Read the passage below and check your comprehension by answering the following questions. Then “submit” your work.
The stereotypical view of the gaming community—especially hardcore, excellent players—is that it is young and male. But industry reports note that nearly half of online gamers are female, and that the average female player is in her mid-40s (Entertainment Software Association, 2016). So what are women playing? And do they play differently than men?
Researchers have found that women play more casual games, while men play more competitive shooter and role-playing games (Trepte, Reinecke, & Behr, 2009). In the highly competitive massively multiplayer online (MMO) games, women make up only about 20 percent of the players. Men and women also report playing MMOs for different reasons—men are more motivated by achievement, whereas women are more motivated by social reasons. In fact, women are twice as likely as men to play with their romantic partner (Williams, Consalvo, Caplan, & Yee, 2009). And, although both men and women tend to underestimate how much time they spend playing, women are far more likely to lie about how often they play (Kahn, Ratan, & Williams, 2014).
Are these differences because women just are not as good as men at playing the games? Recent communication research has debunked this notion. In an overtime analysis of the actual game play of over nine thousand EverQuest II players and two thousand players of Chevaliers’ Romance III (a Chinese game), researchers found no difference in performance—the characters played by women advanced in the game just as quickly as the characters played by men (Shen, Ratan, Cai, & Leavitt, 2016). Men’s characters did often reach higher status levels, but that was a function of them having played the game for a longer time and being more accepted by other players into “guilds.”
The researchers argue that many of the gaming differences between men and women may be due to a self-fulfilling prophecy. The stereotype of women being poorer players may contribute to a lack of acceptance by the gaming community and may encourage all but the most hardcore female players to avoid these games or limit their playing time.