Why girls play digital games: an empirical study into the relations between gender, motivations and genre

In recent years, several studies have explored the motivations for playing different game genres such as MMO (Yee, 2006a, 2006b) and FPS (Jansz & Tanis, 2007). Others have taken steps towards creating an integrated framework for use across genres (Sherry, Lucas, Greenberg, & Lachlan, 2006). Despite the strong gender bias of the game industry, however, none of these studies have tackled the issue of gender differences in motivations. This paper aims to fill this gap by exploring the relation between genres and gamer motivations. For this we draw upon a sample of 983 gamers recruited on online forums to fill out an online survey. On average, the respondents were 23.94 years old (SD = 6.43) and 37% were female. By means of a principal component analysis (PCA) on 23 Likert items, we distinguish between five motivation components: immersion, social contact, challenge, competition and control. Analysis reveals that women have consistently lower motivation scores than men, with a Cohen's d ranging from -.40 for competition to -.99 for social contact. This indicates that women are generally less strongly motivated to play digital games. The picture becomes more complex, however, when we look at playing frequency and differences between game genres. Again using linear PCA, frequency measures of playing 22 different game genres are reduced to five general components: casual games (e.g. puzzle games, board games), heavy action games (e.g. shooters, role-playing games), light action games (e.g. platform games, party games), management games (e.g. strategy games, simulation games) and sports games (e.g. football and racing games). Except for light action, gender effects are found for all game genre components. This shows that female gamers play casual games more often (d = .66), while male gamers spend more time on heavy action, sports and management games (d ranging from -.42 to -1.18). Next, gaming frequency components are regressed on gender, age, gender*age, game motivation and game motivation*gender. Casual gaming is explained by gender (positive effect), challenge and immersion with immersion being a stronger predictor for females. For heavy action gaming: gender (positive effect for males), challenge, social contact and immersion are positive predictors. Again, interaction effects are found as women share stronger effects for these motivations. Concerning light action gaming, a positive prediction is found for females, social contact, and immersion. Once more, immersion yields a stronger effect for females. Management games' frequency is, apart from gender (positive effect for males), positively predicted by social contact and competition. Furthermore, challenge and immersion interact with gender, marking a strong effect of these motivations for females. Finally, no effect of gender is found on the frequency of playing sports games whereas all five motivations yield significant predictions. Except for competition, these predictions are all positive. Again, an interaction of gender with immersion is found, indicating a stronger effect for females. These results indicate that gender as well as motivations can be used to predict genre preferences. Remarkable, however, is that the interactions between gender and motivations consistently show stronger effects for females. This indicates that women who game more frequently are, in comparison, more strongly motivated than their male counterparts. A possible explanation for this phenomenon can be found in the existing stereotype that digital games are ‘boys’ toys’. Consequently, we hypothesize that females are confronted with a higher threshold to engage in video gaming. In other words, their motivation for playing digital games needs to be stronger than their belief that gaming is for men, hence the relatively higher motivational scores for high-frequency female gamers. Next, we look into inter- and intra-gender differences in attitudes towards gaming which confirm this. There are consistent differences between low-frequency gamers, who game less than once a week, and high-frequency gamers, who game at least once a week. Low-frequency gamers generally have a more negative attitude towards gaming than high-frequency gamers. When including gender, however, we notice that these differences are consistently larger for women than for men. This suggests that low-frequency female gamers tend to support the current stereotype of gaming being for males whereas high-frequency female gamers resist this belief strongly. Thus high-frequency female gamers have a relatively more outspoken positive attitude towards gaming than males which corroborates our hypothesis that female gamers face a higher threshold to becoming a gamer than men which in turn explains the stronger interaction effect of gender on the motivational dimensions. References Jansz, J., & Tanis, M. (2007). Appeal of playing online first person shooter games. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 10(1), 133-136. Sherry, J., Lucas, K., Greenberg, B., & Lachlan, K. (2006). Video game uses and gratifications as predictors of use and game preference. Playing video games. Motives, responses, and consequences, 213-224. Yee, N. (2006a). Motivations for play in online games. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 9(6), 772-775. Yee, N. (2006b). The psychology of massively multi-user online role-playing games: Motivations, emotional investment, relationships and problematic usage. In R. Schroeder & A. Axelsson (Eds.), Avatars at work and play: Collaboration and interaction in shared virtual environments (pp. 187–208)

Planar immersion lens with metasurfaces

The solid immersion lens is a powerful optical tool that allows light entering material from air or vacuum to focus to a spot much smaller than the free-space wavelength. Conventionally, however, they rely on semispherical topographies and are non-planar and bulky, which limits their integration in many applications. Recently, there has been considerable interest in using planar structures, referred to as metasurfaces, to construct flat optical components for manipulating light in unusual ways. Here, we propose and demonstrate the concept of a planar immersion lens based on metasurfaces. The resulting planar device, when placed near an interface between air and dielectric material, can focus electromagnetic radiation incident from air to a spot in material smaller than the free-space wavelength. As an experimental demonstration, we fabricate an ultrathin and flexible microwave lens and further show that it achieves wireless energy transfer in material mimicking biological tissue

Culturally Responsive Curriculum: Third Grade Dual Language Immersion Fraction Unit

While there is a growing body of research about best practice teaching in the dual language immersion setting as well as how to structure culturally responsive instruction, there is far less research that connects the dual language immersion model with culturally responsive mathematics instruction. This capstone primarily seeks to demonstrate how cooperative learning strategies, culturally responsive instructional techniques and the response to intervention and curriculum-based measurement model can be used to develop a math fractions unit for third-grade bilingual students in the dual language immersion setting. This study describes the components of dual language immersion, establishes the existence of racial inequities in the school system, describes methods for creating a culturally responsive classroom, and also describes assessment methods in mathematics instruction. After describing each of the previous components, the capstone presents a fractions mathematics unit for third grade students, integrating culturally responsive and dual language appropriate methods and practices in the curriculum

‘You just get sucked into it’: extending the immersion process model to virtual gameplay experiences in managed visitor attractions

This study investigates the immersion process in virtual visitor experiences in the context of a managed visitor attraction. It validates and extends previously developed models of the immersion process from tourism and proposes an underlying structure with four mechanisms driving the immersion process forward. Data was collected through semi-structured in-depth interviews with visitors participating in virtual gameplay at a commercial gaming centre in Oslo, Norway. Findings indicate that the immersion process is comparable across ‘real world’ and virtual visitor experiences and that the process consists of three stages (engagement, engrossment, and transcending involvement), corresponding with invol vement triggers, involvement worlds, and the state of immersion. The study extends previous models of the immersion process by identifying the influence of pre-existing involvement as an ‘involvement booster’ enhancing the individual visitor’s immersion process. The findings have implications for how the underlying structure and components of the immersion process can be understood and offers practical implications for experience designers working in the intersection between virtual and ‘real world’ visitor experiences.publishedVersio

Photoplethysmography for Quantitative Assessment of Sympathetic Nerve Activity (SNA) During Cold Stress

The differences in the degree of sympathetic nerve activity (SNA) over cutaneous blood vessels, although known to be more prominent in the periphery than the core vasculature, has not been thoroughly investigated quantitatively. Hence, two studies were carried out to investigate the differences in SNA between the periphery and the core during the cold pressor test (CPT) (right-hand immersion in ice water) and cold exposure (whole body exposed to cold air) using photoplethysmography (PPG). Two methods utilizing PPG, namely differential multi-site PTT measurements and low-frequency spectral analysis were explored for quantitative determination of SNA. Each study involved 12 healthy volunteers, and PPG signals were acquired from the right index finger (RIF), left index finger (LIF) (periphery) and the ear canal (core). During CPT, Pulse Transit Time (PTT) was measured to the respective locations and the mean percentage change in PTT during ice immersion at each location was used as an indicator for the extent of SNA. During cold exposure, the low-frequency spectral analysis was performed on the acquired raw PPGs to extract the power of the sympathetic [low-frequency (LF): 0.04–0.15 Hz] and parasympathetic components [high-frequency (HF): 0.15–0.4 Hz]. The ratio of LF/HF components was then used to quantify the differences in the influence of SNA on the peripheral and core circulation. PTT measured from the EC, and the LIF has dropped by 5 and 7%, respectively during ice immersion. The RIF PTT, on the other hand, has dropped significantly (P < 0.05) by 12%. During the cold exposure, the LF/HF power ratio at the finger has increased to 86.4 during the cold exposure from 19.2 at the baseline (statistically significant P = 0.002). While the ear canal LF/HF ratio has decreased to 1.38 during the cold exposure from 1.62 at baseline (P = 0.781). From these observations, it is evident that differential PTT measurements or low-frequency analysis can be used to quantify SNA. The results also demonstrate the effectiveness of the central auto-regulation during both short and long-term stress stimulus as compared to the periphery