Why Do Men Like Video Games So Much?
New Stanford Study Gives Scientific Explanation
According to USA Today, recent economic woes have not stifled the video game industry. Up 19% from 2007, sales of video games and gaming consoles reached a record $21.3 billion in 2008.
Furthermore, it’s been found that the fastest-growing group of game players consists of males between the ages of 25 and 40. This means that there’s a good chance that many husbands or boyfriends occasionally enjoys a game or two.
A Look at Gears of War 2
In the Annex mode of the wildly popular Gears of War 2 game, the concept is simple: capture territory and defend it from the other team by using any number of destructive weapons such as the gnasher shotgun, the boom shot, or the chainsaw bayonet.
Of course, it’s generally accepted that guys just like this kind of stuff. However, a new study from Stanford gives insight into exactly why a 2005 survey found that men are two to three times more likely to feel addicted to these types of video games.
Men are Territorial
Allan Reiss, MD and his colleagues at Stanford University created a game similar to Gears of War 2 in the sense that the object of the game was to capture as much territory as possible. It was found that while both sexes quickly figured out the concept, men generally gained a significantly greater amount of territory than women.
Reiss is quick to point out that this doesn’t mean that the men were more skilled than the women. An examination of the participants’ neural activity revealed that men were simply more “motivated to succeed at the game.”
It’s All about the Rewards
An analysis of the brain imaging data accumulated in the study shows that a specific region of the brain, known as the mesocorticolimbic center and often associated with reward and addiction, was activated in all the participants. However, there was much more activity in the males’ brains. Interestingly, activity increased in the men as more territory was gained, yet this was not the case with the women.
While Reiss concedes that the notion that men have historically been the “conquerors and tyrants of our species” is not new, the study does shed some light on the physical processes associated with this phenomenon: “It makes sense that males are more prone to getting hooked on video games than females,” says Reiss.
So the next time you find your husband or boyfriend playing video games instead of cutting the grass or shoveling the snow, it may help to know that he seems to be naturally hard-wired for this type of behavior. If this offers little consolation, readers may wish to read about some of the positive effects that video games may have on gamers.
The very popular Gears of War 2
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