
 Posted: Wednesday, 20 November 2002 06:37PM |
BioWare's Community Manager Jay Watamaniuk profiles community member LadyRolePlay, currently the top rated player at NWConnections, the premiere matching site. The profile introduces the fascinating LadyRolePlay, her background, how she got into RPG games, and the state of the union on RPG's from a female perspective.
Robin
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Robin Mayne
BioWare WebGUY 
+++ Mass Effect +++ |
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hahnsoo
Game Owner
 NWN
NWN: SoU
NWN: HotU
Joined: 12 May 2002
From: Indiana, USA |
Posted: Wednesday, 20 November 2002 07:09PM |
LRP aka Arwen ab Alleric plays in my weekly game on Wednesdays, and she really has made Dragonspire her home. She is a wonderfully emotional roleplayer, and she is very good at giving feedback as well as taking feedback from the DM.
This interview had her a bit frazzled to come up with some cogent responses, but I can see it turned out okay. Congratulations, Arwen/LadyRolePlay!
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"Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist.Children already know that dragons exist.Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed."
G.K.Chesterton
The DMFI |
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Gunti Fallowbeard
Game Owner
 NWN
NWN: SoU
NWN: HotU
Joined: 21 Jul 2002
From: Bath, some place in England. |
Posted: Wednesday, 20 November 2002 07:42PM |
You want a REAL profile:-
This dwarf is always here.
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The only lawful evil Dwarven Swashbuckler; until a stupid deck of magical deck of cards made me Chaotic Good that is!!  |
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Cylvia
Game Owner
 NWN
NWN: SoU
NWN: HotU
Joined: 19 Aug 2002 |
Posted: Wednesday, 20 November 2002 08:18PM |
It's really nice to see other women who are into the social aspect of this game. I spend most of my time in the roleplay or social rooms where the I've encountered some of the best characters around. Some women even play a male character so convincingly I have no clue about it until much later. Anyway, I'm sure the percentage of women for this game is greater than 5%. To me it doesn't really matter though. As long as a player puts his/her heart into the character, it will only make the game more enjoyable for everyone. I myself play a druid by the name of Cylvia Marrs. You might see me often in the social modules. I hope to be hosting my own module very soon. well, that's my 2 cents worth. 
Cyl
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Cyl |
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Betr'thanu
Game Owner
 NWN
Joined: 14 Aug 2002 |
Posted: Wednesday, 20 November 2002 08:21PM |
Well Hurrah!!!
-Divinio 
(I too can play a woman so convincingly that People start hitting on me. Yikes!)
[ Edited By Betr'thanu: Wednesday, 20 November 08:24PM (GMT) ] |
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Crusufix
Game Owner
NWN
NWN: SoU
NWN: HotU
NWN 2
Joined: 18 May 2002
From: Trapped between a rock and a flat place. |
Posted: Wednesday, 20 November 2002 08:49PM |
Suuuure Leave it up to a woman to have to have a 2 part interview!
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"If I had my life to live over again, I'd be a plumber."
-Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
As usual I could always be wrong.
www.standonguard.com |
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Jay Watamaniuk
Community Manager
Joined: 19 Nov 2001
From: Edmonton, Alberta |
Posted: Wednesday, 20 November 2002 09:17PM |
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she had a loooot to say I felt it was important stuff so I broke it up into two parts. Next weeks is pretty darn cool as well. |
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Jublian
Game Owner
 NWN
Joined: 10 Jul 2002 |
Posted: Thursday, 21 November 2002 06:23AM |
I have the honor of playing with LRP in the game she plays the dwarf fighter Rasha (mentioned in the end of the interview). Although she started several weeks after the rest of the party, she became and integral part of the group by the second game. Rasha is funny, naive, simple, complex and terribly confusing all at the same time. My poor character has head-aches every time we play :-)
LRP is wonderful in character and maintaining complex personalities and a real pleasure to play with.
Congrats LRP! You deserve it!
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"Push" is the force exerted upon the door mark "Pull" |
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andrewbadger
Game Owner
 NWN
NWN: SoU
NWN: HotU
Joined: 23 Jul 2002
From: England |
Posted: Thursday, 21 November 2002 10:10AM |
LRP is obviously an excellent roleplayer, and thus deserving of an interview. I admit I find her views on the male/female aspects of CRPGs a bit simplistic and noticably biased, but I guess it was only a 2-part interview!  I could argue about that all day, but compared to her positive contribution to online games, it is totally insignificant.
Well done LRP!
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For is it not written "Well I'll go to the foot of our stairs!"
The Way of Mrs Cosmopolite |
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LadyRolePlay
Game Owner
 NWN
NWN: SoU
NWN: HotU
SW: KotOR PC
NWN 2
NWN 2: MotB
Joined: 14 Jul 2002 |
Posted: Thursday, 21 November 2002 07:46PM |
aye I know the views on the male-female thing were frightfully simplistic, truly this is one of the most hotly debated topics around, heck, look at the amount of books and pop psychology stuff devoted to the issue, ie just to name one Men are From Mars Women Are From Venus.
But at the time I filled the inteview out I was making an honest attempt to keep it to one article LOL and so was in a sense forced to try to state a complex issue into a few simpistic statements. THIS WAS NOT TO SAY--men cannot play women and vice versa, can I tell, yes I almost always can, but this can take many sessions over time to do so.
I saw a Newsweek article that came out and featured on the front page was the question, online gaming, the wave of the future, Guess which picture was on the front--was it NWN, no, it was The Simms Online,
One of the points that I made in the article and will defend to the death---you will not get more females interested in CRPG's and online play such as provided by NWN UNTIL you can change the perception of women that such games as NWN can offer a rich, socially interactive world for them to be in.
EA has done a masteful job in so marketing their games as such and in such a way as to appeal to both genders. And it was my view, and still think so, that NWN could likewise take the ball and run with it.
Now NWN, has only just broken the ice and scratched the surface, there are going to be so many wonderful and ground breaking strides in future expansions. The toolset, the internet playability of the game, were already a giant leap forward in the role play gaming field. I just want so badly for more women to become aware of this and aware of the opportunities. DARN IT this game is miles and tons better than the Sims any day, and want to see it on the cover of Newsweek LOL, |
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Cowman109
Game Owner
 NWN
NWN: SoU
NWN: HotU
NWN 2
NWN 2: MotB
Joined: 21 Jun 2002 |
Posted: Thursday, 21 November 2002 08:21PM |
I have the honor of LRP being a player in my game. She truly is a great player and deserves to be profiled (if she considers it a good thing). I believe she is actually the only female player who has joined one of my servers. Possibly the second, but still, I do agree that women aren't as attracted to these kinds of games as men. The NWN box seems to focus on a male audience. But I don't know what she says about the sims being bad. I love the sims! Err... *glances at the Bioware representatives staring at my post...* but I like NWN better!  |
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Draedar
Game Owner
NWN
Joined: 04 Jun 2002 |
Posted: Friday, 22 November 2002 01:59AM |
Having never actually played a game with LRP I must however say that I agree with her on the topic of females in a group. Females really add to the aspect of roleplaying in a party. A one gender party is pretty much like roleplaying a one race party or a one class party (without balancing problems). Female characers don't even have to be for the romance part, if there was someone playing an old woman I would still be happy that we had a two gender party.
I'm always looking on forums hoping to find a female player looking for a party but I only do this for diversity and interesting roleplay |
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Cylvia
Game Owner
NWN
NWN: SoU
NWN: HotU
Joined: 19 Aug 2002 |
Posted: Friday, 22 November 2002 03:49AM |
I have the privilege of playing the beta test version of "The Sims Online" and can honestly say the game is very gender neutral. The main focus is all about socializing though, so expect to see exactly that when picking up the game off a store shelf. Hopefully The Sims Online will send a message to other companies on different ways of making online games. I've got a bunch of friends on Neverwinter Nights, Men and Women both. Without the player interaction that we're all privileged to experience, this game would have lost lots of it's appeal. Bioware knew this, and many other software and game companies know this too. Makes me sort of anxious to see what the future of video games might bring to everyone. Anyway, that's the rest of my 2 cents.
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Cyl
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Cyl |
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LadyRolePlay
Game Owner
NWN
NWN: SoU
NWN: HotU
SW: KotOR PC
NWN 2
NWN 2: MotB
Joined: 14 Jul 2002 |
Posted: Friday, 22 November 2002 08:50AM |
could not agree more with the last post. Truly NWN would have been on my shelf gathering dust long ago if not for the online play, and that online play more specifically involving the stories of one and all and the drama and comedy, of all the interaction that goes on. This is espcially true of games that go week to week where everyone comes to know eveyone else so well, this includes the dm, as cowman well knows *grins* we have had loads of fun that can only come from knowing each other well. I cannot recommend highly enough finding those games that have a continuing campaing week in and week out. So the social interaction, actully play a game called Gloomviell, where one of the characters is an elderly female, and she is choice let me tell you
Which brings me round again, the Simms is gender neutral, social interaction is stressed, the game is PRECEIVED BY the public as in fact gender neutral. BUT NWN is truely, I feel also gender neutral, and social interaction, and role play are stressed in the very best of the games, at any rate, BUT it IS NOT PRECEIVED as such by the public. Rather it is seen as one of those male things, male games. Ignorance keeps the other half away. If they only knew what awaited them, and guess it is my hope that someday, whoever does advertising for bioware and such can somehow figure out how to convey to the public, the truly social interactive aspects of the game, Not only would someone like Bioware be literally richer for it, but the gaming world would be so much richer for it as well,
Oh and sorry really did not mean to upset any Simms fans, just think NWN is everybit the equal, and speaking from a strickly personal view point, for me NWN is a heck of a lot more fun LOL
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EinWolf
Game Owner
 NWN
NWN: SoU
NWN: HotU
Jade Empire:SE
NWN 2
Joined: 27 Oct 2002 |
Posted: Saturday, 23 November 2002 10:47AM |
Hi, this is my first time posting. I thought I'd kinda make my entrance here because the topic is interesting. Many things have been touched upon, from marketing to women and what women like. I agree totaly that there aren't nearly enough females into games, but I also don't think it's entirely to do with content and marketing. I honestly don't think that matters much at all. I mean, if you look at the games target toward a female Audiance they are just bland and don't pack much fun. Take Drakken as an example, strong Female lead, shes proactive, doesn't let the situation get her down, and is pretty much beatin on males through out the game. A common theme in pretty much all of the games I've played where the develoupers set out to make a game for females. (sorry if using females insults anyone, but it's age neutral)
Well anyway that went on too long, so I'll just make one more quick point. When I'm getting a game for the computer there are 3 main factors, How much can I edit, Does it have online play, how much can I affect the world in game. Thats what made me want for NWN so bad, dispite having never ever ever even played a table top type RPG (which makes making armor and weapons and such a nightmare) Anyway, I just thought I'd throw that in cause no one seems to be saying what a guy wants in a game, It's so nearly almost sorta balanced now I can taste it.
Oh yea! How is Gloomveil? I was looking at that the other day but couldn't figure out how to sign up, if there even is a sign up, or what. It honestly kinda seemed more like a site some one would build to help get a job doing Web/Graphic Design. Anywho, I'd say congradulations, but I think thats been said enough, and I haven't acctually RPed with you, so I'll just say "A character well played is it's own reward" and from the sounds of it you must have one heck of a bounty, Lady! |
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