Male Vs Female Role Playing Games

First please note that this article is not saying that all women are one way, and that all men are another way. This is just an attempt to understand some of the statistical differences in the trends between the type of imagination games that women prefer as opposed to those that men prefer.

In order to understand the difference between men and women in role playing, all you have to do is watch a group of children play make-believe. If you watch closely you will notice that the boys are usually engaged in some activity in which something has to be accomplished. This can be a fight they have to win, a princess they have to save, or something similar. By contrast, the girls are usually engaged in a very social experience, in which the interactions between themselves and others, as well as the feelings of everyone involved, are more important than the goals being accomplished.

This carries through to the types of games that men like as opposed to those that women prefer. For instance, statistics show that there are 5 males for every 1 female that are signed up as members of the popular online role playing game World of Warcraft. That is probably because this game is a very mission oriented experience, in which players go around killing monsters for points to make themselves stronger, and gold, which they can use to buy better weapons, which allows them to kill stronger monsters and get more points and gold. There are social aspects, in that you can talk to other players from around the world, but these conversations tend to be mostly about how to accomplish the goal at hand.

By contrast, games which are marketed at women tend to be more social in their dynamics. One example would be the huge hit "The Sims", a game in which you control the everyday lives of a normal group of people. You can have them make friends, form relationships, break up, have fights, get jobs or any normal activity you would expect from an average person. In the game, there is no clearly stated goal. Instead the appeal is that you get to create and control social interactions between virtual characters.

The general consensus is that girls don't like role playing games. However this is more due to the fact that the term "role playing" was co-opted by Dungeons and Dragons, and turned into a largely goal based activity, i.e. kill the dragon, save the castle, etc. However this ignores the social aspect of the game, which is actually much more to the liking of most females.

In recent years the internet has made it possible for so many different types of role playing communities to flourish, that social based games are starting to become more prominent. Aside from character based forum role playing, you now also have fictional social networks, where members sign up as made-up characters, and interact with one another in a MySpace style website.

This article was written by Joseph Gambit on behalf of [http://www.FiCTR.com] - the world's first role playing social network [http://www.fictr.com/forum/topics/male-vs-female-role-playing], where you actually sign up as a made up character, and then interact with other members to create storylines through forums, blogs, chat rooms, and a variety of group options.