Why do more guys get attracted and addicted to games than gals do? I'm not looking for market's characteristics, such as there are more male developers crafting what they want to play. Well, that maybe one reasno, but this story linked here tries to answer that question in physiological terms by by having participants play a simple "game" on a PC, and reading in their neural activity during the gameplay. What they found: males are naturally inclined to have more of rewarding sensation from playing games than females do. Simply put, they are more motivated than girls are.
Simple enough, you say? Well, although this is the first time researchers used a video game to do this kind of study (that I've heard of, at least), but this only confirms what we already know if we're the least bit observant; there are tons more guys playing, and watching, sports than girls. "Duh! How obvious and how unrelated this is to the topic at hand?" you say? That's because you fail to see that games and sports are practically the same thing (More on this later, as it deserves its own post).
If we were to see more girls playing "games", then we need to create more games that are more different, something that stimulates different kind of rewarding sensation than reaching a goal.
PS. If you're still confused with the title... read the story.
3 comments:
haha, I love how you want to have developers make more games that give a greater "rewarding sensation" to girls. Spread the good word man
I'm not hiding something under those words. I mean girls are motivated by different sets of goals than guys.
The experiment here was done by a simple game where the derived goal was to prevent balls from pushing a bar to far left of the screen. Basically, the goal was to get as much space as possible and maintain it for as long as possible. It's goal is based on space and time, which as many studies show, guys are generally more keen at over girls.
The whole paradigm of setting objectives in games should change, IMO, to engage different group of people; say, a goal not of competition but of cooperation? a goal to socialize with others? a goal to help another? how about plain experience where you sympathize with others in the game?
how about the goal of shopping?
and in my opinion, that "Rez Trance" game might be just enough rewarding sensation ( -_-)
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