Dec 30 2008
Girl gamers really do exist: /facepalm
I’m a few days late on this “news,” but the BBC recently reported that girls make up over 40% of MMORPG players. Why, what else did you discover?
It found that the most hard-core players are female, that gamers are healthier than average, and that game playing is an increasingly social activity.
. . the survey revealed an unusually high level of bisexuality among the women who took part in the study - over five times higher than the general population.
Trippy. So now the new stereotype is that if you’re a girl that plays MMOs, you’re bisexual. Hurray ERP guilds! Hurray free love! Hurray biased surveys!
image copyright Sony Online Entertainment
Why biased? Because:
- The survey was a post-game survey from EverQuest II, and did not cover any other MMOs played
- The survey was sponsored by Sony Online Entertainment
- The survey was completely voluntary
- The survey offered a free in-game item upon completion
- The survey had people self report their levels of health, activity, and so on.
I love how the BBC reports that these conditions have brought on “some questioning of the results.” Some? Dear god, anyone with a basic education in logic or statistics would know that the the survey results are less stable than a stack of Jenga blocks. Shame on BBC for bothering to report this bullshit.
Are we women playing MMOs? Yes, and I’d bet you’d find that in some MMOs, the player base is well above 50% female, while in others, it’s less than 40%. I bet you’d find that girl gamers feel comfortable and safe in an MMO environment because unlike console games, their play is relatively anonymous: if they’re skilled, or if they’re a fuckup, there’s no real boys to yell at them and tell them to go make them dinner. They find MMOs a safe haven to explore fantasies via roleplay, a place to meet like-minded women who might otherwise hide behind the hulk of their husband’s shoulders. They’ve found a place where they really can escape the kids screaming and the husband dicking around and the housework that’s piling up.
Hello, world: you don’t need BBC to tell you that women like playing games. You don’t need the news to tell you that there’s a lot of us there. Just send us a /whisper, a /tell, a /wave. We’re in the computer, waiting for you to acknowledge we really do exist.
