Originally Posted by Statsman1
I do not generally chime in to these debates, because I find that ultimately, like it or not, The Wolf tends to be right. Not always in the WAY he voices his opinions, but the message behind the opinion tends to be correct. At least, in my view.
I do not particularly care about whether or not I get a FaceGen of a woman or a man - that is surface fluff and has nothing to do with how the game is played.
If I was going to endorse the idea, I would first look at the EFFECTS of having a female player in a league dominated by male players.
Let's assume, for instance, Markus has coded this game to create an ENTITY (let's be clear - every "player" in OOTP is a male either because nobody currently playing MLB is anything BUT male, or because there's a flag that says "M" instead of "F") that is 6'4", 230lbs and simply because this entity has these dimensions, it now has "POWER = 20". Therefore "it" can go through some algorithm that ultimately decides, this time, that "it" has hit the ball 480 feet, resulting in a home run.
If that same entity had the flag set to "F" and, every other thing being equal, could do the same thing...then all you need is a FaceGen that says, "If FLAG = F, then make femaie face, else make male face." Because there is no adverse effect to changing that flag - the gender flag is purely cosmetic, it had nothing to do with the results.
If, however, there is going to be an engine that says that women will never be 6'4", 230lbs and therefore WILL NEVER HAVE THE SAME POWER ratings as men, then what effect does that have? Can a woman who's 5'7", 145lbs (say, my wife) hit a ball 480 feet? Nope. Not if she hit it TWICE. So...would Markus' player creation engine give that woman a POWER of 20? Or would the WOMAN have to be 6'4", 230lbs too? How would that be put together?
This is an extreme example, you understand, but my point is this - having women in the game could simply be cosmetic - use the FaceGen to create female pictures, add some female names to the database and away you go.
But, duplicating the female form, if you will, would also have a dramatic effect on the overall game itself, and the player types that are created. If you are going to have female players, and those female players represent actual females, in terms of dimensions, and what those dimensions translate into, in terms of ratings...how could 99.9% of those women compare to male players? And would you draft them? If the goal of the game is to build the best team, why would you draft / trade for / recruit players that are weaker than their counterparts, simply because they are women?
Put another way - if someone like Mike Trout has top-level power, would you believe a young lady, 5'7'', 170lbs, could duplicate that power? How much belief are you willing to suspend for gender equality for the sake of....well, gender equality in a world that doesn't actually exist??
If you are going to create females in the universe, and these women are going to be as realistic as the male players, in terms of height, weight, speed, etc...can they compete with the men in this game's paradigm? I would submit that they cannot.
Women, on the whole, are NOT going to be the same calibre of player that men are. There is a reason there are no female players. Creating them simply by changing a gender flag is not "realistic" in that sense, and everyone should realize that. Creating actual female players that would bring to the game exactly what they would bring to the game in real life would be a waste of time for almost anyone.
Now - if you were going to create an all-female league / world, then you have something, but again, you can do that NOW cosmetically with a little manual work. From a historical standpoint, as someone mentioned, there were professional women's leagues, and while I don't actually pretend to know what that coding means, an all woman universe is NO different than an all male universe, practically speaking.
If I'm playing this game as a GM, why would I pick players, female or male, that were not good enough, regardless of what some gender flag is set to be. If women are going to be recreated in the same fashion that men are created in this universe, then what's the point?
And yes, I know women who have played video games, and I've never heard any of them say, "Jeez, I'd really love this baseball sim if there were women players in it."
So...I agree with Wolf. This concept offers NOTHING to the game, in practical, game-playing terms, and dedicating resources and such to making such a thing happen would be a waste of time that fells like it would ultimately satisfy next to nobody.
|