Society

The fundamental reasons why women don’t like mainstream video games

Some time ago I came across a silly infographic that wanted to make the point that women spend as much time (or was it money?) on video games as men. Unfortunately, they conflated mobile games with their exploitative pricing models where you watch stamina bars fill, and if they drop, you have to go the route of in-app-purchases, with “real” video games that require a greater amount of dedication, primarily because they have complex inputs, for instance first-person shooters. There are also games with complex systems but simple inputs, like strategy games, that require serious dedication to master. This is quite the contrast to match-three games with an extremely low skill ceiling like Bejeweled.

Now that libshits have infested gaming, there is a substantial minority that wants more inclusion and thinks there is something wrong if the top 100 players of a certain game are all male. (It’s the same in chess.) However, there are very good reasons why women don’t dominate such games. One is that they don’t enjoy competition. At that point we’re facing a potential chicken-or-egg problem: do they not like competition per se, or is that merely the consequence of something else? I think that women may initially be interested in a competitive activity, but once they realize that they lose all the time, they move on. Because they can’t compete, they don’t want to compete. Of course, not all women are like that. My highly intelligent gal plays excellent Tetris, for instance, but she’s clearly an exception.

The other reason relates to personality aspects. There was a time when “Asperger’s” was supposed to be a mental illness, when it is little more than the rare trait of people, mostly men, to intensely focus on something. (Yes, I know that I’m exaggerating a little bit.) This is not necessarily good. For instance, if little Béla obsesses over combinatorics, ends up with a PhD in Mathematics and has a stellar career as Béla Bollobás, then everything is great. On the other hand, having young boys literally putting thousands of hours into competitive Counter Strike or Dota 2 is probably not all that great because plenty of guys end up severely limiting their potential in life. In that regard, women probably have it better on average.

7 thoughts on “The fundamental reasons why women don’t like mainstream video games

  1. When I was young my older sibling forced me to play countless hours of Mortal Kombat (1, 2, 3 and ultimate) and I hated that goddamn game because I lost so much. However, when I got older and played the newer installments, I was easily able to get pretty decent with a few characters in little time.

    So, a woman boasted about her MKX skills and challenged me one day. Needless to say that after a few ass whoopings she refused to play anymore.

  2. The number of legitimate female gamers is pretty darned small, and I suspect if that wasn’t the case there would not be too many women making money by having guys pay them to watch video games. You look at any game convention and the few women there are usually just into cosplay.

  3. now that video games are an industry beating the entire motion picture industry in revenue, suddenly video games aren’t for peter pan manboy losers, and women not only need to be included (despite doing harm to the industry and participants in the past) they need preferential treatment or else they will scream sexism at the top of their lungs until they turn purple.

    it would be like if men took over the tampon industry and demanded tampons smell more like shit, because gay guys like to shove things up their asses too so we need inclusion for men and men’s interests.

    1. “it would be like if men took over the tampon industry and demanded tampons smell more like shit, because gay guys like to shove things up their asses too so we need inclusion for men and men’s interests.”

      What?

    2. I think that was an attempt at sarcasm gone wrong….

      Remember guys, dont drink and post ?

    3. You forgot comics and other geeky hobbies.
      Fuck, now all the suddenly, tons of whores -whoops I mean “hotties” and even Playmates are “devoted geeks”. Joanie Brosas is oh so geeky that she’ll gladly sell you her nude prints doin’ cosplay (!), or the legendary Jessica Nigri and her almost omnipresent (and 100% natural guise, srlsy) cleavage.

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