Playing The Sims2: an exploration of gender differences in players’ motivations and patterns of play

Abstract

The Sims is the best selling PC game of all time. It has regularly been stated that its success is partly due to its attraction to a much wider audience than the proverbial male adolescent, yet academic research on its player base is lacking. This article reports on the first ever explorative survey (N = 760) conducted among players of The Sims2. Our study combined social role theory with gender and games theorizing to enable us to understand gender differences in play. We focused on gender differences in motivation for playing The Sims2, employing uses and gratifications as our guiding theory. Our results revealed that most of our participants were indeed female. The significantly higher score of male players on the challenge motive was anticipated by social role theory, but their higher score on social interaction was unexpected. Accordingly, we discuss the implications of our results for uses and gratifications theory as well as the necessity to investigate actual practices of play in more detail.

Tourists as Mobile Gamers: Gamification for Tourism Marketing

“…Boys prefer action and strategy games, while girls prefer brain and leisure games. This is similar with Jansz et al (2010) research on traditional games.…”

“…Jansz, Avis & Vosmeer (2010) find that males rate social interaction, fantasy and challenge as more important motivations than females. Olson (2010) agrees that for males, fun, competition, challenge and excitement, relaxation and coping with anger are important motives for playing games.…”

Situating social games in the everyday: an Australian perspective

“…There has been extensive research in the past on gender and media practices (Walker 1996;Shaw 2013;Butsch 2000) and gender and gaming more specifically (Romrell 2013;Royse et al 2007;Jansz, Avis and Vosmeer 2010;Bryce and Rutter 2002). Similarly, there is a smaller but growing academic literature that considers casual and social gaming and gender more specifically.…”

“…Relatedly, social games have been commonly categorised by commentators and developers as being played predominantly by women (Jansz, Avis and Vosmeer 2010;Hou 2011) and therefore largely targeted as such. This may have an impact on whether a male who plays these games is comfortable with identifying as playing these games or at least feels more comfortable identifying as playing and preferring particular types of social games.…”

Fangirls as teachers: examining pedagogic discourse in an online fan site

“…Unlike previous game studies research exploring The Sims in terms of gender and sexuality (Beavis and Charles 2005;Consalvo 2003;Jansz, Avis, and Vosmeer 2010), the social norms it conveys (Martey and Stromer-Galley 2007) and the modding, or modifying the game, it encourages (Sihvonen 2011), my work looks beyond the game, contributing to what we know about players' activities in the surrounding affinity space (Gee and Hayes 2010;Hayes, King, and Lammers 2008;Hayes and Lee 2012). In particular, I conducted a study of literacies and learning in The Sims Writers' Hangout (SWH; Lammers 2011), an informal learning space made up of adolescents who come together to create and share Sims fan fiction.…”