Survey Presented at GDC Reveals How Many Boys Don't Care About Character Gender (and How Many Girls Do)

Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

Last week at GDC the results of an interesting new study about gender and gaming were shared. The study, conducted by Ashly Burch and Rosalind Wiseman, asked students in middle and high school a variety of questions about their gaming habits, including topics like what gender characters they prefer playing, if those preferences effect how likely they are to play a game, and how they feel about how female characters are typically handled. The lesson Burch and Wiseman are hoping the industry learns from their study is that kids are more progressive than we tend to think, even when it comes to games lead by someone other than the standard grizzled white guy heroes. For instance, a surprising number of boys don't care whether their characters are male or not, compared to a much larger number of equally game-savvy girls who prefer playing as female characters. 

While the bottom line is that these numbers should inform development decisions and help in the push for increased diversity in games, as I was reading about this study I couldn't help but let my mind wander a bit. Specifically, it wandered to all the people (mostly men) who have asked me in the past why I care so much about the gender of the characters I play...

Frankly 'asked' is too polite a word for some of those encounters. But it's easy to forget that they're not necessarily upset because one more female character for me is one less male character for them, but more likely because they really don't care, and they just can't wrap their head around why I really, really do. So they assume I'm making a big deal out of something that doesn't matter, that I'm throwing a temper-tantrum, that it's not really important to me because it's just not important to them. It's an argument a lot of people like me have gotten into time and time again, not necessarily because the people arguing are jerks (sometimes they are) but often because they personally don't have that inclination in their own head.

All tangents aside, be sure to check out Charlie Hall's write-up of Burch and Wiseman's GDC presentation over on Polygon for a summary of their findings as well as their slides.

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Janine Hawkins (@bleatingheart on Twitter, Iris Ophelia in Second Life) has been writing about virtual worlds and video games for nearly a decade, and has had her work featured on Paste, Kotaku, Jezebel and The Mary Sue.

Comments

[Ciaran Laval]

I'm not at all surprised by the results of this survey. I would suspect that results would be similar with older gamers too. Gamers are happy to play non-human characters.

I would expect to see similar results when it comes to race too.

Those who are underrepresented in games are those who are more likely to ask for more representation.

However when it comes to the devs, they should heed these results and instead of pontificating on Twitter and blog posts they should just get on with it, actions speak a lot louder than words, especially in areas such as this.

[Amanda Dallin]

I suspect a lot of boys are saying what's expected of them when they say they don't care what gender they play. There is a contradiction between popular culture and mainstream culture when it comes to gender issues. Popular culture always changes faster than mainstream culture. Culture never changes over night but in a long process based on some kind of dichotomy.

[Adromaw]

The words here are suggesting that the boys are largely not as sexist as often pushed. And the girls are taking on more extreme divisional attitudes. Could just be in vagueness though

[Yesplease]

There are quite a few studies that show that while women have an in group loyalty, i.e. will tend to stick up for their fellow sisters, men do not have such an in group loyalty, in fact many have this sort of 'one good man' theory playing out in their own heads. An ironic twist on what you usually hear.

[Yesplease]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15491274
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/“Women_are_wonderful”_effect
http://www.apa.org/monitor/dec04/women.aspx