FeMale vs Male

Investigating on gender differences in the gaming world is fast becoming an interesting topic today considering the increasing number of female gamers as compared to the 1990s. I myself have seen an alarming number of female players clicking away at Local Area Network(LAN) Gaming shops nowadays, a huge contrast of what I saw during my younger years when it was mainly male dominated.



Second Life(SL) is definitely one online game which has a substantial number of female players behind those avatars. When I first logged in, I could see a fairly even distribution of male and female avatars. However, SL doesn't restrict its players from choosing the OTHER gender as their avatar. Thus I'm quite skeptical as to whether the female avatar in front of me is indeed a female in reality. I admit, I was tempted to choose a female avatar myself.

Anne-Marie article mentioned about games being open source. Upon some reading up, SL didn't start up as open source. It only happened in 2008 according to this article. I believe that is a fantastic move by Linden Labs. Had it not done that, I will not be seeing beautiful houses and avatars while playing the game today. Apparently, you own the digital goods(houses, cars) which you created yourself. There are a number of tools which you can use to create your own "products". You can even sell them to other players as Linden Labs deem it as your property, not theirs. How cool is that!!

A reason I feel why SL is able to attract a large number of female players is due to its Sandbox nature. As we've seen in The Sims which was introduced to the gaming world in year 2000, it was immensely popular with females. According to the reading, females are slowly breaking the tradition though, venturing into more violent and monstrous games. However, I feel that majority of the female gender still prefer a more laid back game mechanics with less violence, less competition and more cutesy stuffs. It is not evident in SL only, the increasing number of Facebook games(Bejewelled, Restaurent City) infested with female players has also proven it.

I like the idea of playing a game with females. They are able to inject a different kind of gaming experience as compared to a single gender game. The way they handle things, react to certain situations etc are very different from what a male gamer would do. As a result, females make the game more interesting, less rigid and not so one-dimensional.

Advantages aside, the female gender can also be a problem. When you mix the two genders in a common world, there are bound to be conflicts and trouble. Sexual harrassement, stalking, online prostitution are just some examples. I haven't encountered any of these during my time in SL though, but I think that's because I haven't gone to the correct places where such activities are raging. And then with the open source nature, people may create undesirable contents which make the game sleazy and unsuitable for the young.


Nudity


Cybersex


Undesirable Content

There has also been cases of what happened in SL leading to devastating consequences in real life with regards to the female gender playing the game. One example is an online affair leading to a real life divorce. I doubt such things will occur if the other gender is not within the game.

There are pros and cons to this phenomenon of increasing female gamers. At the end of the day, it is still how an individual approach the game that matters the most, especially so in an open game like SL. Discussion question I suggesting this week is "Male vs Female, how does a game affect them psychologically. Same in-game occurence, but how different can it affect them?"