Developers and executives that are struggling to develop games that appeal to women now have a new excuse to fall back on if and when they fail. According to a study by Stanford University's Alan Reiss, men are hard wired to feel more "rewarded" playing games than women.The study, which looked at 11 men and 11 women, asked participants to play a simple territorial point-and-click game while hooked up to an fMRI machine. The men in the study showed much great activity in the brain's "mesocorticolimbic center," which is associated with reward and addiction.
Interestingly, the amount of activity for men went up as they did better at the game, while the amount of activity for women stayed roughly constant, regardless of achievement. "The females 'got' the game... they appeared motivated to succeed at the game," Reiss said. "The males were just a lot more motivated to succeed." Yeah, yeah ... tell it to the Frag Dolls.
_thumbnail.jpg "i am 8-bit: 2008")
(Page 1) Reader Comments
all the women who want to be part of MY case study... see me in my bedroom for some VR action...
err...
that is to say, i think more testing needs to be done before the scientific community will belive this.
Reply
studys also shows that testosterone is responsible for the animal instinct in men of teritorial dominance and trying to be the "alpha man" =P
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
C'mon, science. Bullshit studies give you a bad name.
Reply
My Friends list in xbox live is full of people from all over the world, and I don't have a single female in my list. That has to tell you something about women and games. I believe women that like video games the way we do are very rare, but I believe that number is going up.
I bet if they did that study but took the readings when they went shopping it would be all the way around. lol.
Reply
I've managed (though lots of trial and error) to get my girlfriend interested in a few games (video, card and board) but the interest never lasts that long.
She enjoys them, but its only a casual interest... after a few plays or a short while the interest dies.
Ugh... I hate achievement whores.
Reply
Reply
pfft do more research! test the true gamer girls if you want some concrete evidence!
Reply
The point of the test I thought was to round up a random group of men an women. By testing the hardcore (an extreme) the tests wouldn't do much good.
The article says nothing about how the samples were selected. As a result, the generalization to all women and all men is unwarranted.
In any case, the study was specifically focused on territorial games and mammal males are more territorial than mammal females - its the heritage of the forest.
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
now that'd be a game every woman could relate to.. am i right boys?
lol
Reply
Science says: Men get more brain as 'reward' for gaming
Reply
That reminds me of a story one stormy night with my girlfriend whilst enjoying a game of Halo 2... the challenge was beating the final boss on legendary whilst... well.. ya
I'm sure if you had a game company that was all women they'd churn out some stuff that guys don't care about but girls get more "reward" from playing.
Reply
However, I think that HOARDING games seem to have a much stronger pull for women. Games like Animal Crossing and THe SIms where you aren't competing and are instead merely trying to develop a character and accumulate stuff seem very popular with a lot of girls.
Reply
We both like video games about the same, too, albeit different genres.
Reply