Video games get blamed for every thing. There’s a school shooting? It was probably violent video games. Solo: A Star Wars Story got woke and went broke? It was probably gamers who used Russian bots to tank the film. Girls aren’t doing as well in math tests as boys? It’s probably sexism in video games!

That last one is actually the gist of The Globe and Mail’s article that was published on November 27th, 2018 entitled “How Video Gaming Is Helping Boys Land Better Careers – And Hurting Girls”. The article extrapolates the SJW agenda from a Research in Labor Economics report from Nicole Fortin and Yann Algan that stated that playing video games could help lead to higher test scores for STEM related subjects, and that this is could be attributed to why boys perform better in STEM fields than girls. It also found that girls scored several percentages lower on math tests than boys, and that up to a third of the results for boys could be attributed to daily multiplayer gaming.

The Globe and Mail’s Darah Hansen attributes this correlative discrepancy to… sexism in video games.

According to Hansen…

“There’s a catch, though: It’s only teenaged boys who benefit from intense daily gaming interactions, which enhance the player’s co-ordination, visual-spacial and problem-solving skills – all potential pathways to leading to higher math scores, according to the study. […] “[…] Teen girls, meanwhile, appear to suffer from elements in the gaming world that act to deter their full participation, including sexist or sexualized female character depictions, and harassment from other online players. […]”

Actually… this is incorrect.

According to a market data report conducted on behalf of Fort Mason Games, females are not deterred from engaging with interactive entertainment, they just don’t engage in the same kind of interactive entertainment as males.

In fact, majority of the females who took part in the survey admitted that they played games, however, 93% of them played casual games like slots.

So while 47% of females may play games, they aren’t playing the same games as boys. This is an oftentimes reiterated point that gets overlooked and whitewashed in research points and news articles in order to push the SJW agenda.

As noted in multiple reports, barely 10% of female gamers have interest in shooter games, and oftentimes veer away from competitive games. In one particular report from DeltaDNA noted that 61% of female gamers prefer social slot games where they can play casual titles and interact with other players, while 82% of female gamers prefer puzzle games.

Nevertheless, the study that The Globe and Mail cited made note that boys engaged in multiplayer online games three times as much as girls, and 47% of the boys who partook in the study played video games of some kind every single day versus just 16% of the girls who played games every day. It also noted that 36% of boys played collaborative multiplayer games on a daily basis versus just 7% of girls.

Hansen wrote…

“Despite the study results, Dr. Fortin says she isn’t suggesting parents encourage their girls to spend more time gaming. “Gaming culture prioritizes male heroic characters rather than females, and when game characters do appear, they are often sexualized, she says. Many girls who play computer games also face harassment in the games community. At times, it’s vicious.”

Wrong.

Gaming culture has been prioritizing female characters in recent years after culture critic Anita Sarkeesian launched an all-out war on gaming since 2012.

In fact, of the 118 games featured at E3 2018, only 24% of them featured male leads. Majority of the games had male or female options, female only, or characters that had no gender. So Hansen is incorrect to state that gaming — at least as far as AAA mainstream games are concerned — is prioritizing male heroic characters over female characters, especially when majority of the games at E3 prioritized egalitarianism as opposed to gendered protagonists.

Hansen would need to prove that gaming has been prioritizing heroic male characters over female characters, especially since companies like Sony and Microsoft have been either replacing their male leads in top-branded titles like Gears of War 5, Wolfenstein: Youngblood and The Last of Us: Part II, or creating new IP in the action genre featuring female leads, such as Horizon: Zero Dawn or ReCore.This is all despite the fact that females make up a very small percentage within the demographic of gamers who play action games.

In fact, according to a report from SimilarWeb, they found that only 16% of Fortnite’s massive userbase are registered as female. So basically, not only are male heroes being replaced with female leads, but companies are doing so in favor of games within genres that females don’t typically buy or play!

Hansen is also wrong about sexualized female characters somehow hurting real girls. In fact, sexualized female characters were found to lower rape myth acceptance, and even lower hostile sexism towards women. This was discussed at length in a paper published on March 2nd, 2018 titled “Sex Roles: A Journal of Research”.

Hansen would have to provide a citation that females don’t play games because sexualized characters either scare them away or prevent them from playing.

(Thanks for the news tip Ebicentre)

(Main image courtesy of Abrikatin)