Gendarme wrote:@
Goodspeed I have no idea what Arkham horror is; I was referring to
Batman: Arkham. It is not a competitive game as it is not multiplayer. Regarding video games vs. games in general, I don't have much to say as I don't have a good definition of what a game is. The question is what the reason behind the vast majority of men in Starcraft/Counter Strike/etc. is. I'm not really interested in finding a good definition of "game" just for the sake of having something to say about it.
Ah. Well the same thing applies whichever Arkham you meant. It's a game, so women are by default less interested. And like I said the distinction between tabletop games and video games is important because the threshold to get into video gaming is much higher. Looking at tabletop games, which also tend to be more casual, I think the percentage of female players is much higher. When you get into serious (competitive) tabletop games like chess, the vast majority of players is male again.
Puzzling, problem solving, engineering are more male traits than female. I was not referring to jigsaw puzzles, but things such as "How do we cross this river safely?" or "How do I change this from O(n^2) to O(n)?". Jigsaw puzzles are generally just time sinks.
I'm not convinced about puzzling and problem solving. Where does problem solving stop anyway? It's what we do all day every day. Define "problem". Engineering, sure, but one has to wonder if that is mostly a cultural thing or genetic. It probably is genetic, but it's obvious that cultural factors are skewing the numbers so it's hard to say to what extent.
You can feel powerful even in single-player games such as the Arkham Series. Of course the underlying evolutionary reason for the power hunger - as for many other things - is competitiveness, but there is no need for competitiveness to get a feeling of power.
No but there is a need for an underlying instinct that makes power feel
good. You can feel powerful but for it to be a rewarding feeling you still need competitiveness. And there is a degree of that in everyone, including women, it just seems to be more rewarding to men.
I didn't mean playing a game of 4v4 as being a part of a team, but was thinking of something rather long-term. Being in a team is somewhat overlapping with problem solving and engineering, but also extends to other areas such as protecting/providing for your friends/family and robbing a bank.
This didn't make much sense to me. Protecting/providing is not working in a team; you are doing that on your own are you not? How is robbing a bank a long-term team effort?
In my xp women are on average more into working in groups/teams, whether that's short-term or long.
These differences are certainly harder to observe in today's western societies for a number of reasons (e.g. modern feminism, worse global economy so that both the man and woman have to work to provide for the family), but even a few generations ago they were as clear as day.
Just no. They're harder to observe today because they are largely cultural. Women didn't work serious/well-paying jobs because they couldn't. They weren't educated because they couldn't be. Obviously then the differences are clear as day. Women are working more today because they always wanted to. The percentage of families where the woman is the main or even the only breadwinner have been and still are on the rise. This is/was even true in the household I grew up in. As women get increasingly educated and work more serious jobs, these differences will start to fade even more.