Saturday 15 September 2007

Pic of the day: "Konata is my wife!" Not very likely. But at least now the lonely otaku can pretend to be her. Good luck.

Voice changer software

I know I predicted this, though I don't remember whether I did so in the journal. After all, I did not use any unique words, and there are thousands of pages here. But I know I foretold that in the Near Future, there would be software available for common people that would change the voice of a man into the voice of a woman (or the other way around, but I may have neglected to say that since there is less demand). The future is now, but the sound quality is unimpressive. When people find out that such software exists, they will probably also guess that you are using it.

If you want to give this a try for yourself, there is at this time a free "junior" version available. Despite its name, it is not able solely to translate adult speech frequencies into childish. More important, I think, it the gender bending options.

OK, let us briefly recap this particular point, because it is somewhat weird. In pretty near every society, there are more adult women than men. There should theoretically be no lack of women. Despite this, there is a lot more interest among men in emulating women than the other way around. Why is that?

More broadly speaking, men may simply be more adventurous. Since taking on a different gender role is an extreme adventure indeed (potentially fatal in some cultures, life-changing pretty much everywhere) it makes sense that the more thrill-seeking male would be the one to try it.

In our contemporary western societies, it can also be argued that women are free to "roleplay" men far more than the other way around in real life. It is unspeakably less acceptable for a man to wear a skirt and frilly blouse than for a woman to wear a business suit and tie. Women have access to nearly all of the male accessories, but the opposite is not true at all. I am not sure how important this is, but it bears mention.

***

But the special case on the table today is not the life-altering transgender experience of real life, but the playful gender switch of role playing games. For yet other reasons again, men are more likely than women to play traditional role playing games, both at home and on the computer, and not least on the Internet. That is certainly not to say that women don't play computer games, but these tend to be simpler and easier to get into and out of. Perhaps this is because women tend to have other activities that interfere with gaming? An intriguing point is the difference between the classic medieval role playing games such as Dark Age of Camelot and the quicker, more superficial City of Heroes. It is possible to play CoH in the lunch break and get out of it without causing a ruckus. You may even be able to play for a few minutes if you play alone. Unsurprisingly, the percentage of female players is much higher in this game. But it is still well under half.

And what is more, the female players are almost exclusively playing female characters. The male players are MOSTLY playing male characters, but are far more likely to play the opposite sex, some more than others. The reasons cited vary, but let's forget that for today. The thing is, with voice chat becoming ever more common, it is kind of hard to keep up the illusion. This is where this software comes in, or perhaps the next generation of it. With it, you can lie far more convincingly.

I may not be hurt physically by lying, like some of my fantasy novel characters, but trying to speak like a woman is probably beyond me. Still, I could... skirt the truth, perhaps? ^^