After reading the passage below, answer the questions that follow. Be sure to "submit" your response for each question. You will initially receive full credit for each question, but your grade may change once your instructor reviews your responses. Be sure to check the grade book for your final grade.
Online Gamers: Women Are Hardcore, Too
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 computer and online video gamers are female (Gough, 2019). So what are women playing? And do they play differently than men?
Market researchers have found that female game players most prefer the action/adventure and strategy genres, but play a broad range of games, including puzzle and arcade games; male players most prefer more competitive shooter games, but also play sports, strategy, and action/adventure games (Newzoo, 2017). Men and women also report playing games for different reasons — men are more motivated by competition (matches, rankings) and destruction (explosives, mayhem), whereas women are more motivated by completion of goals (finish missions) and fantasy (being someone/someone else; Yee, 2016).
In the highly competitive massively multiplayer online (MMO) games, women make up a much smaller proportion of the players, which may reinforce the stereotype that women cannot play as well as men. Indeed, female players are often not taken seriously by the gaming community and are targets of sexual harassment (Tang, Reer, & Quandt, 2019). However, researchers analyzing the actual game play of thousands of MMO players found no difference in performance — the characters played by women advanced in the games 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.” Such a lack of acceptance may encourage many female players to avoid these games. And even the hardcore female players often eschew the “gamer” label because it is so strongly associated with male-dominated and often hostile game culture (Vermeulen, Van Bauwel, & Van Looy, 2017).
Women have become a much larger presence in the world of Twitch, where they livestream as they play, while also connecting with their followers (Mediakix, 2019). Although “gamer girls” on Twitch face sexism and harassment common to other gaming venues, they are also very popular and some have become major influencers (Convery, 2017).