Class and Gender

Examining the data on the first 7,500 respondents revealed something interesting about the class spread in relation to gender: six of the seven classes have roughly the same distribution between men and women, and just one of the classes is significantly different. The odd one out is Conqueror, which is the most popular male class, but ranks only fourth among the current female respondents.

Here are the percentage of male and female respondents by class:

Male Class Percentages

• Conqueror: 28.50%
• Mastermind: 19.60%
• Seeker: 18.30%
• Achiever: 10.00%
• Socialiser: 9.70%
• Survivor: 7.70%
• Daredevil: 6.30%

Female Class Percentages

• Mastermind: 28.10%
• Seeker: 25.00%
• Achiever: 13.80%
• Conqueror: 13.00%
• Socialiser: 9.00%
• Survivor: 7.40%
• Daredevil: 3.50%

Using the current data to project what the distribution would be among an equal split of male and female respondents produces the following values:

Projected Class Percentages

• Mastermind: 23.9%
• Seeker: 21.7%
• Conqueror: 20.8%
• Achiever: 11.9%
• Socialiser: 9.3%
• Survivor: 7.5%
• Daredevil:4.9%

In other words, if we were dealing with a gender-equal sample, we would expect Conqueror to be the third most popular class (behind Mastermind and Seeker).

Comments

[Mory Buckman]

Interesting that the two lists are so similar to each other. The one major difference is Conqueror, and it seems you'll find plenty of those among women too. This data calls into question the idea that games "for women" need to be designed differently, no?

[Chris]

Mory: I'm not sure that it does... all we're looking at here is the parts of the brain that respond to play. This doesn't cover every gender-issue, and for instance Sheri Grainer Ray points to learning style as one aspect that is very different between the genders. Other differences include network versus spatial thinking, none of which are covered by this test.

What it *does* suggest is that the fundamentals of play are not gender specific, with the possible exception of the Conqueror-style fiero-seeking play. See also the recent post about Testosterone and Videogames on ihobo.

Cheers!

[Andrew Doull]

You may be interested in the sample subset for 71 readers of a roguelike blog here: http://roguelikedeveloper.blogspot.com/2009/10/poll-results-for-what-is-your-brain-hex.html

I'm still mulling over what to make of the significant variation in Conqueror types.

[Chris]

Andrew: thanks for sharing your results here! It's interesting to see these specific subset groups of the data.

[Justin]

I'm not overlly surprised by the disparity in conqueror, after all the description states it is very Testosterone based reaction. According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testosterone) men make on average forty to sixty times more than women.

What is more suprising is the correlation between the two lists. I would have expected more variance.

Very interesting.

Going to send this test to a few women gamers I know. See what they come out like. :)

[Justin]

Ah, less suprised now...

Just read that link posted by Chris above.

Very interesting, everyone should read. :)

[Justin]

(Sorry for tripple post... :S )

I meant more suprised.

[Angela]

Hopefully this'll encourage people to realise that many women enjoy games for the same reasons that men do, and that anybody can enjoy a good game, regardless of it's content.

[Chris (BrainHex Admin)]

Justin: *grins*

Angela: it's true, there are plenty of women who enjoy the same kind of games that men do. There's also plenty of men who enjoy the same kind of games that women do. The games industry is rather better at making the first kind of game than the second, but we're getting there slowly! :)

[Anna]

I'm surprised - female Daredevil-Survivor here :)

Not really stunned at the similarity between the lists - I've never understood why men and women wouldn't enjoy the same types of games.

[Valentin Stemetz]

Did you calculate those percentages by using all the respondents having the classes as a main class or did you include the sub-classes too ?