In a lecture titled Sex Differences in Video Game Play: What the industry doesn’t know about why girls don’t play first person shooters, John L. Sherry began with the 35-year age divide among gamers. Most people who play video games (gamers) are under 35 years old. The older generation generally experiences video games in a fixed, different way. Thus, dynamic new technologies are best suited for the younger generation.

Sherry gesticulates to make a point

“Games are a simulation of the real and the unreal,” said Sherry. So, by encoding education information into the framework of the world, you can use video games to teach. Even a biology textbook could, in theory, be converted into a compelling game. But first, it needs to be well understood why boys and girls react differently to different kinds of games. Girls, for example, like puzzle, quiz, and board games, while boys prefer sports, fighting, action, or FPS games. Both sexes equally enjoy racing, simulation, and mmog games.

Sherry offered four solutions to the gender-gap:

1) Ignore the differences when making a game
2) Make different games for girls and boys
3) Make everyone play games targeted at girls
4) Figure out why girls and boys play differently and use that information to design a cross-gender game

He spent a good deal of time classifying the teenage response and debunking popular myths. For example, girls and boys now spend approximately the same number of hours each day playing games, although they subjectively report their time use differently, boys playing “lots” of games, and girls playing “some” games. Also, “Violence doesn’t make [a game] any more or less interesting,” said Sherry.

When you think about the point of a game, you run into difficulty. “What do you say,” asked Sherry. “I was able to manipulate pixels so I got new pixels? Yeah!” Ultimately, he concluded that “it’s not boyness and girlness that determine who can play: it’s underlying behavioral abilities.” That means that games in the future may test players for their skills and interests before the game starts and tailor the environment specifically for their strong points.

If you’d like to hear the lecture yourself, please view this mp3 recording of it. It’s approximately 40mb.

2 Responses to “Ability, not gender, affects video game play”

1. dr. b. says:

   3/5/2006 at 1:11 pm

   To say that girls play certain games and boys play others is fairly essentialist. I agree with the thought that there do need to be different genres of games that cover the same subject matter for edugaming, but I worry that saying that certain games are for girls and others are for boys will only serve to perpetuate a stereotype. There are more and more women playing FPS and sports games (note the rise in female clans). I also wonder how Sherry’s POV would change if he were to work with updated stats that show that the average age of the gamer is increasing as video game console prices continue to rise. The ESA finds that the average age of the game buyer (this does include parents admittedly) is 37 (http://www.theesa.com/facts/gamer_data.php), companies like EA have disclosed that the player base for their Sims series is female and over 30 (43% of them having children of their own), and the president of the ESRB, Patricia Vance, (www.esrb.org) has placed the average age at 29. There are discrepencies, but the point is that the gaming population is aging. Gamers don’t stop gaming as they grow older.

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2. Bcadada says:

   3/2/2009 at 5:37 pm

   I think girls dont like violence and shooting, they play dress up games and puzzle games, haha

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