Slashdot Mirror
What Games Do Women Play?
wikinerd writes "BBC recently published the results of an Elspa white paper on women in gaming, revealing that women prefer RPG, adventures, easy driving sims, puzzles, Tetris, and life simulations like The Sims. I suppose that the Slashdot crowd knows much more about this topic than Elspa, so I ask you: What games do women like most and are they experienced players? What would be the difference if your opponent in a game is male or female? How does the gender of other gamers or chatters affect your on-line behavior, especially when the physical distance means you may never really meet face-to-face."
What Games Do Women Play?
Mind.
I don't know about most women, but mine likes role-playing... Playing the role of master bitch: Clean up, there are mountain dew cans all over, when are your friends leaving, they have been here 8 hours. What's so fun about Halo anyways. Don't they have homes to go home to? Why are you so loud. Why don't you do something constructive... etc etc etc
;)
Good thing she doesn't read Slashdot
"I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection." -- Sigmund Freud
Is it just me, or does today consist soley of Ask-Slashdot-but-in-other-categories?
That would be Rez.
Well, maybe not so much playing, but she likes participating.
... Crap, I'm a woman!
'Nuff Said.
article about women and games...
/ 1826251&tid=10 / 1339248&tid=10 / 210208&tid=10 / 1458224&tid=10 / 1650258&tid=10
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/01
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/30
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/08
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/28
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/23
Diablo, Heroes of Might and Magic 3 (doesn't like 4), city-building games like Pharaoh, Empire - Rise of the Middle Kingdom, Quake 1 and Heretic (some years ago), Abe's Oddysee.
I'll do the stupid thing first and then you shy people follow...
"headgames". 'Nuff said.
pi=sigma{n:0-infinity}[(1/16)^n][(4/(8n+1))-(2/(8n +4))-(1/ (8n+5))-(1/(8n+6))]
I suppose that the Slashdot crowd knows much more about this topic than Elspa
Of course. When you need information about women, the first place you should turn is the experts on Slashdot :)
Gals evolved better socializing, nurturing and gathering skills. They have pre-wired pathways to enjoy social or not-so-violent questing games.
The biological reward pathway for guys is instantaneous, owing to the immediate success/failure of a fight-or-flight situation.
The biological reward pathway for gals is more gradual, accumulating more for repeatedly successful socializing, nurturing or gathering.
Guys will get an immediate payoff for playing games they're pre-wired for. Gals will need to play for some time to accumulate reward. So for guys, games are more addictive in the same way that injected drugs are more addictive than the same drugs swallowed - there is a much sharper "spike" in their reward system. For this simple, evolved biological reason, games will continue to be more attractive to guys, and guys will therefore continue to define the games market.
It is also a greater challenge to create a game that addresses the socializing, nurturing and gathering reward system of women, since fight-or-flight situations require only an immediate danger to be overcome, while creating a social environment with embedded, accumulating rewards for interaction, nurturing and gathering is a much more complicated proposition.
free fps from http://www.castlewolfenstein.com/
I would post the full URI but activision assumes one has Flash and I don't.
she's a top engineer and can easily play 6 hours straight
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
>I suppose that the Slashdot crowd knows much more about this topic than Elspa
Why would anyone ever suppose that Slashdotters know about women?
Hyperbole is the worst thing ever.
FWIW, my wife only ever wished to play Lucas Arts -styled adventure games. ie. Atlantis, Monkey Island I&II, DOTT, Sam'n'Max. She is willing to look while other play some platform games, but not 3D-shooters. AFAIK she doesn't look much when I play NWN either, though FF5/FF9 seemed to interest her from looking-me-play point of view.
My mother liked to play MarioBros 1 and 3 on NES. She hadn't had console for a long time, but I suspect she'd still like them. Oh yes, she liked Vexed and Bejeweled very much when she had Palm. I think she'd like adventure games too, but her english isn't good enough to play comfortably.
fucktard is a tenderhearted description
Who on slashdot knows about women? Wrong croud buddy.
God is dead - Nietze. Nietze is dead - God.
Apparently the answers are already here.
Mine plays Diner Dash , which was recently showcased on Slashdot. She seems to be quite into casual games. I don't really see what the attraction is of playing a stressed-out waitress in a game, but who am I to argue.
Does anyone here actually enjoy that game?
I like to play RPGs (Final Fantasy games, Skies of Arcadia, Dark Cloud 2, etc.), puzzle games (Puyo Puyo, Tetris, Tetris Attack, Katamari Damacy), and at least one adventure game (ICO) and one life sim (Harvest Moon). However, I also like time-draining SRPGs (Final Fantasy Tactics, Nippon Ichi games, Front Mission 4), platformers (Mario series, Sonic series, Jak & Daxter, etc.), rhythm titles (Bust A Move/Groove series, Samba de Amigo) and the occasional fighting game (Mortal Kombat series) and FPS (Unreal Tournament series). I've played UT online and in LAN parties quite a bit, mostly with guys, and it's been cool-- I find myself being just as fiercly competitive as they, but also find I prefer team-based play modes like CTF, Onslaught, and the Carball mod.
My wife (yeah yeah, I have one, I failed my Geek Test) likes cute games. When you actually look at them the skills are very similar to those used for the games I like (GTA, RTCW, MoH etc) but where those have plenty of gore the games she likes are all fluffy.
:-)
I expect that a GTA like game with little fluffy bunnies would go down a treat
Strangely she didn't like The Sims.
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
A lot of women like to play MUDs, MUSHes, etc. like Medievia.com. A lot of women like to play such text games because there is a high level of anonymity and they can be whoever they want to be. In addition, they are not forced to play a graphic artist's rendition of a woman character, which is typically scantilly clad and big-busted :P
In addition, MUDs lend themselves to a high level of chat and relationship-building. Women like to meet people and create friendships, and MUDs provide that atmosphere to them.
I'm kinda disappointed with the responses so far.
:) DDR. Fighting games like Mortal Kombat and Super Smash Brothers.
I personally enjoy MMO's( Currently owned by WoW) FPS's like Doom, Halo, UT etc. Platformers cause they're just awesome
Overall its not the genere as much as the quality of the gaming experience that matters to me.
It's a heckuva lot cheaper than our last trip to Vegas.
PowerManga, TuxRacer, Frozen Bubbles, SuperTux. Violence (other than squishing the bad guys) is out. Put blood/dismemberment in, and the girls leave. Require large portions of their time, and they'll spend it caring for the family, watching TV/Movies, or playing with real, physical toys (Tinker Toys).
The one where she wins by complaining that games are a "waste of time".
There's this game, which is for PC called Maple Story. Every girl I know is playing this right now, and enjoying it. It's a traditional RPG, but a sidescroller where you walk around and beat up cute little monsters for experience points. You can become a magician, a warrior, a thief, or a bowman to begin with. It's very cute, and addictive.
Another big one is Gunbound, in which you pick a little robot, and use angles, force, and wind to shoot other little robots down. Pretty childish and "cute" also.
Both are online games which came out of Korean based companies.
What games do women play?
Probably the same games they played in the other 5 articles this week on the same topic...
This sig is only here so people stop skipping the last lines of my posts.
Please, for the love of god, stop it with these "woman gamers" articles already! We know they exist, we don't care what games they play because they're humans, and we don't give a flying fudge about what they think compared to "everyone else." They're not aliens, for pete's sake! They play games or they DON'T play games, so lay off already!
While I will say I do enjoy a good RPG (although _please_ less shiny more gameplay to the extent of holy-crap-why-did-my-mom-sell-my-NES-without-telli ng-me...and that goes for all games really) but back to the point...I enjoy as many of the same games as my guy friends, fps, metroid, halo, ut, wc3, bf1942, dc, cs, etc etc, and my roommate as well. I'm female for those who are unable to realize this at this point...and if you ask me, you can't simply categorize what women play. (I HATE the Sims, and look how women are categorized as liking that). It's just silly and ultimately pointless, as everyone has their own opinion on things.
With regards to who I play, it doesn't particularly matter, from experience. Males tend to be a bit more cocky, which makes it more fun when they get completely owned...but that's not the point. The point is both male and females provide an adequate challenge, although I hate it when females use the excuse of being bad because they're female. I'm sorry, but it just doesn't work like that. With that in mind, guys, please don't go easy on us because we're women. It's just pisses us off. We want to beat you when you're actually trying, ya know? (and no, I don't always win, I'm just saying it's a nice thing).
Also, I've played my fair share of games on battlenet and the like, and while a lot of the time no one really bothers asking if I'm female, nor do I tell it unless they ask, but mostly people don't particularly care. And if they do, they are better off ignored, as then they will shut up and pay attention. That is, if they're on your team. I will admit, it is a useful distraction sometimes when they happen to be the opposition and I'm, say, hiding in the woods in DotA waiting for him to move just a little bit farther down the path. Of course, it's just like taunting and enough people do that already.
"Success isn't a result of a spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire." - Arnold H. Glasgow
Well, the only women I actually know -- my wife and my sister, like puzzle games.
My sister actually got a new computer cause she couldn't play SNOOD on OS9.
My wife won't play anything without a touchscreen or a mouse now. She thinks controllers have too high of a learning curve.
She plays
DS: Zoo Keeper
PC: Bejeweled, Insaniquarium, Zuma
GC: Animal Crossings, Wind Waker(a little, not in the fighting areas)
Civ 3, The Sims, Runescape, Heroes of Might & Magic, Karaoke Revolution on the Xbox, Alchemy and other Popcap games, and - at the risk of perpetuating stereotypes, I will admit that I also like playing Hello Kitty Rescue (I do it to de-stress, because I can beat bad guys up with a pink cartoon wand).
When I was doing capoeira I used to play Tekken.
Wouldn't it be shorter to list the games that women don't play? i.e. "plotless FPS deathmatches".
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
got me hooked for a while to Team Fortress, and I happen to know her from back in the 90s when we were both playing MUDs.. Might be I ran into a somewhat unusual woman there tho..
As far as I can tell, females play all kinds of games, but there are a few genres which females seem to prefer. My current girlfriend loves Pac Pix, Donkey Konga (together with her sister, who thinks it's hilarous) and Yoshi Touch & Go. She gets nervous when she has to play too long at a time. Interestingly, she doesn't like typical "girl games" games like the Urbz or Harvest Moon too much.
My former girlfriend, however, was different. She used to play single player sessions of Mario Party for hours at a time, and she finished Klonoa very quickly. A female friend of mine loves Adventure-style RPGs and Jump-N-Runs, she spent over 70 hours playing through Paper Mario, finishing every possible side-quest and keeping on playing it even after she finished it. She's currently playing Wind Waker and constantly telling me about stuff she's discovered. She also likes Bomberman Generation and Super Mario Sunshine. I even know a girl who loves Sonic Adventure Battle 2. Because it has a great soundtrack.
If you can make a generalization, I'd say that most girls prefer games which aren't too violent (If you want to play games together with your girfriend, get a Nintendo console). Other than that, girls play all kinds of games, just like males.
-My girlfriend: She plays the Sims and Need for Speed Underground 1 and Minesweeper, along with some other things. Also, she plays Burnout, Mario Kart and Super Monkey Ball 2 along with me.
-My sister: Plays The Sims and Animal Crossing a lot. Also, played the heck out of Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine, and is a fan of Wario Ware.
-My mother: She is not into videogames, with the exception of Tetris and Solitaire.
I suppose that the Slashdot crowd knows much more about this topic than Elspa, so I ask you: What games do women like most and are they experienced players?
Not sure Slashdot is the best place to ask about women (if we knew about women, we wouldn't be sitting around reading slashdot now, would we?)
If you can read this then I forgot to check "Post Anonymously"
My children are trained to respond the best possible way: lying like their life depends on it! "Gee mom, nice hair! You look good today!" and all was peacefull and quiet in the house :-)
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
I've been playing tranquility for a couple years now.
I't great to just be able to pop in, play a while to relax, then get back to real life.
Sort of a virtual vacation spot.
I like city building, RPG's and Sim stuff. I'm playing Zeus, HOMM 3 and Dungeon Siege at the moment. And Starflight on my newly built 486dx4. :) I like platformers like Sonic when I'm on consoles. I playing Flight sims, some sports a lot as a teenager and really like a good FPS.
I'll play anything really. But I'm a SAHM so I'm limited in how long I can play unless the toddler's asleep and I pick a game my 6 yr old loves to watch...Like Dungeon Siege.
The majority of Dance Dance Revolution players are women.
My wife is a hardcore, WoW addict. She easily logs over 8hrs a day. Plays on the Allera server (aka "Carebear"), 2 characters are Level 60 (has a number of other characters too), and is a member of the Tendrils of Maneroth guild.
I concur, girls appear to be more inclined to play the RPG and MMORPG games than the the Q3A/UT2K4 that I prefer (SC:BW excepted).
pi=sigma{n:0-infinity}[(1/16)^n][(4/(8n+1))-(2/(8n +4))-(1/ (8n+5))-(1/(8n+6))]
My favourite game of all time is Half-Life (proud to say I beat it with NO cheat codes or walkthroughs).
I'm a big fan of FPS and adventure/action games. I'm currently playing Resident Evil 4 on Gamecube and previously finished Beyond Good & Evil and Eternal Darkess on that system.
I also like RTSes and RPGs... but hate it when they get repetitive.
Biggest example of repetitive junk is Diablo II. Horrid!
Basically a game has to have a GREAT story to make it worth my while. I actually have a life (amazing for a slashdotter eh?) and I refuse to play games with no point that aren't interesting.
It was some obscure anniversary like when we first met today and you forgot so I'm not going to talk to you.
Women have a special bit of brain that men don't have. They don't use it often, but when they do it's always right and never forgets.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
My wife plays Nintendo games. It makes sense since Nintendo is the only company to figure out that in order to make a game fun, one must concentrate on both the communitive (female) and competitive (male) aspects of a game.
Other game companies, imo, feel that concentrating on large breasts is a priority instead of making killer gameplay that appeals to everyone.
I see we're busy trotting out the same old stereotypes...
Extrapolating from my own experience: I like puzzles (Myst, Lara Croft, etc), economic/strategy games (Civilization I,II,II, Pharaoh/Cleopatra/Caesar III/etc), RPGs (Baldur's Gate, NWN), MUDs, MMORPGS (EQ,DAOC).
Why? Single-player games: I like to take things at my own pace, not be driven by the pace of incoming baddies. I don't like "twitch" games... though I do play Tetris
Multi-player games: Look, Ma, no FPS! Also, in MMORPGS, I, and many female games I know, prefer the so-called "roleplaying servers".
Why no FPS and why choose RP servers?
Fewer hormone-driven male teenage jerks. Nothing like a trash-talking, lecherous, rude 13-16 year-old to turn me off from the "game community". (Or worse, so-called "adults" who behave like immature teenagers! At least the teenagers have the excuse of youth...)
---dragoness
I'm a woman. I particularly like strategy games. I also play some RPGs and sim games. Some of my favorites: Civilization II and III, Tropico, Warcraft II, Age of Wonders II, Rollercoaster Tycoon, Restaurant Empire, Neverwinter Nights, Guild Wars... too many to list, really. I also like history-based games like Europa 1400: The Guild.
What I don't like: shooters and war games.
If your girlfriends thinks games are so boring and geeky, guys, maybe you need to get better girlfriends.
just check games @ women.com
what a silly question...
Mostly, I like playing FPSs and strategy games. Generally I find the Sims and most RPGs boring. I tend to prefer single-player games to multi-player games (unless I'm playing with people I know, since it seems many gamers are, or act, about 8 years old). Basically, I'm the opposite of the typical female gamer portrayed in the article. (I like some puzzle games, though.) I've noticed that I'm treated quite differently when other (mostly male) gamers find out I'm female. I tend to either get hit on a lot, treated with a lot more respect than previously, or treated with a lot less respect than previously (since they assume (correctly in my case) that I'm not as good as them at the game.)
I like destructive driving games and strategy games, but I don't think I'm very representative of women as a whole. Maybe women like all kinds of games, just like guys do. It could be there's no particular preference among women for one type of game over another.
I'm a girl and I like super-bloody games. I'm a proud owner of GTA San Andreas, GTA 3, Turok Evolution, Unreal Tournament 2004, Doom 3, Alien Versus Predators 2 Gold, and lots more bloody stuff. So these guys have it all wrong. I like violence, and so should you!
I like BEANS
If you're lucky. But this is slashdot.
I once tried to play the Sims and I've seldom found any game that's more boring than that one. Yes, I'm a girl, and my list of games is larger than I'd like to imagine...all of the LucasArts adventures, RPGs(Morrowind, Gothic II, Vampire:The Masquerade), all of the Myst games, all of the GTA games, some of the NFS series, some FPS(Max Payne, Unreal Tournament, the Jedi Knights, Far Cry, Enter the Matrix)...all in all a happy little mix. By the way, none of my friends who actually do play computer games likes the Sims.
I think Zonk is stuck in a loop.
My wife is hooked on World of Warcraft, and I'm sure she's not alone. Stories of couples playing the game together abound on the official message boards. I have no real numbers, but I'm not surprised WoW would attract a significant female audience.
:-)
A) It's a role-playing game, and there is significant investment in the advancement of your character. (Chicks dig that.
B) Although it is pretty action-ey, it's not such a twitch game that those without years of video game conditioning are put off.
C) There is the social element inherent in most MMORPGs.
D) Fantastic, easy learning curve, and you start playing almost immediately.
E) It's just a really well built game. You don't have to put with a lot of bullshiat to enjoy the game underneath.
F) And, of course, it really does look quite graphically nice.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
Can't believe I forgot to list one of the most important reasons that a wife or girlfriend would enjoy playing World of Warcraft.
G) The fact that you can play it together.
My dear wife and I don't always play together nowadays, but we often do -- especially when we were first starting out.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
My gf liked to play the Sims and make virtual babies, over and over. Think she was trying to tell me something? (rhetorical question!)
My girlfriend really likes the "Ratchet & Clank" series on Playstation.
Marvel versus Capcom and King of Fighters....both on MAME
ps: OF COURSE , i have both arcades on my living room!
Quake 1 & 2
:)
Half-Life 1
Fallout 1 & 2
Simcity (all of them)
Zelda (1,2,3)
Myst 1
Chess, Go, Blackjack, Poker...
And surely a lot more that I'm forgetting.
But the above fps will forever be in my heart, so when I think of games, they always come first
My girlfriend has recently been hooked on the nintendo ds. And she has never liked any games from any system. I think the different approach to the games with the stylus makes a bit of difference. Its so weird...
My wife only likes obvious pattern games like Shanghai, Majong, and various solitaire type games. She likes to change the backgrounds and tile layouts, watch the simple animations when she matches the right tiles, and try to beat her fastest time. The nice thing is that she can be as addicted to one of those as I am to something requiring a little more horsepower (Half-Life, etc).
What most game providers have not yet capitalized on is that couples will play together if they can face a common opponent. She may not really like a particular game, but she'll play with me if we can be on the same team (even if it's just a shooter). She'll get board in 15 mins with a shooter, but be more interested if it's a pattern matching game that she likes.
My wife has in her repertoire of amazing skills the ability to play tekken as long as she wants for $0.50. We will go to an arcade like Dave and Busters where a line of 20 asian teenagers are playing, and she will sit there and destroy all comers. She only knows a couple of moves for maybe two characters, but I have seen her lose only once, when she lost a contact.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
How exactly could a stereotype become also true?
What next, the covetous jew? Fuck, grow up.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
My recreational habits have little to nothing to do with my gender (except I don't play hentai or dating sims). My fiancee and I play the same games, but he plays a lot more because he doesn't need as much sleep.
I play Diablo, Morrowind, World of Warcraft, City of Heroes, and other violent RPGs for fun. Building and strategy games like Civilization and Stronghold are for mental decompression when my net connection is down.
Console games such as Mortal Kombat and Dynasty Warriors are good for living room play when there are guests over.
Tetris and simple GBA games are for long waits at the airport.
I guess my favorite style is "hit things until treasure pops out" because I love breaking those pots and barrels.
There are a few games, such as Alice, that I really wanted but couldn't master. I have little interest or skill in first-person shooters, possibly because the camera moves so much it makes me ill.
On Computers I play WoW, some puzzle games (like Bejeweled), previously played Myst/Riven, Journeyman Project, 7th Guest, etc...
On Console, we have several generations of Nintendo hardware, Zelda, Mario adventures, Animal Crossing, Gex, Quest, Bomberman, Mario Party, Eternal Darkness.
Tabltop, currently play and run D&D, have run CyberPunk 2020, White Wolf, GURPs, Tales of the Floating Vagabond, Paranoia, and many many more [tm].
Board Games and Card Games - Fluxx, Mystery at the Abbey, Chess, Mahjong, Bolivia, Guillotine, Cascassone, Cathedral, Settlers (multiple varients), Munchkin, Chez Geek, and many many more [tm]
(some) Women play plenty of different types of games, personally I don't 'get' FPS, but I have female friends who do.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
My wife has only played Simcity and Rollercoaster for any length of time. She'd probably play Sims if she tried it. She has no interest in playing or watch FPS or strategy games, but does sometimes watch me play GTA.
If guys play UT, Total war and girls play Sims and bejeweled, what do homosexuals play? Sims-modded UT and UT characters in the Sims.
Being female I find myself an expert on the subject at hand. Mario has always been one of my favorite games. For the past 17 years I have played it....from Nintendo to Nintendo 64. I do not care for later versions. I also enjoy racing games, but not the violent ones like GTA. I prfer simple ones like Crusin USA, Mario Kart, and the greatest of all time RC Pro Am. I think at a younger age (say before 13 or 14) girls like games almost as much as guys do. But as they get older, they find other things to occupy their time. Some women still play seriously but there are so few of us b/c there just aren't that many games that appeal to the majority of us. I think Neopets may have been one of the best games for most of us. But every woman is different....
My name is a variety of floral rose, and no, it's not blue
What Games Do Women Play?
Where do you even start with a question like that?
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
I'm not sure what games women play, but if I find any playing the ones I play I'm going to SEEK AND DESTROY them so that maybe I won't see a million freaking posts to slashdot on the subject of games and women, obviously some kind of advertising hype. No, then we'll see "women players unfairly targetted" posts, right?
Why does nobody make the question "what do men like to play?" Because its a stupid question to begin with! There are many different genres and men like to play all of them. Why would women be any different? You cant make such blanket assumptions based on gender. Both men and women like a variety of games. There is not a handful of genres that women play. I know several gamer women and they all have different tastes and play different genres. A lot of women dont play because they assume that games have nothing to offer to them, that games are for boys. I have known several girls/women who have started playing games once I have introduced them to games and shown them that they can be a lot of fun. Women *can* like games as they are now, if they just give them a chance.
Also, unless you are mature enough to handle it, you won't even know its a women when playing online.
___
No power in the 'verse can stop me
Please just stop this shit slashdot. It's really pathetic to read.
No one has given a toss about this topic for about 6 years . Stop digging up questions about women gamers every few days and trying to look 'right on' or more likely, because you are getting paid to put these articles up for 'marketing reasons'.
It is embarrassing to watch. Really no one gives a shit.
The answer you are looking for though is one of the following:
1. Stop taking backhanders from marketing companies to do research on slashdot for them.
or
2. Stop reading left leaning newspapers because you obviously can't distinguish fact from fiction.
signed
Everyone
The problem is that that's _not_ how early hominids evolved, and not how really primitive hunter-gatherer tribes live.
Let's start with the beginning. It started with a small-ish fruit eating ape. Note that there's a difference between eating fruit and eating leaves. Practically any mammal can digest fruit and meat, but extracting the protein from leaves requires either the specialized digestive tract of a herbivore, or cooking them at high enough temperatures. This particular ape hadn't yet invented fire and had _no_ natural weapons to hunt, so it had to live happily on fruit.
Then the climate started changing, and less and less trees and fruit were available. The ape increasingly faced two problems: (A) avoiding predators on the ground, and (B) finding food.
With fruit being less and less available, the only other thing it could eat was meat. But here's the fun part: it lacked natural weapons or the strength to do much hunting.
What it had to do was steal the prey from carnivores, without ending up second course for that carnivore. And no, that didn't involve comic-book-style brave muscular cavemen wrestling sabertooth tigers. It involved stealth and cunning.
That's why what evolved the fastest was the brains. That was what mattered. What got lost in the evolution? Well, you lost all natural weapons for a start, such as the oversized jaws males had in that original ape.
So, no, males did not evolve for adrenaline-high combat. We're talking the vast majority of evolution being a game of Metal Gear Solid, where if you're seen you're dead, rather than a Quake 3 deathmatch.
The ones who enjoyed adrenaline and tried to fight the tiger got eaten. They got themselves out of the gene pool. The ones who survived were the nerds who used their brains.
Let's also look at the relative sizes of males and females. The ape we started with features males about twice as large as the females, and featuring _some_ extra natural weapons. What did it all evolve into? Well, look around you. The evolution constantly diminished the size difference in males and females.
Basically it doesn't support the bullshit theories that males fought tigers, while women stayed and socialized. If that was the case, evolution would have increased the size and muscle mass of males even more compared to females. What actually happened was _equalizing_ them.
So maybe the tasks they had to do and then challenges they had to overcome weren't that different after all.
And indeed if you look at hunter-gatherer tribes, they aren't. Look at the Bushmen sometimes. Fascinating folk.
While the males hunt, yes, it's not adrenaline pumping combat. It's not even close. What it is is still a game of _stealth_ and patience. The trick is to _avoid_ predators, and _sneak_ up to the gazelles to shoot one with an arrow.
And while the females do gather, they still have the exact same challenge of avoiding predators. It's still a game of stealth, with only _marginally_ lower risks. It's _not_ an exercise in sitting around and chattering all day long.
Basically that's the whole problem with these bullshit theories about how evolution made guys natural warriors and made women nothing more than chatterboxes. It's something completely pulled out of the ass, and completely ignoring the ample data that the actual sciences (e.g., anthropology) provide.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Hide the sausage
a game that will listen to them, cuddle after simulated sex, and go shopping with them on the weekends. Sounds a lot like Duke Nukem.
Curses, missed this post yesterday. Surprisingly familiar, and the ELSPA white paper's old news, but still:
:) The Sims to me is more a RTS than anything else. I hate the socialising part :)
The game I play most at the moment, generally 4-6 hours a day, is Halo 2 on Xbox Live. I play it so much because I socialise within the game as well as advance my level; in fact, I play way more custom games than matchmade games at the moment.
I also play World of Warcraft (less heavily now than I used to), but contrary to stereotype, I generally play it alone. I haven't got a cadre of ingame friends and admirers, I like to solo hard quests to prove I can do them. I try and quest above my level when possible.
I'll play anything, though. Other FPS (Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon 2 and Conker: Live and Reloaded are getting attention right now, and I'm learning to play Counter-Strike), RTS and RPG (I'm slowly making my way through Jade Empire, KOTOR, and playing Warcraft 3 when I get time), driving games (Forza mainly).. and yes, I do play The Sims, but mainly 'cos I'm trying to work on some custom items for the University expansion to make it more realistically like an English university
Oh yeah, I'm a girl, in case it wasn't blindingly obvious.
"Frag the weak, hurdle the dead, and assassinate those cursed snipers."
My gal is usually playing "Patience" or "Spider" or card games like that if she only has a few minutes. She's also a big fan of those online java games as well, and plays those if she has a bit more time. The odd thing is, even though she plays card games on the PC a lot, we play some of those in real life too, yet I always win (poker, 2-person-patience, and lots of other games I don't know the english name for). I myself never play card games on the pc, and not very often in my real life either (not counting having a beer and playing poker for who's going to pay for the beer)
My girlfriend plays WoW, SHadowbane, and any other game she can get her hands on. Nuff said. -Red
Guns don't kill people, "with glowing hearts" kills people.
My teenage daughter got Animal Crossing for her GameCube (a "cute" Sim-like game). My wife spends more time playing it then my daughter. I don't get the appeal (i.e. no rocket launchers) - though the fishing simulation is not bad.
My daughter's friends REALLY like DDR on the PS/2.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Frequent save points but also some plot for when you want to play the game for longer periods of time (the newer Grand Theft Autos are good at this).
Goals that don't just involve blasting everything in sight (like Metal Gear Solid). I get bored easily with first-person shooters.
Goals that involve skill and thought rather than just reaction speed. Battles that require tactical decisions.
I have never known a girl that was very big on video games, but my sister is a tetris wiz. She does do some online puzzle games, but that's about it.
My mother, in her late fifties now, adores computer games. It has become so prevelant that most nights she and my dad can be found playing through some old Playstation/N64 title that they've completed previously.
I get strange looks in shops when they ask who the game is for and I say it's for my mother. They must think that I'm just someone who assumes that their parents are into the same things.
Mum has completed almost every known Mario, Crash Bandicoot or Spyro game and has steadily upgraded for many years from Gameboy up to Gamecube, through Game Gear, Playstation, CD-I, Palm and onwards.
She prefers platformers like Mario (original or 64) etc. but is also a big fun of puzzle games like Tetris, Columns, Puzzle Bobble/Bust-a-Move and the cheap ripoffs of such. She also likes the Mario-style racing titles, Mario Kart, Diddy Kong Racing etc. though she is a little throttle-heavy and thinks that brakes are for other people.
Her motions with the joypad as she gets carried away with the game are legendary, the leads usually end up in a right tangle once she's finished and on more than one occasion she's ended up sporting an indent of a capital A on her thumb from pressing the N64 controller too hard.
It comes to something when my mid-twenties girlfriend isn't anywhere near as interested in video games as my own mother. Even she, though, is prone to the odd flash game or a run through an old Megadrive game via an emulator. At the moment, she's hooked on the Sims which I bought for her birthday, a special deal which contains the original game and every official add-on.
Hopefully, that'll keep her quiet for as long as Catz and Dogz did.
"We come to an appreciation of The Sims as less a videogame -- which are effectively seen alternately as puerile bloodbaths and degrading, prurient peep shows by the general public -- and more as a widespread way in which millions of mature Americans are enthralled by Simulations of their own mundane lives. A perfect, seemingly innocuous way to sell consumers what they already know; an enormously profitable, explicitly manufactured, overtly normative 'game.'
*Taken from a short-ish essay I wrote last semester to get into the Media Studies major at my University.
My first, and only, online gaming experience. Started about a year and a half ago, created the gimpiest character on the server, met some cool folks, and I'm still happily bashing the sh*t out of monsters on a daily basis!
Actually, it's not Toyota saying 'Americans are too stupid', it's 'Gerry Fedchun, president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association'.
Still an interesting, though way off topic read.
i stick to hacking... although i do enjoy some of the gnome games (iagno, gnometris, attax, glines) and nethack. i do have the problem of always looking at a game/app as a programming project -- what would i do better, how would i code this, etc. etc. luckily i generally stick to open source games so i can go digging around when i want to ^_^.
i'd say my favorite sort of games are rts (dune, warcraft, starcraft) and rpg (final fantasy, chrono trigger, etc.). i have a lot of friends that do p&p, larp, mudding, and mmorpg but i haven't gotten into those. way back in the day i used to enjoy if/text adventure games...
the genres i care least about are fps (why do all the good graphics go here? the idea hasn't changed since doom and wolfenstein 3D!), fighting games (ooh, how fast can you hit all the buttons?), and racing games (around and around and around). pretty much, i like games that use your head and draw you in to a storyline (e.g. king's quest series and the other roberta williams games). i got bored of the sims fairly quickly but i enjoyed the simcity series (but that's the only sim* game i did).
i'm picky and i prefer to spend my time coding. i think what games women play have to do more with socialization than with evolutionary biology but then again, i'm a soc. major...