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Brain research on boys’ preference for video games and girls’ for social media

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Re: Brain research on boys’ preference for video games and girls’ for social media

#71

Post by throwawawathrow »

dublinben wrote: post #67
derefr wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of games "for girls" (the hidden-object and life-simulation genres are almost exclusively consumed by women, regardless of theming) but they're not marketed with quite the high-budget superbowl ad-campaign effort that games "for boys" are. I've encountered the situation many times where I'll find out one of my female friends doesn't play video games. I'll ask why, and—disregarding the people who just…

According to some random infographic¹, over 60% of the mobile gaming demographic is female. This kind of game is absolutely being advertised during the Super Bowl. They're just not on the radar of "hardcore" gamers who tend to look down on console and especially mobile players. ¹ https://mediakix.com/blog/mobile-gaming-industry-statistics-...

Yeah as I alluded to in this thread I believe most gamers have been female for some time, but somehow for many people (read: many men) they don't 'count' because they're mobile games, or casual games, or not real games. At least that's the responses I've got every time the subject came up in previous discussions.

Re: Brain research on boys’ preference for video games and girls’ for social media

#72

Post by derefr »

dublinben wrote: post #67
derefr wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of games "for girls" (the hidden-object and life-simulation genres are almost exclusively consumed by women, regardless of theming) but they're not marketed with quite the high-budget superbowl ad-campaign effort that games "for boys" are. I've encountered the situation many times where I'll find out one of my female friends doesn't play video games. I'll ask why, and—disregarding the people who just…

According to some random infographic¹, over 60% of the mobile gaming demographic is female. This kind of game is absolutely being advertised during the Super Bowl. They're just not on the radar of "hardcore" gamers who tend to look down on console and especially mobile players. ¹ https://mediakix.com/blog/mobile-gaming-industry-statistics-...

I didn't want to get into it, but I would like to make a distinction, that I hope should be obvious in retrospect, and is different from the usual "casual"/"hardcore" distinction:

Some people play games; but some other people are only addicted to spending money on slot machines. The kind of mobile "game" you see Super Bowl ads (or, really, any TV ads) for are almost exclusively actually just slot machines at their core, with any game mechanics being tacked-on afterthoughts.

(If you wouldn't let your own children play a given "game", and your intuitive reasoning is the same as why you wouldn't let them wander freely in a casino—then you probably should mark such titles down under the "casino" tally, not the "games" tally, no?)

Importantly, the audiences for these two types of... experiences, let's call them—are mostly non-overlapping sets of people. Plenty of people are addicted to these slot-machine apps but would never play an actual "game", no matter how casual it was. They're not in it for game-mechanical "fun"; they're in it for variable-scheduled dopaminergic rewards. And, vice-versa, the more of an experienced "gamer" someone is—the more actual games they've played (where even FarmVille with all its dark patterns is still a game)—the more they'll have a taste for actual fun brought about by game mechanics, and so the more clearly they can intuitively feel that these slot-machine apps aren't providing such "fun."

Once you take these slot-machine non-games and their mostly non-gamer audiences out of consideration, then things do line up the way I described: there are no game companies targeting women bothering to spend much on advertising.

(There are, however, plenty of games without gendered targeting that have AAA ad spend. Pokemon, for example.)

Re: Brain research on boys’ preference for video games and girls’ for social media

#74

Post by txsoftwaredev »

whatshisface wrote: post #53

All of the games I played as a kid were clearly designed for boys and young men (featuring all of the typical things like guns and heavy machinery that men are well known to like more than women). That's just how the market was. If it's like that today, then it is no wonder that boys exhibit signs of enjoying video games more.

There is no shortage of video games both enjoyed by boys and girls. One popular "game" among younger children is "Roblox". It appeals to both girls and boys. My son tends to enjoy the more high paced action type games and my daughters enjoy the ones focused on running a store, dress up etc. They all enjoy playing games but my son can play for a much longer period of time. My daughters seem to get bored quicker and switch over to Netflix or similar.

Re: Brain research on boys’ preference for video games and girls’ for social media

#75

Post by thrower123 »

univerio wrote: post #69
derefr wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of games "for girls" (the hidden-object and life-simulation genres are almost exclusively consumed by women, regardless of theming) but they're not marketed with quite the high-budget superbowl ad-campaign effort that games "for boys" are. I've encountered the situation many times where I'll find out one of my female friends doesn't play video games. I'll ask why, and—disregarding the people who just…

I assume an example of a "life-simulation" game is the Sims? What are "hidden-object" games?

They are like eye-spy books or Where's Waldo moved to tablet. You pick try to click on objects hidden in a scene.

Re: Brain research on boys’ preference for video games and girls’ for social media

#76

Post by satokema »

chrisco255 wrote: post #57
chrisrhoden wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cultural acceptance / expectations account for a lot of behaviors. I played soccer & baseball as a boy because that was what was expected of me, not because I have some natural inclination to do so.

Did you? You telling me you got no innate enjoyment out of those activities? No rush or thrill when you scored a goal or caught a pop fly?

You would have to score a goal or catch a pop fly in order to experience those things.

My attempts at team sports when young were full of experiences of being insufficent and bullying or ostracism by the more athletic team members. So I didn't ask to go back and didn't join them later on for school teams, and had minimal interest in even observing them. Learning the rulesets was fine, I can follow an american football game, but I can't bring myself to actually care about teams or players or the league itself.

Re: Brain research on boys’ preference for video games and girls’ for social media

#77

Post by solidsnack9000 »

NoodleIncident wrote: post #66

Here is one of the actual studies, which is much less annoying to read: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6234325/?mod=ar... I was particularly interested in the participant selection section; they did go to an effort to select male and female participants with similar gaming habits. However, this doesn't mean that the only explanation for the different "craving" response is a fundamental difference betwee…

This argument is superficially compelling but I fear that it is ultimately argument from ignorance. It is true that we don’t know everything. You even offer a fairly elaborate example of something that we don’t know whether it happened or not. It could be true. The problem here is that you offer no evidence to support whether it is true or not. Now it’s story time and instead of evaluating the studies and working with a minimal conclusion supported by the evidence, the task becomes telling the better story.

Re: Brain research on boys’ preference for video games and girls’ for social media

#78

Post by oh_sigh »

univerio wrote: post #69
derefr wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of games "for girls" (the hidden-object and life-simulation genres are almost exclusively consumed by women, regardless of theming) but they're not marketed with quite the high-budget superbowl ad-campaign effort that games "for boys" are. I've encountered the situation many times where I'll find out one of my female friends doesn't play video games. I'll ask why, and—disregarding the people who just…

I assume an example of a "life-simulation" game is the Sims? What are "hidden-object" games?

Just what it sounds like - there are objects in a picture and you need to spot them. You'd get a list of 10 objects(guitar, owl, hamper, etc) and you need to find them in a picture of a room. The objects frequently aren't hidden per se but are just hard to spit because there might be 100 objects in the picture.

Re: Brain research on boys’ preference for video games and girls’ for social media

#79

Post by ineedasername »

The original (more clicky baity) said "brain differences", which really isn't born out by the article content. It seems highly likely that these preferences are socially constructed. I have two kids under the age of 10, and both play video games with the same fervor & intensity. Neither are allowed on social media yet. (yes, that's a sample size of 1, so it's hardly authoritative, just a case-in-point)

Re: Brain research on boys’ preference for video games and girls’ for social media

#80

Post by archontes »

ineedasername wrote: post #81

The original (more clicky baity) said "brain differences", which really isn't born out by the article. It seems highly likely that these preferences are socially constructed. I have two kids under the age of 10, and both play video games with the same fervor & intensity. Neither are allowed on social media yet. (yes, that's a sample size of 1, so it's hardly authoritative, just a case-in-point) Also, at least some of…

And perhaps will change dramatically when puberty hits.
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