Girls As Game Designers
© Michigan State University Comm Tech Lab, 2005
Carrie Heeter, Rhonda Egidio, Punya Mishra, Leigh Graves-Wolf, Randy Russell, Brian Winn
partially funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation

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Other Results by Gender and Grade

Respondents were asked how much they would like to play the games at home and how much they would like to play them at school. They were asked, for each promo, whether they felt the game was more for girls, for both boys and girls, or more for boys.

Amount of game play per week, how much they love to play games, and preferences for a variety of game features were also measured.

None of the promos were considered more appropriate for girls.

Even though 4 of the 8 promos were envisioned by all girl teams, none of the games seemed to the respondents to be designed for girls. The highest "more for girls" percentage for any promo was only 10%. The average percent of respondents who thought any promo was more for girls was only 5%. Games are perceived as either gender neutral or more for boys. The girl games were significantly more likely to be perceived as being gender neutral (for both boys and girls) than the boy games were. Boy games were more often thought to be more for boys.

Girls and Boys would be more interested in playing the games at school than at home

Girls play less than boys do.

Girls play games for significantly fewer hours per week than boys do. More than half of 7th and 8th grade girls play for less than 2 hours per week, compared to about one fifth of 7th and 8th grade boys. 5th and 6th graders play for more hours per week than 7th and 8th graders do, for both boys and girls. About 10% of girls and around 20% of boys are avid gamers, playing for more than 10 hours per week. Avid gaming is more common than abstinence.

Projecting from these findings, boys play an average of around 570 more hours per year than girls do, resulting in a cumulative vast gap in gaming experience over time.

Girls love to play less than boys do.

On a scale from 1= I love to play to 5= I hate to play, the average response is lowest for 7th and 8th grade girls (2.34) and highest for 5th and 6th grade boys (1.46). The difference between 5th and 6th grade boys and 7th and 8th grade boys is slight -- both ages of boy strongly love to play games.. The difference between 5th and 6th grade girls and 5th and 8th grade girls is large. At both ages girls love to play less than boys do, but by 7th and 8th grade the level of liking is much lower.

Game Attribute Preferences

This analysis was performed only among the 7th and 8th grade respondents.

Boys and girls dislike the idea of games where you learn something, and like games where you can choose your character's appearance and gender as well as games that have clear instructions. Girls and boys are not different in their liking of games where you have sidekick, or games where you get to be a hero.

Some gender differences were found -- girls dislilke games that are hard, fighting games, and games where you have to react quickly. Boys are not fond of games that are funny. Girls are less interested in being able to choose their character's abilities, although they do like that attribute in a game fairly much, just not as much as boys do.

Preference for What Kind of Alien to Have in a Game

This analysis was performed only among the 7th and 8th grade respondents.

Because the researchers are designing a game involving aliens, we asked six questions about what kind of aliens respondents would most want to see in a game. The order of preference was mostly the same for girls and boys.Most preferred types were enemy alliens, then realistic, followed by weird, friendly, silly, and cute. Girls particularly liked the idea of enemy aliens, and their response for the other five types were barely different. Boys likes and dislikes were much more extreme. Boys really like enemy and realistic aliens, and really hate cute, silly, and friendly aliens.