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Girls in the Gaming World
dkleinsc writes "The BBC is running an article about life as a female gaming squad. There's some discussion about the welcome or lack thereof women get in the gaming community, and arguments over whether it's a good idea to have separate women's matches."
Oh come on! I think it is silly to have separate leagues for men and women in real-world sports, where it could be argued (not by me) that the physical differences between the genders would give one or the other an unfair advantage. In a virtual environment, even that would be voided. Why separate them?
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
:wq!
Actually, men tend to perform better than women on tests of visuospatial ability. For example, they are better at mental rotation (Delgado & Prieto, 1996) and various other tests of visualspatial function (Collaer & Nelson, 2002). Men actually show different brain activations during a navigation task, something speficially relevant to these types of games (Wunderlisch, Spitzer, Tomczak, and Riepe, 2000). I'm not saying that there should be separate competitions, but I also would not assume the playing field is equal simply because muscles are not invovled.
Collaer, M. L., & Nelson, J. D. (2002). Large visuospatial sex difference in line judgment: Possible role of attentional factors. Brain and Cognition, 49, 1-12.
Delgado, A.R., & Prieto, G. (1996). Sex differences in visuospatial ability: do performance factors play such an important role? Memory & Cognition, 24: 504 - 510.
Wunderlich, Spitzer, Tomczak, & Reipe (2000). Brain activation during human naviagtion: gender-different neural networks as a function of performance. Nat Neurosci. 2000 Apr;3(4):404-8.
My clan has two female players out of roughly 40 total players. We play combat-oriented games. They play in the leagues alongside the rest of us. Their skill is in step with the amount of time they spend playing, just like every other player in our clan. We don't treat them any differently, and they don't demand to be treated differently. If someone sees a "problem" with the fact that females do not like to play these types of games, why alienate the brave few by segregating them in a separate (and likely very small) league.
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
Yeah, you can. It's the XBox version of the game that allows you to do so, on Live.
Creator of the popular web game Proximity
Does the U.S. armed forces even allow women as fighter pilots yet? i
For about a decade now.
3. Your Mom Playing Solitaire
You know she's playing it right now. Remember that 1.5ghz Athlon system you built for her so she can send digital photos to grandma and make her own mix CD's? Yea, it's a $900 solitaire deck shuffler.
Wrong - it's Freecell she plays, not Solitaire. You need to up the resolution on your spy satellites.
She was a celebrity gamer and beat the crap outta John Romero in Q3. They eventually married, tho now they're divorced.
Louise Thomsen is way too hot to be a gamer. I know that's exactly what the article is talking about, but hey..
Just too hot...
actually, there was a study done recently about 3d spacial processing in both men and women. (Heh, done by microsoft actually)
On average, men have a better time processing, and virtualizing 3d information on a computer screen. But it turns out that, if you give a women a wide screen, or multi screen environment.. they can process 3d information just as good (and some times better), than men
Just thought I would put that 2c in =)
Luke