Women gamers
I forgot to mention this while writing the post about women gamers. What the stat represented was all kinds of games, the small javascript, tetris kinds as well as the MMORPG like warcraft. Now there are people (mostly those who play the latter kind) who would not call the former gamers. Now we have a couple of issues. First of all, why aren't they gamers? Having at least two MMORPG gamers in the audience, can you answer that?
The second issue is what bothers me a little (or maybe a lot), is the fact that it IS true that women are more likely to play the first. Little games, with simple objectives, and not very complicated. I do that. I prefer playing these games than the complicated ones. Well I like complicated ones too that i play on gamecube but if asked what i play most, I say simple and small games. So why is it that women usually play these kind of games? why don't we like (mostly, because of course there are lots of women who play the MMORPG games as well) the complicated one as much as guys?
So my opinion: women are not willing to invest so much of their time to these games knowingly. Each warcraft game that Alvaro plays takes between half an hour to an hour if not more. Now it is highly likely that I sit in front of my compute screen and burst bubbles for half an hour, but I really like the fact that the games are short and I can leave it off any time I want and not in the middle of a game. Now does that say something about my concentration or about my time management? and what i am willing to invest my time on?
If it is the concentration idea, it does get backed up by evidence that men have a higher tendency to concentrate on one topic without distractions for longer periods of time. Oh how I disliked writing that last sentence!
Whenever I find trends which separate men and women i find it fascinating. Why do you think women prefer to play small simple games?
5 comments:
"If it is the concentration idea, it does get backed up by evidence that men have a higher tendency to concentrate on one topic without distractions for longer periods of time. Oh how I disliked writing that last sentence!"
.. another way of looking at it - women are better at multi-tasking ... I think there is some research out there which looks into how women and men's brains are wired differently - and the way we solve problems etc is different. There are studies which show that the way men and women read maps / give directions is also different ..
I'm not a gamer - and I play only reallly small games on the computer - partly because I can get them done - because I dont want or feel like spening like hours in front of the computer! But I can curl up in front of a story book all day ... very contrary .. and Im a single statistical point!! now you have got me wondering ...
Nice blog!!!
OMG How I loved reading that sentence! :P
K, First of all, as a guy, I know how we excell at tons of things :P First being flattering our personal egos.
In gaming, however things might be changing.
Two years ago I would ask, why don't women like videogames, AT ALL?
Now, the question has changed to yours. Why don't they play the more involving time consuming games?
So might it be that in the near future there could be the chance of women playing those types of games?
I would like to thinks so, one friend back in Colombia has subscribe to hattrick.
She is paying a monthly fee for administrating a fictional football team!!!!!!!!!!!! I like to think I had some influence on that.
And as I said on my blog, there seems to be hope here also. As far as I know it is only WoW fan, but it would be hard for me to imagine that having 3 high level charachters was just achieved in casual gaming.
So if there is the time comitment allready achieved by women, then I'm not sure what is missing, but hopefully in the future, the question will change to something else.
Like why do men keep pwning women at gaming, even if they spend far more time.. or something like that :P
Brinda, I agree with the book thing. every time you pick up a book you are making a commitment to the amount of time you are willing to spend on that book. Of course the difference being that you can always put down the book and pick it back up later. Maybe it is just priorities.
Juan, I liked your comment as well, how things are already changing. I wonder if ten or twenty years ago, men also only played simple games? Do you think it is true that as time passes, games become more complicated? I have no idea btw about the answer, just throwing some ideas.
but what did you mean by the three high level characters? who has these characters?
and whenever you want my dear, come and I will pwn you in tetris :-D
ps. it is so nice getting comments and opinions from people! thanks :-)
Well, twenty years ago I would say all games were simple... except haunted house, that was difficult.
But pac-man, pitfall, all those were quite simple for today standards.
Some games are getting more complicated, but some are just getting prettier graphics.
I think I started to see the change when just before I came to MD, I realized some women were playing The Sims a LOT. It was just to hard to belieave :P
But times are changing, the characters were to that one I mentioned in this post I only remember that she mention a night elf and a gnome. SO maybe a exagereated with 3 chars
And say whatever at tetris, I just felt bad at pwning u at Fifa, time splitters, mario party, pacman versus, that I had to give you one game right?
It was the gentelman thing to do :P
we talked about this at work ... and one of the things that one of the girls who plays onl ine said was that she likes to play games where she gets to talk to people online - more networkingish ,.. or stuff where you setup virtual parties and decorate rooms and get people over ... cant imagine many men wanting to play that
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