Archive for the 'Study' Category
Study says MMO players are gender confused
A study by Nottingham Trent University revealed that over half of the males who play MMOs play as female characters, and nearly three-quarters of females play as male characters. 70% of the females polled said they played as males, because they didn’t want guys to know that they had breasts and vaginas and because they seemed to get treated better. Chief researcher Zaheer Hussain explains:
It seems that women gender swap for a variety of reasons, such as to avoid unsolicited male approaches on their female characters, or because they felt male characters were treated better by other males during the course of the game
By that logic, it seems male MMO players enjoy “male approaches on their female characters” and like to be treated bad, because 54% play as females. That, and looking at a hot pixelated night elf follow your commands for 8 hours straight is a lot easier on the eyes than watching a virtual man do the same.
10 commentsNews Flash: Men Like Gaming More Then Women, Science Proves It
There are some things that we really don’t need science to tell us. One of them is that men like video games more then women. I know, I know, there are plenty of girl gamers out there who love gaming of all sorts but let’s face it, it’s a male-dominated scene. Before all two of you female gamers who read this site get up in arms, be forewarned, science has my back.
A new study shows that men’s brains react in much different ways then women’s do when they’re gaming. The study, lead by Fumiko Hoeft of the Stanford University School of Medicine, shows that when men play games, a part of the brain involved in feelings of reward and addiction becomes much more activated than it does in women. I could have told them this 15 years ago when I sat in front of a TV playing games with my friend, who happened to be a girl, as she got more and more bored. Still putting the words “study” and “Stanford” behind my claim certainly validates it.
To accomplish these perfectly obvious findings the doctors hooked up an equal number of men and women to an M.R.I. and had them play a game. The study found that in the men, there was much more activity in the mesocorticolimbic system, which is a big-word way of saying men like to accomplish menial tasks and garner awards for them. The game they played was a simple game in which they were told only to click the images of balls they saw, with no mention of a goal. Both sides played the game well but the men were more interested in completing the game and subsequently did better.
[Via New York Times]
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