MSU researchers link gender, leisure time with video gaming

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Chances are that n00b you pwned last night on “World of Warcraft” was a dude.

In a study published last month, researchers at MSU found that women spend less time playing video games than men.

Jillian Winn, an outreach specialist in MSU’s Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies and Media, and Carrie Heeter, a professor in the department, found that one possible reason for the trend is that women have less leisure time than men.

“The most surprising thing that I found was the big difference (in) what girls reported than boys — the number of hours spent working and spent on homework,” Winn said.

They also found that the free time women have occurs in smaller chunks than the free time of males. Heeter said women tend to want to multitask and spend time with family and friends, rather than play video games.

Women prefer to play games in a short block of time when they can predict when the session would end, Heeter said.

The research also found that women prefer casual games rather than more intensive games such as massively multiplayer online role-playing games.

The research has implications for game designers who want to expand their target audience, Winn said.

“One suggestion for game designers is to make games that are easier to get into and come back to,” she said.

The study, called “Gaming, Gender and Time: Who Makes Time to Play?” was published in Sex Roles: A Journal of Research in June. The research was Winn’s graduate thesis and looked at results from a survey taken by 276 undergraduates at MSU.

“It’s fairly unusual for a masters student to get published in a journal,” Heeter said.

Winn said gaming isn’t just for fun anymore — it has more serious, practical applications, especially since women are underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields.

“As a girl, you’re at a disadvantage if you don’t like to play games since it’s in our culture so much,” Winn said. “Girls who don’t play games might be more intimidated by technology, but if girls play games (they might) feel more confident in terms of technical skills.”

Heeter said the study adds “another piece to the puzzle” of brain research.

“If you look at the whole picture of brain research, we get a complicated and complete picture about what’s known about gender and gaming,” she said.

Despite Winn’s suggestion females should play video games, accounting juniors Jackie and Jessie Kamprath said they don’t indulge.

“I have better things to do,” Jessie Kamprath said. “High school or college, hand (a guy) a controller and they’re done for the rest of their lives.”

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