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."

Comments

easy!

[sinner0423]

What Games Do Women Play?

Mind.

Evolved preferences

[gregor-e]

Guys evolved bigger, fast-twitch muscles and the brain wiring for hunting and defense. They have pre-wired pathways to enjoy adrenaline, fight-or-flight games.

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.

Re:Evolved preferences

[krystrandya]

I agree with Lenny; to quote one of the masterful arguments commonly made on the internet "nuh-uh." I would also like to point out the insightful comment about asking slashdotters to describe womens preferences and how it degraded into a frustrated conversation about head games and blow jobs being modded as the top ranked assessments on females in the categories of "insightful" and "funny".

Part of the root question was what turns girls off gaming and specific chat groups. I think all you have to do is read the above mentioned modded comments to understand.

As for the biology of gaming. Gaming I highly doubt has even increased the capability of gentelment to breed or decreased the breeding capability of females. Therefore there would be no shift according to gaming in the near future. For fast motor or social skills - depending on the roles within society... everyone could really benift (breeding wise) from all of the skills you named and not just the males or the females. There have been articles on /. refuting your arguement with facts, which I noticed the root arguement lacked alot of.

There are men who breed with force and men who breed with wit/intelligence or pretty words.

Success of young by the ability of one of the parents to provide food doesn't eliminate the female in the provider role. I'm not sure what happened in the cave man days, but I doubt it was the female just swept the cave. There wasn't alot of housework back then :P Most of it was food, shelter etc. related. Either or both parents. Whatever. Trying to undo the sex roles that were established for the caveman days by men in the days were declaired when the female orgasm was unknown and women were thought not to have enough of a brain to participate in business or government is irrelevant.

Today we see inheritance patterns. We notice that speed and strength are not only passed from the father, but from the mother as well. This inheritance isn't direct with the X or Y, but mixed. Because my mother is a 98 pound 5'2" weaker female and my father is 5'10" and very muscular doesn't mean my twin brother is strong and I am weak. Such is the same with speed and olympic runners. Yes body type does seem to play a role, but until you study finger speed on the keyboard or mouse clicking ability (which so far say that women are better in those categories), you are using bad information. Just saying biology a few times in your argument and using a formal presentation style doens't make you an expert. It just makes you and uneducated, opinionated, sad, little person.

Lastly, I was doing a purely sex realted argument. Women are quite different from eachother and those willing to take a survey about games may slant your data. :( It would be nice to think that many girls like RPGs, but I haven't found that yet. I could discuss what I like and what trends I've noticed, but I'd really only written to smack this bad argument down and cool my head about how caddy and unfriendly an atmosphere slashdot becomes when people bring up women.