Although women now make up almost
half of all video game players, the gaming community remains, in some ways,
hostile toward women. For example, the GamerGate controversy, which began in
2014 and involved a harassment campaign against prominent female gamers,
journalists and designers, reflected a longstanding undercurrent of misogyny
and sexism in the community. In some cases, those who challenged the sexism
found themselves threatened with rape or death. There’s also the long-held
stereotype that men are simply better gamers than women. Women gamers are often
perceived as incompetent players who aren’t genuinely interested in the games
but rather sign up to get attention. If a female gamer does play well, she’s
often derided as a hacker – someone who cheats to gain an advantage – because there
is no way a girl can be that good.
In a recent study, we set out to
examine whether men really make better gamers than women and, if so, what drove
the gender performance gap. Specifically, we wanted to compare how quickly men
and women leveled up in Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) games, which are
online worlds where thousands of players develop characters, make friends, join
groups, complete quests and slay dragons together. If men are actually better
gamers than women, they should advance to higher levels within the same amount
of play time. But if they don’t progress any faster, this finding would help
refute one of the most pervasive stereotypes that continue to exist in the
gaming community. The research used
anonymous server data from over 10,000 men and women in two MMOs. Results found
that women advanced at least as fast as men did.
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