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Water Cooler Games served as the web's primary forum for "videogames with an agenda" — coverage of the uses of video games in advertising, politics, education, and other everyday activities, outside the sphere of entertainment.

The site was maintained at watercoolergames.org from 2003-2009, where it was edited by myself and Gonzalo Frasca. It is now archived here in full.

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Do Girls Prefer 2D Games?

by Ian Bogost December 18, 2007

categories: Game Design , Women and Games

The term is finally over and I'm ready to get back in the saddle here, at least until the holidays further interrupt our regularly scheduled programming.

This study isn't new, but it's the first time I'd seen it. Tina R. Ziemek published the results of a study on 2D vs 3D game preference in boys and girls ages 13 and 14 in Two-D or not Two-D: Gender Implications of Visual Cognition in Electronic Games. The study asked boys and girls to choose games from a Nintendo 64 emulator start screen and measured preference through choice and post-study ranking.

The results suggest that almost 70% of girls preferred the 2D games (e.g. Yoshi's Story), and about the same percentage of boys preferred 3D games (e.g. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time).

Some of the conclusions:

Results indicate that 2D electronic games are easier than 3D electronic games for both females and males, and the majority of females would rather play games that are "easy" while the majority of males would rather play games that are "challenging". Females tended not to like the confusion in the 3D video games, whether it was unclear directions, objectives, camera perspectives, or not knowing how to control the character. Females may also prefer games that have dreamlike graphics to games with realistic graphics. Results also point toward a steeper learning curve for females when playing a 3D game than a 2D game.

(thanks to Ben)

Comments (6)

Did the study adjust the findings to remove the possible trend of boys having more experience playing games than the girls? (I don't have an ACM account to look at the findings with myself.)

josh giesbrecht on December 18, 2007 6:15 PM

Your link to the study is broken (too much gatech), and the author's name is "Ziemek." :) correct link: http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1111444&coll=portal&dl=ACM&CFID=47461365&CFTOKEN=92202908." rel="nofollow">http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1111444&coll=portal&dl=ACM&CFID=47461365&CFTOKEN=92202908. I'd HTMLize it, but this comment code strips the a tag.

@josh: One anecdote doesn't create "data." Nevertheless--I've been playing computer games actively since 1985 (a couple years younger than the study's participants), which means more experience with gameplay than most males. I don't represent the "majority of women" that Ziemek's article attempts to characterize. I can handle 3D FPS, though I prefer meaty RPGs like Baldur's Gate II and adventure games. For me, Quake and the old Apple ][ Bard's Tale II have something important in common: I have trouble seeing where I am without either (a) a 2D map that provides perspective or (b) sufficiently distinct in-game landscape. That's a failure of spatial capacity, not inexperience with a variety of game types.

I give directions offline by cardinal direction and distance as most men do, not by landmarks as most women prefer. But without a point of reference in a game, I do get lost, and my threshold for "clear point of reference" seems higher than that of many male gamers. Top-down view, as in Ultima VI, is fine. Visual richness in Morrowind and Oblivion? Great. But that's where my 3D ...tolerance, I guess, trickles away.

I might add that I find overly facile Ziemek's suggestion that females don't want to put in the effort. Her results are fascinating for other reasons, though....

skg046 on December 20, 2007 5:32 PM

@sg046
Thanks, fixed on both counts.

Ian Bogost on December 20, 2007 5:55 PM

From the description, it sounds like the researcher didn't control for other variables. Yoshi's Story versus Ocarina of Time? Umm... those are different genres. Is this a preference of 2D vs. 3D or a preference of platformer vs. adventure game? I'd think a better comparison would be Super Mario World vs. Mario 64, for example.

ibogost Schreiber on December 21, 2007 6:15 PM

@ josh

No-- and in fact the article explicitly states the girls had less experience playing games than the boys, which is a big deal, given recent research (e.g. de Castell and Jenson) that suggest many of the differences in gameplay and preferences attributed to gender may in fact be more indicative of novice vs expert play.

One of the other potential problems with the study is that it also reveals the boys were clearly performing their expertise and knowledge-- and everyone knows the 'cool' games are the ones in 3D (at least that's what the ads assure me...)

Don't get me started on using research on women to talk about girls, and vice versa.

Still, the idea of looking at how we build our virtual models of space is interesting, and has some repercussions I think into how some of the 'classic' mathematical models of creating 'real' visual space may be gendered.

Cloo on December 21, 2007 7:07 PM

Interesting. I think there are many plausible explanations given the current research. I've found interesting the possibility that there might be sex differences in responses and prioritization of depth cues. Nothing conclusive has been done with this, but see http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0926-6410(98)00002-0 for example.

Dean Eckles on December 29, 2007 1:56 AM