Dr. Griffiths’ students don’t play games to bond with their classmates or to blow off steam between lectures — they play to feel powerful and in control. “Most gaming research has been done on adolescents,” says Griffiths, a psychology professor and director of the Center for Mental Health and Addiction. “I don’t think anyone expected to find such a gender difference.”
That may be because the stereotype is that all gamers are teenage boys. But when Griffiths and his colleagues surveyed 360 college students who play games, they found 98 percent were men. About half said they spent more than five hours per week gaming; 20 percent played daily. Combining surveys and interviews, the researchers found that men preferred fast-paced shoot-’em-up games, while women enjoyed puzzle and adventure games.
i wrote a blogpost about why i hate video games original
“If you’ve ever played as a female character in a computer game, you know what our society thinks about women: They’re either helpless princesses waiting to be saved or sex objects. The same goes for male video game characters: They’re either aggressive, violent meatheads or paunchy old men with potbellies and receding hairlines.”
About Video Games
Even when they were matched for skill level in a game like Halo 3 , men enjoyed playing with male characters more than women did. Men were also more likely to choose a violent avatar: “For them, it’s about being aggressive, competitive, and dominant over other players,” says Griffiths. “Women were more likely to choose a female character because they saw them as less threatening.”
Griffiths has also surveyed the online community of massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) like World of Warcraft . In one study he found that 84 percent of men who play as female characters in MMOGs do so to feel powerful. “I think these games appeal to men who have a sense of entitlement,” says Griffiths, “and want to be in a world where everything is about them and everyone acknowledges their existence.”
positive qualities and negative qualities
for males and females respectively. Boys who play video games are more likely to be depressed than boys who do not play video games. Girls who play video games are also more likely to be depressed, but make better friends and have a stronger sense of self-worth. I feel this article is a little biased towards the positive effects for males and negative effects for females playing video games. The journalist states, “even when they were matched for skill level in a game like Halo 3, men enjoyed playing with male characters more than women did.” I don’t think it is saying that women aren’t as good at the games because they would be using a male character to make themselves feel powerful.
The journalist then goes on to say “Women were more likely to choose a female character because they saw them as less threatening.” I guess this was supposed to mean that women were more likely to choose a female character because male characters are preferred and viewed as powerful by men. This article does state things from a very generalized point of view and is not specific on the type of person playing video games, so it may be hard for some people who play video games to relate. The article does state that women prefer puzzle and adventure games such as Final Fantasy, whereas men prefer fast-paced shoot-’em-up games such as Halo 3. I think this is just because the majority of people playing these types of video games are men and so these types of games are geared towards their wants more than the women’s. Overall, this article is good at stating facts but doesn’t offer many solutions to the problems it brings up.
Conclusion:
The article states that men who play video games are more likely to be depressed than women, and girls who play video games are less likely to make good friends. I think the article has a very male-favoring bias in their wording of things throughout the article.
