A new study led by Dmitri Williams, a professor at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication, revealed that in some cases every male geek gamer's fantasy may be true -- some girls really are closet gaming freaks.
The study, published in the Journal of Communication, and available here (PDF), examined the gaming habits of females and males playing the popular Massively Multiplayer Online RPG (MMORPG) EverQuest II.
The sample group was quite large, consisting of responses from 7,000 logged in players. There were many surprises in the results. First, the gaming wasn't dominated by kids -- in fact the average age was 31. More interestingly still, older gamers tended to spend more hours on the game per week.
And female gamers spent, on average, far more hours than their male counterparts. Top female players logged 57 hours a week, while top male players only logged 51 hours a week. And on average, girls logged 29 hours a week versus 25 hours for males.
Age isn't the only thing women tend to lie about, according to the survey. More women than men responded that they lied to their friends and loved ones about how much time they played.
Other dark elf slayers/professors and grad students that participated in the study included Mia Consalvo, Scott Caplan, and Nick Yee.
Original article
LSN: Not that anyone gives a damn about Everquest. But yah! Women can waste more time than men on the monotonous grinding that is MMORPGs.
Squeenix CEO Calls Out Japanese Gamers on Western Bias
The relationship of Japan and the West when it comes to video games is a strange one, and Square-Enix CEO Yoichi Wada has spoken at length on the subject more than once. Wada clearly admires the Western game industry, mentioning that he wants to see his native Japan follow suit with more games made for adults, and - like many other Japanese developers - has obviously been mulling over how Japanese game makers can market their titles to Western gamers more successfully instead of dealing with a relatively small, insulated market.
But for the moment, Wada isn't concerned with how to market his company's games in the West, but with the exact opposite: In an interview with Japanese TV posted to YouTube, Wada expressed frustration with Japanese gamers' resistance to Western titles, in part due to the country's collective "meh" to Modern Warfare 2, which Activision handed off to Square-Enix to publish in the Land of the Rising Sun.
Specifically, Wada has an issue with the Japanese term youge- (洋ゲー), the word used to refer to titles made in the West as opposed to Japanese-made games, or geimu (ゲーム - yeah, it's just the word "game"). By differentiating between the two, Japanese gamers are essentially saying that Western games aren't actually games, and the Square-Enix boss doesn't like it.
"Even now, there have been people in Japan using the label youge- (Western games) with a terribly discriminatory meaning," said Wada. "I'd like them to try it once. If they play it once, they'd realize how incorrect that label is."
There's no doubt that Wada has a bit of a personal investment in the matter considering that strong sales of MW2 would benefit his company's coffers, but considering his previous statements on the matter it's not hard to believe that the man genuinely wants Japan's gamers and game makers alike to broaden their borders in more ways than one.
The Escapist
LSN: And after this fair-minded and progressive message, the Escapist encourages people to play a Ching Chong Beautiful, a really damn racist browser game for the holidays.
The study, published in the Journal of Communication, and available here (PDF), examined the gaming habits of females and males playing the popular Massively Multiplayer Online RPG (MMORPG) EverQuest II.
The sample group was quite large, consisting of responses from 7,000 logged in players. There were many surprises in the results. First, the gaming wasn't dominated by kids -- in fact the average age was 31. More interestingly still, older gamers tended to spend more hours on the game per week.
And female gamers spent, on average, far more hours than their male counterparts. Top female players logged 57 hours a week, while top male players only logged 51 hours a week. And on average, girls logged 29 hours a week versus 25 hours for males.
Age isn't the only thing women tend to lie about, according to the survey. More women than men responded that they lied to their friends and loved ones about how much time they played.
Other dark elf slayers/professors and grad students that participated in the study included Mia Consalvo, Scott Caplan, and Nick Yee.
Original article
LSN: Not that anyone gives a damn about Everquest. But yah! Women can waste more time than men on the monotonous grinding that is MMORPGs.
Squeenix CEO Calls Out Japanese Gamers on Western Bias
The relationship of Japan and the West when it comes to video games is a strange one, and Square-Enix CEO Yoichi Wada has spoken at length on the subject more than once. Wada clearly admires the Western game industry, mentioning that he wants to see his native Japan follow suit with more games made for adults, and - like many other Japanese developers - has obviously been mulling over how Japanese game makers can market their titles to Western gamers more successfully instead of dealing with a relatively small, insulated market.
But for the moment, Wada isn't concerned with how to market his company's games in the West, but with the exact opposite: In an interview with Japanese TV posted to YouTube, Wada expressed frustration with Japanese gamers' resistance to Western titles, in part due to the country's collective "meh" to Modern Warfare 2, which Activision handed off to Square-Enix to publish in the Land of the Rising Sun.
Specifically, Wada has an issue with the Japanese term youge- (洋ゲー), the word used to refer to titles made in the West as opposed to Japanese-made games, or geimu (ゲーム - yeah, it's just the word "game"). By differentiating between the two, Japanese gamers are essentially saying that Western games aren't actually games, and the Square-Enix boss doesn't like it.
"Even now, there have been people in Japan using the label youge- (Western games) with a terribly discriminatory meaning," said Wada. "I'd like them to try it once. If they play it once, they'd realize how incorrect that label is."
There's no doubt that Wada has a bit of a personal investment in the matter considering that strong sales of MW2 would benefit his company's coffers, but considering his previous statements on the matter it's not hard to believe that the man genuinely wants Japan's gamers and game makers alike to broaden their borders in more ways than one.
The Escapist
LSN: And after this fair-minded and progressive message, the Escapist encourages people to play a Ching Chong Beautiful, a really damn racist browser game for the holidays.
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Actually, MW2 made the Japanese Top 10 and improved Xbox 360 sales? The real news is that the game had a horrible translation filled with TONS of reverse-Engrish that ruined the plot and made the game unintentionally funny.