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It's no mystery that girls tend to play fewer video games than boys. There is no real scientific explanation or study describing why this is the case, yet it remains an accepted fact and an accurate statistic. Part of the reason might be simply because video games can seem nerdy, and girls are less willing to look nerdy than boys, regardless of their age. However, this alone shouldn't account for the lack of female gamers in its current state.

Consider also the possibility that women are treated with less respect on the internet for their being than for their girliness. I've known a few girls who tried playing games online and were pushed away by drooling pubescent boys trying to flirt around. That barrier that the internet provides is just enough to make some less-than-gentlemen forget their manners, or their sanity, for that matter. Again, this alone wouldn't explain why there are fewer female gamers out there.

The main issue here is more likely to be something about the way the female mind works compared to the male mind. In identifying it, there is a very simple, almost obvious analogy that I feel somewhat obligated to use: Chess.

In the world of ranked Chess players, there are far fewer women than men. Chess requires a great degree of concentration, planning, and patience. Men tend to play it more than women. At first, this probably makes me sound incredibly sexist, but please first allow me to clarify one thing: The women are NOT decidedly worse than men. On the contrary, women are scattered across the map as far as rank goes in chess. In other words, women are just as (if not more) proficient as men are at chess, but still fewer women choose to play the game.

Video games present a similar case. There are many women who play games and work in the game development industry. It's completely normal to look at a big group photo of 15-25 dorky developers and see several women. It's completely normal to hear a women over voice chat playing an Xbox game, and it's very common to meet women who play Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft.

Unlike Chess, where there is still an undecided verdict as to whether a woman Chess player is likely to be better than a male Chess player, women who frequently play games are decidedly better than most men who frequently play games. Large video game tournaments often have something like a 20:1 ratio of women to men, with women almost always placing in the top 40%. No one can say for certain why women don't enjoy video games as much as men, but we can say for certain that women are not less skilled.

Learn more about this author, Levi Ritchie.
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