“—found that female undergraduates spent significantly more time – about 16 hours per week – on jobs, homework and other activities than did male undergraduates.—”

I think it’s the “other activities” that flagged me on this.  From my experience in college, there was favoritism, and there was perhaps gender favoritism, but when you’re a freshman in a class of 600 no one gives a crap about your naughty bits.  You’re lucky if the professor knows your name.

So the idea that girls have to work twice as hard in the class room to make the grade seems a bit off to me.  I don’t know any professors that cared whether it was an Adam or an Ashley when sliding the scan tron through the reader.

It’s possible that girls, on entering college, find they have a lot more catching up to do because they didn’t take this advanced math class or that AP science course like their male peers.  So maybe it’s more like girls end up with 16 extra hours of curriculum to get caught up on.

But yeah, other than that, this does look like it’s off in left field somewhere.  I mean, yes, we know, video games are bad.  But it would be nice to do a more through break down of how exactly people spent their time.

Well, when my daughter started college, she went to the financial aid office and explained to them that her father was having health issues and she needed more financial help than she was getting.  I also talked to them about the situation.  They found her a few more grants and things eased up.  During the summer she worked on campus cleaning and repairing student housing to save up for the next semester.  She talked to one of the males in her crew.  He said that when he went to financial aid they not only gave him some extra money, but they referred him to a website with additional aid and told him the best way to find grants and scholarships to help relieve more of the burden.  The only way my daughter could relieve more of the burden was to work longer hours.

Something to remember is that less than 25% of college students live in dormitories - that “carefree” college experience.  The rest are sharing apartments, living with parents. 
It’s much more likely that girls will be expected to share in the housework, grocery shopping, etc that young men are often not expected to do.

It’s also my experience that in those activities, groupwork, and leadership women tend to take more of the busywork burden, no matter their age. Somebody has to bake cookies for the meeting, somebody has to order the pizza, somebody has to run the copies. In my experience, that person is usually female.

but when you’re a freshman in a class of 600 no one gives a crap about your naughty bits.  You’re lucky if the professor knows your name.

That’s true for Scantrons, but what about for papers? I’m thinking of the study that gave the exact same article to a group of people to rate. When the article had a woman’s name as the author, it was rated consistently lower than when it had a man’s name. It’s quite possible that a professor doesn’t need to know who someone is is in order to subconsciously give them a lower grade for having a female name.

I’d be interested to know what women’s grades are compared to men’s. If the women are getting better grades than the men for their extra work, that might be worth something.

Are they only counting people who go straight from high school to college? Because it’s possible that women are a little more likely to do other life things first and then go back to school, maybe? Event hough they would be a minority of students, the number of extra hours of full time worker, married, mother, or other life-altering things could skew the average by some hours.

But, that said, I think Zifnab’s idea that women are less educated than men when they go to college (Really, Zif? Does that sound right on 2nd thought?) is the least likely thing and volunteering, political activism, longer work hours, harder studying (forget whether the profs are sexist—though some are—the only thing needed to make girls work harder is sexist high school teachers conditioning them. Or a perception of the possibility of sexism) are all good reasons for the standard female college student to work harder. And some of those “other activities” are things the women love doing. I was nearly recruited to the SCA in college. I was asked to train for a junior Olympics team.

The mainstream view for young women sort of tells them that if they aren’t busy, they are kind of a loser. Even if the busy is going out to a club with the girls. But guys are granted time for video games, as long as they have *something* more active once a week. Slacking off just isn’t ‘permissible’ for women in media portrayals and we gt the message.

Ugh, the only thing I can predict out of articles like this is excuses like, ‘we don’t have to market to women, because there are less women in the market.’ for making horrid sexist video games.

Looking back at my college experience (at a somewhat prestigious technical college, so the population was mostly upper-middle-class or wealthy white males with a mix of women and minorities thrown in), I get the sense that women, a) Were more involved in extracurricular groups, and inside those groups did more of the work, and b) were more likely to hold down a job during the school year. This second factor could be an issue with the way demographics played out at my institution - the majority of women at the school attended on a financial scholarship while the majority of the men did not. But even then I knew several women who were completely over-extended between jobs, volunteer activities, courseloads, social events, etc. etc. etc.

The mainstream view for young women sort of tells them that if they aren’t busy, they are kind of a loser. Even if the busy is going out to a club with the girls.

This is a good point as well.

I’m sure that’s faded tremendously, but a lot of research shows that girls can be shortchanged in subtler ways by parents that think they’re playing fair, but are quantifiably not doing so.

I know when I moved out of the house my senior year of college my mom didn’t pick up any of my living expenses, even though she’d been paying for food and rent for my brother for most of his college education.  I believe it was justified by my birth order.  In other words, Mom only had so much money, and since my brother was older it got spent on him first.  Although even at the time I suspected it was as much a way to discourage me from moving out of the house as anything else.

Having recently been a college student—first at a coed college and then at a women’s college, if it matters—another explanation for the extra 16 hours a week is not to say that women are doing more work (of whatever kind), but that the men are doing less.  That is to say, the women aren’t overworking, the men are underworking.  Yes, there are a lot of young women driven to perfection, but there are a lot of young men that are slackers, and not the good kind.  Maybe they should put down the game controller for a couple hours a week and do their fucking homework.

...girls spend less time playing digital games than boys because they have less leisure time, a finding that could have long-term implications on the technology gender gap.

What bothers me about that statement is it seems to imply that one learns how to program, code, etc. etc. by osmosis.
Perhaps the women polled in this study are actually cracking books, researching, etc. on the way to a degree in a technological area?
I don’t see how merely playing a video game for hours a day suddenly allows men in particular to be more technologically superior than women.

So, do women spend less hours playing video games because they have too much else to do?  Or do they find other things to do because video games don’t appeal to them? 

Another thought:  Aren’t recent studies showing that women do better in high school and college than men?  Perhaps the men should put down the joy stick and pick up the books?  Or get involved in activities that look good on college and job applications?  No wonder they can’t compete.

That’s a good point—the guys that do badly in my classes are usually pretty hardcore slackers.

And they live in horrifying conditions.  There’s a basic hour a day of chores that just don’t get done.

Another thought:  Aren’t recent studies showing that women do better in high school and college than men?  Perhaps the men should put down the joy stick and pick up the books?  Or get involved in activities that look good on college and job applications?  No wonder they can’t compete.

Word, BadKitty, that’s what I’m talking about.

I realize anecdotes mean nothing but I hear an awful lot of married / partnered straight women complaining that their male partner is too busy playing video games to share parenting and household duties.  Granted, these women might be married to slackers who would find some other way to avoid being an adult if video games didn’t exist.  But their gaming habits certainly ensure that their female partners don’t game:  they have no time and the dudes are hogging the Xbox.

I agree with all the commenters who are saying that college men should perhaps emulate their female colleagues. When I think of the men in my classes (I teach public speaking, so I get to know my students mroe than others) especially the ones who are into video games tend to not show up well-prepared or particularly clean looking. And don’t even talk to them about cooking that doesn’t involve a microwave or can opener.

In my admittedly limited observations of young women and men, I’ve noticed that the women seem much more focused, studious and goal-oriented. A lot of young men just seem to have given up on anything besides the frat life writ large. You could just as easily flip the conclusions of the study around to declare that young men are wasting a lot of time playing video games.

Uhm, could it be that women do use as much computer time, but it’s the social stuff, facebooking, IM’ing?  Also, even though many of my female students may show up to class in flipflops and jammy bottoms and a T, they always still seem to have full face makeup and painted toenails - that’s gott take some time, multiply by minimum 5 days per week, there’s a good chunk of the 16.  Now add in that it’s been my experience to see/smell guys either get their significant other to do the wash, or take it home to mom on a monthly or (yuck) semester basis, and there’s another chunk.

I realize I’m going to start a flame war with this, but there is also an addiction issue with videogames.  My nephew (who has other mental health issues) was just hospitalized because he was literally playing videogames until he would drop from exhaustion.  Since it’s not a “real” addiction, they’re having trouble figuring out how to treat him, because you don’t have many kids his age who are gambling addicts (to use a similar problem), at least not in Illinois, and he can’t really relate to the kids with drug addictions.

I know people like to claim that the only problem with videogames is the moral scolds trying to prevent people from having fun, but some people really do develop serious addiction problems because of them.

I wish I could find it, but I was reading about a study where they found that college men did not spend as much time on their studies as female peers because of the social pressure to appear as though their good grades were effortless.  Of course, the result is that more men find themselves falling behind academically or dropping out of college.

But more to the topic, in grad school there is the phenomena of the grad student/department “secretary”. This student, usually female, spends many extra hours organizing the social aspects of grad school (lecture series, honor societies, brown bag lunches, etc.) or acting as grad representatives on hiring committees (attending job talks, taking the candidate around, etc).  They often excel academically too, but at the end of the day, their efforts are under-appreciated and often despised by faculty who think that they lack respect for themselves and their studies by spending this much time at the department.  Apparently, serious academics expect others (usually female) to do the work of making a department function.

What bothers me about that statement is it seems to imply that one learns how to program, code, etc. etc. by osmosis.

While you’re right that you don’t learn programming and the like from gaming, I think the idea is that people who play with technology will be more comfortable with technology and therefore have an advantage when it comes to learning the nitty gritty stuff.  I majored in 3D Animation, and I know at least in my school there were way more women in 2D Animation than 3D Animation.  From what I could tell the main thing keeping women out of 3D was sheer intimidation of the software.  There was just a lot less technology you needed to know to do 2D; I mean really you can do that without a computer at all.  I also noticed that those of us women who did go into 3D were the sorts who made time for a fair amount of gaming.  Of course that’s all anecdote.  It would be interesting to see a study done on that to find out if there’s any real truth to it.

Yes, there are a lot of young women driven to perfection, but there are a lot of young men that are slackers, and not the good kind.  Maybe they should put down the game controller for a couple hours a week and do their fucking homework.

Men are also less likely to go to college.  It used to be that men, mainly white men, could coast and still expect to get a good job out of college.  Now they have to compete, and it seems like some of them need to get with the program.

Part of this may also be class. Women from working class backgrounds are more likely to attend college than men from working class backgrounds, and more likely to conclude that a college education is the only way that they are going to avoid a lifetime of low-paid shitjobs. Few of those women are going to have full-boat scholarships though, and Pell grants don’t go very far (and I’m so old I don’t think they even call them “Pell grants” any more)—-so that means, working. Usually between 25-30 hours a week.

At least, that’s what I see in my family. Female cousins who balance work with a class load at the community college, while the male cousins are: working in restaurants, roofing, driving a truck, working in a warehouse, in the military, working as prison guards, going to trade school or getting an apprenticeship. Women are less likely to think alternatives to college are realistic for them—-and they’re probably right. Comparing the paychecks of one female and one male cousin who are both warehouse workers (both in their twenties with the same work experience/education) certainly bears that out; men still have a clearer path for advancement on the non-college plan than women do.

Lauren O:

If the women are getting better grades than the men for their extra work, that might be worth something.

I’ve read that, though women tend to get better grades, it doesn’t translate into better jobs or more money when they graduate.

I’m in physics, where the majority of people get Cs and Ds. I also live in squalor. I would say I do do more of my homework than my male friends. I’m always horrified when they say they just skipped an assignment - I will bust ass to get work done, even if I don’t do as a good a job as I might have hoped. I think female students have more anxiety about their performance, too. For example, I took a programming class this past term, and when I didn’t understand a concept I stayed up till 3 am and asked my CS major friends for help. Most of my guy friends (even the good programmers) just blew it off. I have no idea where they get the time to do all of their gaming, though. For me, playing an hour of Fallout 3 was a reward I gave myself after studying for 8 hours straight. So I’d study 24 hours total and play Fallout 3 for three hours.
I think guys have a more lax attitude towards grades in general. I had a lot of friends who were totally okay with getting 64 in Calculus 1, when I thought my 81 was pretty bad.

That’s true for Scantrons, but what about for papers? I’m thinking of the study that gave the exact same article to a group of people to rate. When the article had a woman’s name as the author, it was rated consistently lower than when it had a man’s name. It’s quite possible that a professor doesn’t need to know who someone is is in order to subconsciously give them a lower grade for having a female name.

At some schools at least, I believe they get around this by using an ID number on the papers. The grader has no idea what the student’s name, gender, race, etc. are; all they see is the writing and the number. Seems like a fairly reasonable system.

I agree that it makes more sense to spin this as “Guys play video games too much”. As a guy aiming for a physics degree, I know that my first year I tended to spend ALL my time on the computer just playing video games if given half a chance, and it really showed in my grades. Since I’m also on a merit-based full-ride scholarship, I have to do really well to keep my funding and keep being able to go. So, I ditched my computer; left it at home after that. Surprise surprise, my grades went up tremendously.

I was always encouraged to play video games, i dunno what thats all about. Guys were practically falling over each other to hand me the controller for either Super Smash type party games or Metal Gear Solid games both. There is still a list of guys trying to get me to play WoW… one even offered to pay half! In fact, every female i know has had the same experience, especially in college. Girls don’t play video games largely because they don’t like them, in my experience.

As for the 16 hours of work a week? I want to see what was included in ‘work’ ... thats pretty interesting. Part of it might be that guys rated down the amount of time spent studying for some sort of macho boost, my guy friends used to do that to try to prove how smart they were. And like studies have shown women do tend to try harder and in my experience that holds true even at male dominated tech schools (RPI for instance)

I can’t find a particularly good study just now, but it’s well documented that women have significantly better GPAs (high school, undergrad and grad level), but significantly lower standardized test scores (SAT, GRE and LSAT).  I also know that male LSAT scores have improved more than female scores over the past 5 years, and over the same period women have gone down from 49% to 46% of the entering law school class.  I have no idea what this means, I just hope this is a trend we can reverse.

When I was entering grad school in the 1980s, I went to see the dept. chair and inquired why my scholarship package was not, er, very generous. He looked me straight in the eye and said that they didn’t view women as a “good investment”, as we tend to get married and have babies and never use our degree. Seriously.

I appreciated his honesty (fucker). While I don’t think they would dare be so blatant today, some of those profs in my dept. are still teaching, and wonder how much their view of their female students has evolved. Needless to say I had to go to work, take out more loans, and it took me longer to graduate.

And WORD to the poster above about working class women. I see that things have not changed that much since I was in school.

And they live in horrifying conditions.  There’s a basic hour a day of chores that just don’t get done.

Well, there’s a “Cleanliness is next to godliness” argument to be made, and maybe people should keep their places as clean as possible on principle, but if people feel their leisure time is better spent playing video games a little more and vacuuming a little less, I can’t necessarily blame them.

And, incidentally, my grades were decent in college, but what got the attention of the professor who saw my grad school application was my research experience. The place where grades translate into more money is things like medicine and law, where your grades determine almost precisely what opportunities will be available to you.

In limes’s case, if the majority of people are getting Cs and Ds, some people might figure that making the extra effort isn’t worth it if it’s not going to result in a significant change in the bottom line when it comes to their GPA.

And they live in horrifying conditions.  There’s a basic hour a day of chores that just don’t get done.

SO TRUE. My boyfriend and I live together, and he does his fair share of cleaning, but really only when I point out that something needs to be cleaned. Otherwise, he just literally doesn’t notice it. When I visited him at his dorm in college, it was grotesque. He had cleaned the bathroom before I got there, and I still found it too disgusting to use and cleaned it for real. Neither of his two roommates seemed to notice anything wrong with it either. He had one bowl and one spoon; we had to take turns eating cereal in the morning. Male friends’ dorm rooms usually weren’t as bad as that, but they were always on the messier.

I’m not a neat freak by any means, but even I spent time doing cleaning in college that it seems like most guys weren’t spending. I’m just saying, I never saw any girls’ dorm rooms that literally had mushrooms growing from their bath mats, which happened to my boyfriend.

Yeah, I was going to say, in my experience as a college teacher (doing Freshman Comp at a variety of third-tier and below institutions), the women, on average, do more work—and the men don’t do *enough*.  I’ve taught slackers of both sexes, but the hardest workers are 99% female.  I have students turn in all of their writing process work along with their final drafts, and there are always a few students who hand in a great big honking packet of stuff—and they’re always women.  (Except once in a while a man will have the idea to print out two or three copies of his draft and (if he’s a real go-getter) circle a spelling error or two on each one, making his packet look bigger.)  On draft review days (when they work with classmates to improve their drafts), it’s routine for about a third of the men to show up empty-handed or not at all, while only one or two women will do the same.  When they form groups to do things, all-male groups, the men rush through the deliverable (the worksheet or whatever) as quickly as possible, just putting something down in each space, and ignore the parts of the instructions that ask them to think, discuss, or reflect.  After they finish, they sit there and stare at their desks, while all-female and mixed groups generally take more time doing the activity thoroughly, and afterwards discuss something at least vaguely relevant to it.  (The men in the mixed groups do participate a lot, sometimes bordering on dominating the conversation, which suggests that gendered group dynamics are at play somehow, rather than just young male laziness or anti-intellectual attitudes.) 

Anecdata, of course, but I believe that a much more realistic spin for this study would be “College men don’t study enough, waste time playing video games (or, if video games unavailable, staring vacantly into space).

I just don’t understand why women working more is seen as the abnormal thing, when so many men are failing in college.  I play too many games, and I’m not a student.  I tell myself that I’m doing my kids a favor by finishing the difficult levels on the Lego Star Wars game, and still tell myself that even when I should be getting a decent night’s sleep.  Am I addicted?  Not likely, just attracted to this fun.  Sometimes I stay up reading a book, sometimes I stay up watching TV, sometimes I spend way too much time commenting on blogs, and sometimes I’m doing housework.  Guess which one gets shorted the most?

<i>Another thought:  Aren’t recent studies showing that women do better in high school and college than men?  Perhaps the men should put down the joy stick and pick up the books?  Or get involved in activities that look good on college and job applications?  No wonder they can’t compete.

Word, BadKitty, that’s what I’m talking about. </i?

“6b.    Female undergraduates in our study spent 2.8 times more time per week working at a paying job than male undergraduates (23.76 h as compared to 8.61 h; F(1, 264) = 61.530, p  < .001). However, there was not a significant relationship between the number of hours spent working and game orientation. Those who most recently played “today” worked an average of 8.2 h per week, whereas those who had not played at all within the last 6 months worked an average of 25.6 h per week (F(4, 264) = 3.682, p = .006).
H6c.    Neither time spent on homework nor time spent gaming were correlated with GPA overall, among males or among females (R 2 = .390). “

So no, it doesn’t look like women do better because they work harder.  They just do both.

Phylosopher:

Also, even though many of my female students may show up to class in flipflops and jammy bottoms and a T, they always still seem to have full face makeup and painted toenails - that’s gott take some time, multiply by minimum 5 days per week, there’s a good chunk of the 16.

Assuming that most of your students are traditional-age (18-22), full face make-up is not that big a time investment.  These are women who are wearing makeup to cover skin “flaws” they haven’t had time to develop, and so even a really elaborate make-up job wouldn’t take more than 10 minutes.  Standard, full-face makeup with limited bells and whistles? 5 minutes.  As for the pedicure: that can be accomplished *well* (paraffin, moisturizer, scraping, and cuticles and paint) in 20-30 minutes once every week or two. 

There may well be “girl stuff” in those 16 hours, I don’t know.  But I damn sure do know that “girl stuff” doesn’t account for 16 hours/week.

I don’t see how merely playing a video game for hours a day suddenly allows men in particular to be more technologically superior than women.

A lot of the technical expertise comes from getting the game to work.  I’ve spent hundreds of hours searching the web for crack keys, modding X-Boxes, updating drivers, researching new hardware, and parsing through registry files to hack my own system, just so I could play a game for free or with certain 3rd Party Add Ons.

I mean, I agree.  Sit a kid down in front of WoW and he won’t get any more computer savvy.  Sit him down in front of a low budget computer that can’t quite run WoW, give him an account, and tell him all his other friends are playing it, and he’ll learn a trick or two.

But that ultimately comes from time spent on the machine.  The more time you spend, the more likely you are to discover problems you’ll be forced to solve to continue using your computer.  That’s just the nature of the interface.

There may well be “girl stuff” in those 16 hours, I don’t know.  But I damn sure do know that “girl stuff” doesn’t account for 16 hours/week. <>

Regarding a few other comments:
<I>The seven women in my year (out of 110-ish students) in my major were always near the top of the curve, along with the serious guys.  The serious guys were about the same percentage of the total class as the women were.  From the guys with lower grades, we heard a lot of “C’s get degrees!”

While I certainly agree with the sentiment about those lousy slackers, I will point out that the study found no correlation:
Neither time spent on homework nor time spent gaming were correlated with GPA overall, among males or among females (R 2 = .390).
So, maybe not. But there’s still the issue about work time.

Ugh, the only thing I can predict out of articles like this is excuses like, ‘we don’t have to market to women, because there are less women in the market.’ for making horrid sexist video games.

I agree, that’s certainly a likely possibility (those jerks). The study, however, suggests (pleads, begs, demands?) a better solution:
Common sense explanations of casual game play among women 35 and older claim women have less free time, available in smaller chunks. Therefore casual games are well suited to the leisure time constraints of older women. The current study clearly shows that it is not just older women, but indeed even undergraduate college females, who play in blocks of half an hour or less. Games that want to attract larger numbers of female players need to dramatically change game designer expectations of how long a player will or should spend in a typical play session. A female player who knows she can spend as little as 10, 15, 20, or 30 min can more easily justify spending her time with a game. Quite likely it is useful to be able to know and control exactly when the play session will end, to facilitate time management and to permit temporary concentration on the gaming experience without the worry of being sure to stop on time. More time in a play session is not better, for the typical adult female player.

So, hopefully, this will mean developers make more casual games or games that can be played in limited time blocks. No more running across a freakin’ continent to turn in a quest or taking a 15-minute gryphon flight while you can’t do anything. No more dungeon crawls that take 4 hours at a minimum with no possibility of saving. No more games with save points that are half hours apart, so that you have to keep repeating the same boss fight which you lost on, and then have to sit through that stupid 5 minute video cut scene again and again and again.

A lot of the technical expertise comes from getting the game to work.  I’ve spent hundreds of hours searching the web for crack keys, modding X-Boxes, updating drivers, researching new hardware, and parsing through registry files to hack my own system, just so I could play a game for free or with certain 3rd Party Add Ons.

Agreed - I built my first computer because (a) I wanted to learn how to build a computer and (b) I wanted to play the latest games. But b was definitely a major motivation for a.

People who have addictive personalities don’t know how to deal, is all.

Yes, my nephew who is severely ADD and bipolar “just doesn’t know how to deal.”  Gee, thanks for that insight, doctor.  We kinda figured that part out already, which is why just he’s been institutionalized in a mental hospital for the third time before he turns 16. 

As I said above, the actual problem is that people can get addicted to videogames the same way they get addicted to gambling and other non-drug activities.  There’s a Gamblers Anonymous, but there doesn’t seem to be a Videogamers Anonymous, because there’s still this notion that it’s not a “real” addiction that can require treatment.  Look at the comments online where people talk about how people just need to take personal responsibility because it’s not a real addiction that causes problems in someone’s life.

Someone who’s not prone to be an addict will not become an alcoholic so, yes, someone who’s not prone to be an addict will not become addicted to videogames.  I thought that was pretty well-known, but I’ll put that disclaimer on from now on for you, okay?

As I said above, the actual problem is that people can get addicted to videogames the same way they get addicted to gambling and other non-drug activities.

So can any activity. Addiction is a genetic predisposition towards a certain chemical balance in the brain - alcoholics are more likely to be gambling addicts and sex addicts and internet addicts and gaming addicts, etc. There’s almost complete overlap between the groups, only difference being personal preference for certain activities.

But that’s not what this article is about.

Tyro, that’s partly true. Some of our profs refuse to give any grade higher than 35 on the midterms. They also grade nastily because “it’s preparation for grad school”.

I know a lot of upper year guys who are barely floating above the 65 minimum average to stay in the program because they lost a year to WoW, though.

I don’t see how merely playing a video game for hours a day suddenly allows men in particular to be more technologically superior than women.

Actually, the reason I know how to build a computer and troubleshoot many problems is because I spend hours gaming. Why? Well, I wanted to have a better system to game on, but I’m poor. So I learned how to build one. When my game fucks up, I want to be able to make it work again. This has translated into technology skills, as other commenters have pointed out.

My grades in undergrad were just good enough to keep my scholarship. I didn’t stress out about getting straight As, nor did I stress out about extra-curricular activities or keeping my room clean. After I quit playing hockey, my main extra-curricular activity was the gaming club. So I played a lot of tabletop RPGs, strategy board games, collectible card games, and video games.

No more running across a freakin’ continent to turn in a quest or taking a 15-minute gryphon flight while you can’t do anything.

The fact that WoW allows you to run and fly across a continent with no loading screens is what makes it so good. You don’t feel like you’re in a series of boxes, you feel like you’re in a world. Plus, WoW has plenty of instances that save - raids and heroics save on a daily and weekly basis. As long as they keep the aspects that appeal to me, because I like raiding for hours at a time, I’m all for adding more casual content. But I do take your point about watching cut scenes over and over again in certain video games. Annoying.

In my anecdotal experience, one reason why women are more likely to have a job in college is that, as alluded to above, in families where college is not “expected”, it is more common for the daughters to attend college than for the sons. As a consequence, women are more likely to be attending college without the financial or moral support from their families than men are. In families where college is not the expected norm, the son is more likely to find a decent job without college, while the daughter is less likely to and will quickly conclude that going to college is a better bet, but without the family support, she’ll be more likely to get a job to pay her way through.

They also grade nastily because “it’s preparation for grad school”.

You know what? They’re lying: classes in grad school are graded much more leniently than they are in undergrad.

Might this also be related to the fact that girls don’t play video games because other girls don’t play video games?  I was a bit of a slacker who blew lots of time on video games in college - but I did so WAY more during the years when my immediate circle of friends were more gamer-ly.  I mean, I’d spend more of my time even when I wasn’t with my friends playing video games.  My senior year when all my gamer friends graduated I barely managed to finish one game in the entire school year.  I believe I watched Arrested Development instead.

I also think it’s very interesting that women work through college more than men.  Now that I think about it, I knew way more girls who had to work to support themselves at least partially through college.  And the parts of our school that employed the most work-study students (school store, library, coffee shop) were almost exclusively staffed with females.  But… maybe guys talk about work more/take more pride in their work/I’m subconciously biased to take their paying work more seriously?  Because the relatively small number of guys I knew who had to work their way through school dominated the number of women to the point where I didn’t realize there was a difference until I read that statistic.

But that’s not what this article is about.

It’s a possible factor in the disparity, which is why I brought it up.

The fact that WoW allows you to run and fly across a continent with no loading screens is what makes it so good. You don’t feel like you’re in a series of boxes, you feel like you’re in a world. Plus, WoW has plenty of instances that save - raids and heroics save on a daily and weekly basis. As long as they keep the aspects that appeal to me, because I like raiding for hours at a time, I’m all for adding more casual content.

Yeah, but the point is that it’s a turn-off to gamers who don’t have lots of time. It’s not the loading times, it’s the fact that the quest requires you to run back and forth between two distant locations. Example: escort the guy to Moonbrook from the tower. Once you get there, run back to the tower to turn the quest in and get the next… which requires you to go to Moonbrook. Sure, there are no loading screens, but as a level 15 character in Westfall, that running back and forth just ate up 8 minutes of your time. And if you’re a casual gamer looking to play for half an hour, that’s a quarter of your time.
As for WoW instances that save, you’re talking about Karazhan and the like which take 8 hours… but oh, if you’re lucky, you get to a certain point and then it’s a mere 6 hours! The new instances in Northrend are significantly better - 1 to 2 hours tops… BUT, you have to get a level 70 character before they’re even accessible. So again, not for the casual gamer, unless you want to take several years to be able to get the casual content.

Sims? Casual. Tetris? Casual. Skyrates? Casual. WoW, Gears of War, GTA, Madden? Not casual. And it’s not an issue of “oh, those games are all violent.” No - it’s an issue of “those games all take a minimum hour or two per session.”

It’s a possible factor in the disparity, which is why I brought it up.

It is? I can’t find anything on Google about differences between male and female addiction rates except one article that notes that for a long time, addiction was considered a “men’s problem” because women’s addictions were marginalized. By saying addiction is a possible factor in the disparity between men and women playing video games, are you sure you’re not marginalizing addiction in women without supporting evidence?
I don’t think you are, and certainly not consciously. But without a showing that men are addicted to things more often than women are addicted to things, I don’t think this is a possible factor in the disparity at all.

I tend to agree with Mnemosyne.  But as far as gender difference, these are some articles I found after a quick search:

<ahref=‘http://www.springerlink.com/content/r6t475031n2j27p7/’>College Students’ Video Game Participation and Perceptions: Gender Differences and Implications</a>

As growing numbers of youth in the United States play video games, potential effects of game playing are being considered. We focused on gender-related aspects of gaming in a study of 206 college students. Men were significantly more likely than women to play video games two or more hours a week and to indicate that video game playing interfered with sleeping and with class preparation. A greater proportion of women than men complained about the amount of time their significant other played video games. Participants rated female video game characters as significantly more helpless and sexually provocative than male characters and as less likely to be strong and aggressive. Gender differences in participation and character portrayals potentially impact the lives of youth in a variety of ways.

<ahref=‘http://archpedi.highwire.org/cgi/content/abstract/161/7/684’>Relation of Adolescent Video Game Play to Time Spent in Other Activities</a>

Although gamers and nongamers did not differ in the amount of time they spent interacting with family and friends, concerns regarding gamers’ neglect of school responsibilities (reading and homework) are warranted. Although only a small percentage of girls played video games, our findings suggest that playing video games may have different social implications for girls than for boys.

But THIS study really takes the cake!  Gender differences in the mesocorticolimbic system during computer game-play”

Little is known about the underlying neural processes of playing computer/video games, despite the high prevalence of its gaming behavior, especially in males. In a functional magnetic resonance imaging study contrasting a space-infringement game with a control task, males showed greater activation and functional connectivity compared to females in the mesocorticolimbic system. These findings may be attributable to higher motivational states in males, as well as gender differences in reward prediction, learning reward values and cognitive state during computer video games. These gender differences may help explain why males are more attracted to, and more likely to become “hooked” on video games than females.

Damn those gender differences in the mesocorticolimbic system!

Yes, but that merely says there’s a difference without saying what the difference is… Articles like this suggest that estrogen levels play a role in predisposing one towards addiction. But it’s a third- or fourth-level removed study. I can’t find any definitive studies on “are men or women or neither more likely to be addicts?” One suggesting men would support Mnemosyne’s hypothesis, but I can only find vague, unscientific articles suggesting it’s women or neither.

“I know that it wasn’t uncommon in my mother’s generation for parents to refuse outright to pay for girls to go to college.  I’m sure that’s faded tremendously, but a lot of research shows that girls can be shortchanged in subtler ways by parents that think they’re playing fair, but are quantifiably not doing so.”

My parents kicked me out at 19 and refused to pay for college (or anything), or even sign the FAFSA and allow me to get financial aid. In short, totally cut off. A few years down the road I wound up discussing this with one of my professors, and she told me that it is far more common for this sort of thing to happen to daughters, rather than sons. So, presumably it’s common enough that it’s noteworthy.

In six full years as a tenure-track professor in a difficult subject, I feel that I have enough of a sample size at this point to say that the boys are a bunch of stupid slackers. The difference in preparation, attitude, personal hygiene, effort and success is wild and obvious. There are a few guys in every group who are good students, but there are more women, and a significantly higher percentage of women, who are among the A and high B students. It’s just glaring and manifest how better prepared for success in nearly every sense the women are. At this point, I’ve developed a bit of an attitude, and tend to expect men to fail, especially if they’re poorly groomed, which seems to be a very good indicator of their lack of interest in anything other than getting credit.

And in the 06-07 school year, I lost four students, all male, out of a total of about 110, to World of Warcraft. I mean in the literal sense of their coming into my office or emailing me and saying something along the lines of “Sorry, Dr. F, but I play WoW 12hrs a day and can’t keep up with your class.” But I suspect that there are just as many for whom the problem is unending cable TV sports.

Also my mother in 1955 won a full scholarship to the U of Michigan, a very good school, but wasn’t allowed to go: her mother made her get a job as a secretary to pay for her brother to go to school because he was the boy. He turned out to be a ne’er-do-well, and my mother never spoke to him the whole time she was paying for his school. Once she married my dad, she never spoke to her mom again, either. They both died in 2003 and my mother took me out for a steak to celebrate.

My parents kicked me out at 19 and refused to pay for college (or anything), or even sign the FAFSA and allow me to get financial aid. In short, totally cut off. A few years down the road I wound up discussing this with one of my professors, and she told me that it is far more common for this sort of thing to happen to daughters, rather than sons. So, presumably it’s common enough that it’s noteworthy.

That’s…just ridiculous. It’s one thing to not pay for anything (though IIRC, colleges expect the parents to contribute some money in their financial aid calculations; still, understandable), it’s completely different to prevent you from getting a lot of financial aid! It makes no sense at all.

At this point, I’ve developed a bit of an attitude, and tend to expect men to fail, especially if they’re poorly groomed, which seems to be a very good indicator of their lack of interest in anything other than getting credit.

Are these, by chance, the same dudes who say that girls can’t do physics/math/engineering/cs?

Not that I’m bitter or anything.

I really don’t have a good sample, ‘cause I went to a women’s college (which was awesome, btw—I got so entitled! If guys came on campus and started taking over the class or acting like assholes we all had an attitude of “this is our turf now eff off to the back of the class and shut up, thanks” which I think a lot of women could use a dose of now and then. ^^) But we all worked *hard* and most of the students I knew had at least a work-study type job. So there you are, for what that’s worth. :p (You’ve been anecdoted!)

I agree that playing games can help your technical skills. Just trying to get a mini-LAN party set up with my Dad and sisters (using a single pirated copy of Starcraft from a guy friend) as a teenager got me a lot more comfortable just screwing around with settings and programs and key-generators and even the general computer lingo than I might otherwise be. (Return of the Anecdote!)

Do I have to talk about what useless lazy slobs guys are now? ‘Cause my room says I’m a hypocrite…

I used to play video games quite a lot when I was in K-12, but it dropped off when I was in college.  Hell, it dropped off a couple of years before, but it totally dropped off when I was in college.  My brother, however, still finds time to play oodles of video games (I would probably have time now, but I have no TV ... or game system). 

I was always told that I was an idiot if I didn’t make all As.  When I made a B+ in 4th grade math, my mom told me I had let the family down.  Yes, exactly in those words.  And I had made her a liar because she had “told everyone” I was going to make all As.  That’s quite a burden to heave onto the shoulders of a 9-year-old.  And she continued with this trend until I was in college.  My brother, on the other hand, couldn’t be bothered to turn in his homework.  Every year at parent/teacher conferences it was a lot of, “He doesn’t turn in his homework.  If he did he’d have an A.”  But he just couldn’t be bothered to do it.  And my mom was angry, sure.  But he was never letting the family down or making her a liar or any of the harsh things she said to me.

In college my brother lived at home.  No rent, no food bills, nothing.  I had to go away to college because of my major.  My mom had promised she would pay for some things.  She didn’t and claimed she never said she would.  If I used the argument that my brother was getting shit for free, I was told itw as my CHOICE to live in another city and I could have just as easily picked a major I didn’t want and lived at home.  My brother couldn’t be bothered to wake up and go to class.  For the first two years while I was still home, I sometimes had to drive him to class before I went to school.  Otherwise it was my dad.  My brother had a soso GPA and a really good ACT score and got a full tuition scholarship (which he lost to laziness).  He failed and almost failed a few classes before changing his major.

I managed to go to class every single day on my own.  My GPA was excellent and I had a fairly good ACT score, which entitled me to a whole $500 total from my school (1/5 of tuition for one semester).  If my mom found out I was making a B, she would yell at me.  I ended up having a lot of health problems which were exacerbated by the stress of HAVING to make good grades.  Eventually I was too sick and had to move home and finish my degree online.  During which, being sick and finishing school, I was routinely yelled at for being “lazy” and not having a job. 

Now I live abroad.  My brother finally moved away to another city.  When I had financial trouble and needed about $100 to make it through the month, my mom wouldn’t give me the pin to my own credit card without a fight.  She routinely sends my brother hundreds of dollars to help him with his expenses, and then he spends oodles of it on toys and comic books.

So.

I don’t know if this is male/female favoritism (my mom can be fairly sexist when she wants to) or first born favoritism or favoritism toward the less independent child (my mom wasn’t the independent child so I think she feels more badly for my brother) ... but all I know is that for me, the female child, I always had to work harder and was never good enough and blah blah blah, while my brother could slack off and gets rewarded now with money and gifts.  I wish I were exaggerating ...

I’m a gamer and I’m tired of videogaming advocates just sweeping under the rug the very real problem that videogame addiction is. Organizations devoted to gambling are, by law, required to put in safeguards against addictive behavior: timers on slot machines in Quebec, funding for anti-addiction advocacy, etc. In contrast, video game makers are *celebrated* for making their games more addictive (MMOs in particular, which are a bane to all gaming).

MMOs are designed as anti-games, basically. They are an unending grind of repetitive, monotonous tasks. In games like fighters (SF2) or RTS (Starcraft), time spent playing eventually results in skills learned and improvement in the game. In constrast, in MMOs time directly converts to power (levelling grind) and skill is absent. In fact, skill is not only unrewarded, it’s punished (all the best guilds get routinely banned for beating bosses too quickly because they learn how the game works better than others, i.e. ‘use exploits’ which is basically what Blizzard calls any usage of game mechanics that they hadn’t thought about).

Chet is full of shit again. Quelle surprise.

A friend lost his job because he played Everquest non-stop. When some compulsive behavior makes ‘dealing’ with society impossible, we call that an addiction. Whether it’s gambling, or video gaming, or going to church.

I’m pretty sure I’m right that Blizzard bans you for playing their game better than others do.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=69556.0

LOL. Skill is learning how the game works to beat it. They learned how the game works, and beat it. Then Blizzard comes by and say ‘oh noes, we screwed up on how this boss works’, and instead of going ‘good job fellas on your excellent play there, finding that loophole was brilliant work, our bad on that BTW’, they go ‘BANHAMMER!’.

Geez I wish I could have done that in my competitive Magic The Gathering gaming. “Hey WotC, this Skullclamp bs is clearly a mistake you made, how about you ban my opponent from playing tourneys for a year for using that deck instead of just ‘patching’ the game by adding Skullclamp to the ban list?”

If it hadn’t been Everquest it would have been TV, or science fiction novels, or any one of a million other things people would rather do than their work.

Say that to alcoholics. “If it hadn’t been alcohol, it would have been…”. Well yeah, it’s true. But we still have support group for alcoholics.

Endorphin and adrenaline are chemicals. You can get addicted to them, and the way you get them released in your brain.

Stop being an idiot.

Chet - Don’t be an asshole.  Be polite and quit commenting like your opinion is fact.  Your statement that “there’s no such thing as ‘video game addiction’” is not a fact.  Even a cursory review of the literature on the subject shows that some scientist agree while others do not.  But still you insist on stating this as fact and are ramping up the bad manners to boot.  Don’t be a jerk.  There is validity to the other side of the argument.

Well Chet, food and sex are generally accepted as addictive, genius.  Compulsive behavior and psychological dependence on a substance or activity, despite harmful consequences is, if you’re a behaviorist, an addiction.

But we all know about your disdain for “soft” sciences and I’m sure you fall into the category who adhere strictly to the idea that the only things that can be labeled addictions are chemical in origin.  So I guess all those compulsive overeaters and gamblers (to name a few) are just too damn lazy to get over their “poor choices” and are morally inferior to such upstanding people like yourself (who would, of course, never suffer from an addictive behavior).

In constrast, in MMOs time directly converts to power (levelling grind) and skill is absent.

I’ve raided and run instances with a fair number of people who don’t know how to play. I’ve also run a lot of raids with skilled players. There’s a difference.

People are only addicted to stuff that other people disapprove of. I’m addicted to video games because people think it’s weird to play video games every night after work. But people who read books or watch TV or knit or garden or whatever during that same time period after work are totally normal human beings who are simply using their free time to pursue hobbies. If somebody says “I read a whole book Saturday, it was great!” you don’t immediately think “OMG! ADDICTED TO BOOKS!” But when somebody says “I spent all day raiding and I finally got that epic sword!” people immediately think “OMG! ADDICTED TO VIDEO GAMES!”

I don’t give an embryonic rat’s ass about video games, so I’ll push that to one side, but I’m still interested in the premise of the piece. 

female undergraduates spent significantly more time – about 16 hours per week – on jobs, homework and other activities than did male undergraduates.

I wonder if that figure for how much time women spend on “other activities” in college includes volunteering, extracurriculars, clubs, etc.  Because I’ve been teaching at a liberal-arts college for a few years now, and I come across _so many_ women who are involved in _all kinds_ of activities, some of which seem to stem from sorority life.  I can’t recall hearing any men talking about similar commitments.

A problem I see is that often when women game it’s not considered ‘real’. If a woman plays a facebook game like farm life, it’s not ‘real’ gaming, if I play Diner Dash, that’s not ‘real’ gaming. I think it’s interesting that games that have a huge time investment are considered more ‘real’ than games that can be played on the go.

Look, I totally failed a couple classes in University because I was playing games.  But they were things like chess, Axis and Allies, and D&D;.  Making them computer based changes nothing, really.

And no, you don’t need alot of time to play Warcraft.  It’s just that you’re unlikely to find other people who are similarly time-deprived, which means you lose alot of enjoyment to the game.  But you can totally solo to raid level on less than four hours a week.  ...And yes, many games are horribly sexist.  I feel lucky it’s as little in WoW as it is, and it’s terrible there.  They cannot release a playable race without the males being buffed over the females, and the females nerfed into eye-candy.  Ugh.  Also, a suspension for 72 hours is hardly warrants calling it ‘banned’ for violating game protocol and not reporting an serious bug.

From my (20 years ago) universtiy experience: We had about 8% female students in computer sciences, 30% in the club that represented CS students’ interests to the uni (a subgroup of the previous), and 50% in the sub-group of the previous that did the newsletter, did introduction and paperwork help for newbies, and organised parties.

Also, men were more likely to live in dormitories (women had apartments or shared flats), drive home on weekends (women did not have cars), and had their mother help with the housework (no woman sent her washing home or had her mother over for housecleaning.)

OTOH, most of the women were complete math nerds, while the men’s qualifications tended more towards programming in BASIC and playing computer games, so the women on average got better grades.

It’s important to remember the Pareto Principle, which, though not absolute, is a pretty accurate rule of thumb—that 80% of the results are attributed to 20% of the influences. That means 80% of the games playing likely comes from just 20% of the customers. So, those 20% drive the market. And really, taking that one iteration further, a deeply committed 4% gets the ball rolling.

Oh, now that’s talking about how to effect social change.

Mnemosyne, IYO is addiction to videogames rarer in women, i.e., do women find other outlets for addictive behaviour? Would that reach the level where it makes a significant difference in the average time spend on gaming for the whole gender?

laterose: From what I could tell the main thing keeping women out of 3D was sheer intimidation of the software.

Quite possible. A friend of mine who is studying design is spending twice as much time tweaking the hardware, optimising her machine, trying to get software cheap and experimenting with it, than most computer science students (machine geeks excluded) that I ever knew. And once you have that high-performance machine with all the cool graphics software you need for 3D, and you spend all your free time on it the way others do on their cars—gaming is just the obvious thing to do. (Hey, it’s research! Networking! Opportunities! Raw material to make fanart/-games/-movies from!)

truth is life: As a guy aiming for a physics degree, I know that my first year I tended to spend ALL my time on the computer just playing video games if given half a chance,

I have seen a lot of study-evading behaviour among students over the years. What they have in common is, a “good” study-evading task never get sdone, but gives you the feeling of having accomplished something. For me, it was designing role-playing games, a friend draws comics, many students in my year had a spotless clean kitchen when they had an exam coming up. I can see how computer games are very easy to get into and very hard to let go: they have all that’s needed, plus a more demanding time flow and more emotional involvement than, say, cleaning the kitchen has.

truth is life: it’s completely different to prevent you from getting a lot of financial aid! It makes no sense at all.

It makes no sense but it is still done. I think the parents just want to forget that they have a daughter, and signing the paperwork would mean that they have to remember and have to realise, at least on some level, that they are behaving like shit towards her. So they shove it from their minds and behave even more like shit.
Or its about control. Or both.

Tyro: if people feel their leisure time is better spent playing video games a little more and vacuuming a little less, I can’t necessarily blame them.

It’s a matter of degree. There is some point where untidiness becomes squalor, and living in squalor is a big drain on mental and emotional resources, as well as on time and health.

I’ve raided and run instances with a fair number of people who don’t know how to play. I’ve also run a lot of raids with skilled players. There’s a difference.

If a skilled level 1 PVPs a noob level 80, who wins? If a skilled level 1 tries to join your raid, what happens?

Time spent >>>> Skill, every time, in MMOs.

The point being that MMOs aren’t good games. They’re virtual worlds (as some fans already stated on this thread), and the enthusiasts of MMOs make that a priority over anything that would make them better games.

Good games have equal access to game pieces/moves. Either through complete symmetry (chess) or the same options being available to all at the beginning (Street Fighter 2, Starcraft). Magic: TG and collectible games are slightly less good there because of the ‘Mr. Wallet’ syndrome, but at a certain shared budget level they degenerate to a good game (i.e. as soon as you only play amongst pros or people willing to spend 500$ on one deck). That’s why drafting is a better game than Constructed Magic (equal, but random, access).

One good solution to make MMO PVP a good game would be to segregate PVP and PVE in separate servers, make the PVP side its own game by giving immediatly top level and access to all PVP gear to all players. This is, to put it mildly, unacceptable to the toxic player culture that thrives on MMOs, who think that one should ‘deserve’ these options through grinding. If this sort of design theory held sway in other game genres, you’d start with only Ryu in Street Fighter 2 and only a limited move set, and would have to play 80+ hours to unlock every character and their moves. Only then would you be ‘allowed’ to participate in the actual competition of the game. Oh wait, we do have an example of that (but less extreme): the putrid Super Smash Bros: Brawl on Wii.

Another, less good solution would be the legitimize gold selling and powerlevelling through cash, either by allowing third parties to do it in the TOS or by Blizzard taking over the business as an enforced monopoly (it is THEIR IP after all). While Pay to Play isn’t Equal Access, like for collectible games it at least makes all moves/game pieces available to all ‘in theory’, and the game degenerates to a good one as budget increases. This would allow people to skip the filler (simulationist) material if they wish and go directly to the main game, PVP and raiding.

I’ve been teaching at a liberal-arts college for a few years now, and I come across _so many_ women who are involved in _all kinds_ of activities, some of which seem to stem from sorority life.

I was just the sort of person who considered these things to be a bit of a distraction both from work and the other things I was interested in—namely, hanging out with my friends or engaging in other sorts of extracurricular activities that I could begin or stop as I chose (some of which were related to gaming, I admit). It may be that women are more susceptible to the propaganda about or more commonly guilted into being “a good community citizen.” Men are more likely to evaluate their professional/academic goals, look at what makes them happier, and shed the “extraneous” stuff.

Universities are flooded with various “coordinating committees” and other such things, and participating in these sorts of activities are requirements of sorority programs, along with the fact that people simply get guilt-tripped into participating. Men are less likely to think these things are important to get involved in and, when they avoid these sorts of distractions, less likely to face opprobrium for “not being a good citizen.”

all I know is that for me, the female child, I always had to work harder and was never good enough and blah blah blah, while my brother could slack off and gets rewarded now with money and gifts.  I wish I were exaggerating ...

It sounds like a combination of both your mother “triaging” the two of you—she knew your brother was hopeless, so she concentrated on making sure you succeeded—while having conflicted feelings of guilt knowing that she “should” be favoring the first-born son.  He’s not turning out to be the person your parents hoped he’d be, so they’re just following along with the narrative as though he really was that person.

Your brother is participating in this because it means that it gives him more attention from your parents than you get. Look, my brother’s sort of a ne’er do well, also. The way I look at it is this: his ne’er-do-well status in a sense works—he gets more attention from my parents than I do. I’m not the one who has to live at home without a job, tormented by seeing everyone around me become more successful than I am. Yes, your brother gets more gifts and attention from your parents, but the fact that getting that means living like him means that you don’t want those things anyway. The best thing you can do in this case is just be as professionally successful as possible. Not because it will make your parents like you any more but because it will give you the sort of freedom that allows you not to care.

So the idea that girls have to work twice as hard in the class room to make the grade seems a bit off to me.  I don’t know any professors that cared whether it was an Adam or an Ashley when sliding the scan tron through the reader.

It’s possible that girls, on entering college, find they have a lot more catching up to do because they didn’t take this advanced math class or that AP science course like their male peers.  So maybe it’s more like girls end up with 16 extra hours of curriculum to get caught up on.

I think that you have completely missed the point.  The problem isn’t with impressing professors; it’s about impressing everyone else.  The scrutiny from classmates and future employers is what counts, and it’s tougher for girls.  So male students can get occasional Bs, Cs, and maybe even a few Fs and still be considered smart and future employers will give them a chance.  But for a female students, getting anything less than A means that you lose your class status as a good student.  So even though the teachers will grade fairly, a C for a man is considered average, or it’s just a “tough class”, but a C for a woman means that you’re dumb, and also that some people will think all women are dumb because of you.  Essentially, being average is fine for a man, but it’s a failure for women.  Because we know that sexism still exists, we realize that we have to be so incredibly good that no one can ever dispute it.  I took many advanced classes in high school, and I still felt the pressure to be better than the guys, just to seem the same.  I studied engineering, and in my class, there were excellent, average, and poor male students, but nearly all the female students were excellent.  There’s just no room for average women, but average men are given the benefit of the doubt.

I think this sums it up well:

http://xkcd.com/385/

To tell the truth, I like the epic flights in WoW.  That’s when I get up and get a chore or two done.  I can fold laundry, empty the dishwasher, even vacuum in the time it takes to fly from STV to UC. 

I am currently soloing a discipline priest.  She hasn’t run any dungeons, and I’m at level 64.  And I have never quest-grinded on her.  I run around, do a couple quests, go to the inn, take a break and walk the dog or whatnot.  If I want to raid with her later, I’ll be sure to find a guild that has a core group of adult, professional people who also don’t have hours to spend at a time.  I’ve outfitted two characters for Ulduar with casual raiding guilds that only raid once or twice a week with a hard three-hour stop time.

The people who get addicted are the hard-core PvPers because you constantly need to upgrade gear and strategy in order to continue winning at arena and BG.  Those are usually your teenage boys who do seem to be more addicted to the game than enjoying it.  We had an exchange student living with us, and he got me into WoW.  He couldn’t tear himself away from the computer because the next BG was coming up and it was the holiday weekend and he only needs X more honor points for the trinket so he can beat that dude he dueled earlier.

I wish I were kidding.

The seven women in my year (out of 110-ish students) in my major were always near the top of the curve, along with the serious guys.  The serious guys were about the same percentage of the total class as the women were.  From the guys with lower grades, we heard a lot of “C’s get degrees!” and these guys were the most likely to have connections within the industry, so I’d guess there was some family pressure when they picked their majors.

Yes, this is exactly what I meant.  I should have read all comments thoroughly instead of just skimming before I posted.  I studied chemical engineering and the situation was similar.  My class was small so we became a close group.  After every test, there was speculation about who got the highest grade.  Of the people that were most commonly suspected, it was an equal group of men and women, although there were very few women in my class.  In the group of “good students”, it was all 5 women in the class and about 5-7 men.  In the group of “mediocre student” it was all men.  A lot of them already knew that they could get a job somewhere that a relative or friend worked.  But the women and some of the men felt the need to be extra good to overcome their lack of connections.  Teachers grade fairly; employers and classmates often don’t, even when they try very hard to be fair.

In six full years as a tenure-track professor in a difficult subject, I feel that I have enough of a sample size at this point to say that the boys are a bunch of stupid slackers.

Based on a similar amount of experience in my past life in academia I entirely concur. And I don’t agree either that the main cause is societal pressure of the “have to work twice as hard to be perceived as almost as good” kind, which I think kicks in mainly AFTER college. Rather, my experience was that women were simply significantly more likely to be good students, in the idealistic sense of being more genuinely interested in learning. At college age men still haven’t caught up in their development- women of that age are likely to be more mature and in general to have their shit together than men. (That outcomes after college are nevertheless tilted so markedly in favor of men only emphasizes just how sexist our society remains.)

I realize I’m going to start a flame war with this, but there is also an addiction issue with videogames.  My nephew (who has other mental health issues) was just hospitalized because he was literally playing videogames until he would drop from exhaustion.

This shouldn’t start a flame war.  Videogames can be extremely addictive.  I’ve only taken a few intro psych classes, and it’s still easy for me to see how it works, especially since I play videogames heavily.  Videogames are addictive because they grow with you, which is something TV or books just can’t do.  As your skill improves, the challenges get harder.  You work a little and get a reward, and then you’re willing to work a little more for the next reward.  The reward system is just perfect for making people want to play more.  If it’s too challenging, people give up.  If it’s too easy, people get bored.  But videogames are just right.  That’s why people (including myself) will spend hours “grinding” to level up.  It seems like it would be so boring, but then that promise of getting a new level makes you keep doing it.  I don’t think I’m addicted, but I can easily see how it could happen to somebody.  There have been times when I stayed up too late or neglected things because I was just so close to getting that virtual reward.

Also, even though many of my female students may show up to class in flipflops and jammy bottoms and a T, they always still seem to have full face makeup and painted toenails - that’s gott take some time, multiply by minimum 5 days per week, there’s a good chunk of the 16.

UT has that phenomenon as well.  Young women are struggling with the twin expectations to be easy going and perfectly beautiful to attract men, and so they’re trying to imply they roll out of bed with a full face of make-up.

I was always encouraged to play video games, i dunno what thats all about. Guys were practically falling over each other to hand me the controller for either Super Smash type party games or Metal Gear Solid games both. There is still a list of guys trying to get me to play WoW… one even offered to pay half! In fact, every female i know has had the same experience, especially in college. Girls don’t play video games largely because they don’t like them, in my experience.

Sorry, but I must call bullshit.  Men are often eager until you start to beat them, just you watch.

But the idea that a woman’s sole motivation is male approval?  WTF?  If you have 16 fewer hours a week, men can approve until they’re blue in the face, but you don’t have the time to play.

The problem is that levelling grind is, yes, addictive, but the reward itself is completly illusionary. It’s not the same as the reward that someone gets for getting over a plateau in competitive gaming. When I started making top 8s at local Magic events, there was an actual sense of accomplishment, and I could point to you the sort of plays I used to do and the sort of plays I do now and how I’m way superior a player than I was back then. When I make top 8 at Darkmoon Faire for the WoW miniatures game (excellent game, even if the source material on which it is based is shite), I know exactly which players in the room are better than me and which aren’t, and when I improve I can actually see the first set shrinking.

With WoW, what have you got? The ‘reward’ is just a ding, an increase in your *avatar’s* abilities (not yours). These rewards were designed expressedly by the devs to be a carrot to chase, but they are 100% artificial rewards. The way you’d feel if you had just unlocked Ryu’s Hadoken move after playing for hours (in some alternate world where devs applied the bullshit wrong-headed concepts from MMOs to gaming in general), even though the devs could have well chosen to make these powers available to you upon first rolling your character.

The worst part is that gaming in general is moving *towards* the awful MMO model, rather than away. They’ve added unlockables to most console games, and many strategy games coming out on the PC these days have units that are only unlocked by game time or paying for them (sometimes both). Team Fortress 2 is giving out unlockables too now based on random drops, which is complete and utter BS.

Rather, my experience was that women were simply significantly more likely to be good students, in the idealistic sense of being more genuinely interested in learning. At college age men still haven’t caught up in their development- women of that age are likely to be more mature and in general to have their shit together than men.

That sounds like an essentialist distopia to me. Girls - in the individual rather than average sense - are no more likely to be mature or “good” than anybody else, except in the sense that the penalties for not appearing so are immeasurably harsher than they would be for boys, whereupon they (we) are faced with the horrific choice between conformity and opprobium.

Sorry, TheLady, those are my empirical observations. I don’t pretend to have the expertise to explain them, but that’s what I saw with my own eyes.  And I know that MANY college faculty have said the same thing.

It’s actually the males who were much more concerned about appearances, i.e., in academic terms, grades. Female students were significantly more likely to show genuine interest in learning more about the subject matter.

I see the ” roll out of bed in my sorority t-shirt and shorts, plus perfectly coiffed hair and makeup” look hasn’t gone out of favor at UT. It always seemed silly to me—and you saw practically ever sorority member wearing this outfit, almost as if it were a uniform.

Steve LaBonne: Probably a form of self-selection. Women who push on through to higher education tend to be genuinely interested, because patriarchal society puts up obstacles for them and only the motivated are willing to go through them rather than fall back on ‘acceptable gender roles’ like being a stay at home mom and letting their boyfriend/husband bring home the bacon.

Men instead are sort of expected to go to college anyway, at least in middle and upper class contexts where money is not a problem, and a lot of them get to coast through life through privilege anyway, so they’re not very interested in a degree except in so far as it is a key to a better paying job.

You know what? They’re lying: classes in grad school are graded much more leniently than they are in undergrad.

So true. At my grad school, we used to have a warning for people who were slacking off: careful, or you might end up with a 3.5 GPA.

I worked much less hard on coursework in grad school than I did in undergrad, yet my GPA wasn’t significantly different.  And my grad program was much more prestigious than my undergrad was. Of course, we were expected to be devoting our free time to research, so teachers calibrated their coursework expectations accordingly. And for future success, your grades didn’t matter—your research publications, advisor’s connections, etc. did.

“Push on through to higher education”, BlackBloc? Women are over-represented in college enrollment and even more heavily over-represented among those graduating with a baccalaureate degree. I think women have already been very successful at “pushing” that far. Which of course is all the more reason to ask with alarm, what the hell is going on AFTER college? Women are performing at an extremely praiseworthy level in higher education and then being denied the fruits of their labor. That seems to me to be where the really pressing problems lie.

The best thing I ever did for my grades in college was move into an apartment. The minute I had to share a kitchen with my dude friends, not to mention no longer having the dorm cleaning people come hose out the bathroom for us once a week, any susceptibility I had to playing keep-up with the guys—whether it was pressure to visibly slack off, to play more video games, to drink more, to procrastinate as hard as possible, or any of that other effortlessly-too-cool-for-school crap—was absolutely shot to shit. I maintain no respect whatsoever, in any way, shape, or form, for how my dude friends spend their time and energy. I’ve gone from feeling like I must be dumber than my dude friends because I have to actually budget in the time to write my papers instead of goofing off until the very last second and then pulling an all-nighter, to feeling secure in the knowledge that they might have ONE skill in life—writing a paper in six hours—but I actually have MULTIPLE skills in life, in that not only can I write papers (even if I require sleep every day*), but I can ALSO wash a dish; do laundry; and visibly recognize an empty candy wrapper on the floor as “garbage”, take it in my hand, and drop it in the open-top wastepaper basket the next time I walk right past it to get to the bathroom.**

I play Kingdom of Loathing. KoL is generally considered “not a real game.” I play it because anything more involved often requires interaction with other humans, expenditure of money, a time commitment of more than 1 second at any given point, or cannot be multitasked with actual work, and I do not have time for that shit. It makes me feel lazy and claustrophobic. I do not know where guys get off being able to be lazy without feeling worried that they are totally screwing themselves over. I feel claustrophobic and lazy just writing this comment, and not only am I working at the same time, but I’m doing it because if I don’t dick around on the Internet at work I finish things too fast for them to find new stuff to give me.

*I think I just have less backup sleep in reserve because I do shit on days I don’t have a paper due, too.

**One of my dude friends is literally incapable of throwing out his own candy wrappers. I don’t live with him anymore, but every time I go over to his place, I end up having to do a fair amount of cleaning just to sit down.***

***He’s unemployed, so it’s not like he doesn’t have the time to tidy up. He just doesn’t do it. And don’t even get me fucking STARTED on the dudes who are unemployed after graduating and do not seem to be feeling REMOTELY ashamed of themselves or loserlike, let alone ever lifting a finger to make anything easier for their female friends/housemates/girlfriends who do work. I work 48 hours a week in the summer (I have a job and an unpaid internship), and I STILL spend an inordinate amount of time cleaning kitchens that guys use, too. Some of which are not my kitchens.

I’m in physics…
I think guys have a more lax attitude towards grades in general. I had a lot of friends who were totally okay with getting 64 in Calculus 1, when I thought my 81 was pretty bad.

limes

Just gotta say GO LIMES! I fully support you in your journey (as cheezy as that sounds)!
My day job is not even closely related to physics and yet I’m fascinated by it. Go kick ass!

In college I noticed a trend. In every couple, the guy was always a bigger slacker than the girl. Even if the girl was a slacker, the guy was bigger one. The guys seemed to have the impression that everything would fall into place for them, while girls have to make things happen. Also, in my group many of the girls had mother trapped in unhappy marriages because the man made more money & they were afraid they wouldn’t be able to support themselves on their own. These girls never want to be in that position so they probably make sure they are one step ahead of the guy.

At this point, I’ve developed a bit of an attitude, and tend to expect men to fail, especially if they’re poorly groomed, which seems to be a very good indicator of their lack of interest in anything other than getting credit.

Curious.  My experience as an undergrad as well as someone who has taken several undergrad/grad level classes since has predisposed me to believe that it is the “poorly groomed” people or those who dress in non-conformist/messy ways who tend to excel academically, are more likely to be original creative thinkers, are far more engaged in the learning process, and less likely to “judge a book by its cover”. 

The ones who are well-groomed tend to be mediocre to poor students, prefer to parrot ideas of the more original freethinking classmates rather than engage in their own thinking, less engaged/downright mercenary about the learning process, and tend to make snap judgments about many things with little/no critical thought behind them.  Those who tend to wear formal business suits/dresses tend to , on average, be the worst in this regard IME because they feel their flawless grooming substantially compensates for any slacking in other areas of their academic or working lives.

They also tended to be the least effective and most problematic members of various work-teams with whom I’ve had the distinct displeasure to work with after undergrad. 

Men are often eager until you start to beat them, just you watch.

Agree x1000
This hasn’t changed since I beat my little brother @ Super Mario Brothers back in the 80’s.
(We were a bit too poor to get the orig. Atari when that came out, otherwise I bet that would have been true even earlier.)

Speculation -
I also think that this is why my boyfriend, despite working for a game company (non computer games - a increasingly rare breed) doesn’t want me to play D&D;with him. I think that some guys are very aware of their super comptetitive streaks and have te sense to avoid situations where it might get out of control and afffect those closer to them than other guyfriends or co-workers.
I also think that in a way that the all-male enclave of D&D;type games carried over into computer games.
Forums for “girl gamers” are emblazoned with pink shit and often just really forums for men to rate how “hot” a girl who happens to play video games/RPGs are.

exholt, if the first thing that jumps to your mind upon hearing the term ‘poorly groomed’ is ‘wears cut-up t-shirts instead of a business suit’ and not ‘hasn’t showered in a week,’ then I want to go to school where you went to school.

I didn’t read Steve LaBonne’s comment to be essentialist.  And to support BlackBloc’s point about self-selection, one reason women do (slightly) worse on the SAT is more of them take it, for the reasons amply raised here—unlike their male counterparts, they have little hope of finding a decent-paying job without some higher education.  A man likely to get a low score simply skips the test and can earn a living anyway.

Exholt, there are different kinds of poorly/well groomed, especially if you take the cost of the clothing out of it.  Expensive and conformist clothing can still be worn wrinkled on a dirty body, with 3-day-old facial scruff, and hair that hasn’t seen a comb in a while, and inexpensive or creative clothing can be worn neatly, on a person who has clearly showered recently, and put some thought into their appearances.

Danica: I fear your bf might be trying to keep his D&D;game a boys’ club. I mean I got my gf and my friend’s gf in our game and I get comments all the time about making an offshoot game just for ‘us guys’ because that would be ‘more fun’, which I find extremely offensive (and the comments are done by my brother, I can decide to not be friend or not play with someone who says these things but I can’t really cut off my blood ties). I hope I’m not intruding in your personnal life, it’s just I’ve seen this type of thing happen before with geeks.

I found it much easier to get non-gamers into D&D;4E than 3rd edition, for instance, and for most gamers that basic fact has resulted in accusations of the game being ‘dumbed down’ (i.e. it’s now accessible to newbies and that might threaten your exclusive little geek club).

The Lady: That sounds like an essentialist distopia to me.

It’s empirical, which allows to draw essentialist conclusions (girls are smarter/mature faster/whatever), or non-essentialist ones (societal expectaions move girls towards diligence/demand they act less stupid/make it harder to go to uni so those that go are very motivated).

LOL BlackBloc
I hear that ALL THE TIME about 4E. SERIOUSLY.
What’s good for the BF I guess is that the games they make are still 3E so there are a lot of people that are very happy about that.
I dunno. I see the whole line about “keeping it pure” or whatever… have you read The Elfish Gene by Mark Barrowcliffe? I think that both guys and girls have that in them - the ability to get incredibly involved in a certain thing. It’s just that I think that it’s not as encouranged for girls - my theory is that women are pressed into being more concerned about other people’s wants than their own by society.
I think that the “more fun” thing might be because they feel that they wouldn’t have to watch what they say? I feel that the same could be said of white / multi-racial gaming groups. From what I’ve seen there’s not a whole lot of non-whites at the conventions or in the industry.

The fact women tend to do far better, on average, in college than men is not a new phenomenon of the 90’s or this decade. 

Within my own family, most of my female cousins who came of age in the 1970’s and ‘80s ended up at Ivy-level universities and excelled academically there whereas it was a serious wash among the mostly male cousins of the same generation.  Some ended up excelling at first-tier colleges/universities as those female cousins or I did, others were struggling on the brink of being academically expelled for partying too hard/slacking at 3rd and 4th tier institutions….even after attending some of the finest private high schools in the country including President Obama’s alma mater. 

exholt, if the first thing that jumps to your mind upon hearing the term ‘poorly groomed’ is ‘wears cut-up t-shirts instead of a business suit’ and not ‘hasn’t showered in a week,’ then I want to go to school where you went to school.

When I say “poorly groomed”, I am including those who wear clothes with holes in them* along with students from a certain dorm dominated by those from the most socio-economically privileged families by parental income who believe that recreating the “hippie lifestyle” includes going without showering for weeks or even months at a time.  And yes, the overpowering stench is such that your nose can hardly miss it when you walk past that dorm… 

* Like I did because I didn’t have money to get new clothes at the time and people at my undergrad tended to not care about how one dressed so there was no need to bother mending them.  If anything, most new incoming students learned quickly that making any critical comments about people who dressed messily or in non-conformist ways was a good way to get screamed at about judging others on their appearance as I witnessed firsthand during and after orientation.  On the other hand, it was ok to give people who wore formal business wear or designer label clothing a hard time because they were “facilitating the oppressive bourgeois materialist culture”.  It is probably one reason why one parent said in a college guide’s article on my college that “People go out of their way to dress ugly here.”

Within my own family, most of my female cousins who came of age in the 1970’s and ‘80s ended up at Ivy-level universities and excelled academically there whereas it was a serious wash among the mostly male cousins of the same generation.  Some ended up excelling at first-tier colleges/universities as those female cousins or I did, others were struggling on the brink of being academically expelled for partying too hard/slacking at 3rd and 4th tier institutions….even after attending some of the finest private high schools in the country including President Obama’s alma mater.

This. When women are doing what they’re supposed to in college and men are underworking (both on average, needless to say, with many individual deviations) I’m just not very motivated to say, it’s unfair that the women “have” to, or feel they have to, work harder in college. Rather, I’m much more motivated to be fucking furious that women are not reaping the just rewards of their superior performance after they graduate.

I think guys have a more lax attitude towards grades in general. I had a lot of friends who were totally okay with getting 64 in Calculus 1, when I thought my 81 was pretty bad.

I’m wondering how much of this is also related to the prevailing longstanding traditional anti-intellectual culture that has existed from the very beginning of our republic as discussed in Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy In America?

It wasn’t only males who tend to be more lax, but also whether the degree they assimilated American pop culture’s disdain for academics within themselves and/or whether they were middle or upper-class and thus, have the socio-economic privilege to not care. 

IME, I found those who were American-born and had deeply assimilated this aspect of American pop culture tended to be more lax about grades to the point they say “Cs get degrees and 2.0 and go”. 

This is one attitude children like myself who grew up in immigrant families from societies where academic achievement is highly valued or international students from similar societies find so puzzling about American undergrads attitudes that Cs or even Bs are “good enough”. 

Classmates from immigrant or working class/lower-middle class backgrounds tend to excel more because they came from societies where academic excellence is highly valued and/or because the classmates concerned knew they could not afford to fail or even get by with a B as that could risk the scholarships they received from their colleges.  And why yes, I do speak partially from firsthand experience.

I’m just not very motivated to say, it’s unfair that the women “have” to, or feel they have to, work harder in college. Rather, I’m much more motivated to be fucking furious that women are not reaping the just rewards of their superior performance after they graduate.

Incidentally, all of the female cousins are highly successful professionals in business and law whereas the most slacking cousin who struggled to avoid being expelled from a 3rd or 4th tier school is only surviving as a landlord in a poorly performing real estate market due to the benefits of support from his family and the fact he married a medical doctor with a successful private practice.

exholt: On the other hand, it was ok to give people who wore formal business wear or designer label clothing a hard time because they were “facilitating the oppressive bourgeois materialist culture”. 

This. In my time at uni, every guy in a suit would have been assumed to have got lost on his way to the economics department, and any girl with make up to have been foreign. (Foreign was interesting, economics department was the enemy.) Most dreaded, however, were the scruffy guys in brown cordury and blue shirts who carried briefcases and clobbered everyone who dared come between them and the front-row seats (not to mention less endearing habit). They disappeared or became more civilised over the years, though.

I’m revisiting my hatred of the word “networking” which was highly developed during undergrad.

Ugh, I totally hear you on that.

Great, Blackbloc doesn’t like MMOs. So? Just because you, personally, don’t like something doesn’t mean it’s worthless. It’s your opinion that MMOs are crap, but why is anybody supposed to give a shit what you think? You know what? I like leveling up. I like playing on a team and fighting huge bosses. I like RPGs and MMOs where you develop a character. I don’t like games like Team Fortress or Street Fighter. I’m not going to play video games to please YOU. Why should developers stop making games that people want to play simply because you think they’re garbage? That’s bullshit.

This. In my time at uni, every guy in a suit would have been assumed to have got lost on his way to the economics department, and any girl with make up to have been foreign. (Foreign was interesting, economics department was the enemy.) Most dreaded, however, were the scruffy guys in brown cordury and blue shirts who carried briefcases and clobbered everyone who dared come between them and the front-row seats (not to mention less endearing habit). They disappeared or became more civilised over the years, though.

Incidentally, one other reason why classmates wearing formal business attire were given a hard time was also because it was also associated with the conservatory students who were often stereotyped among us college students as insufferable snobs because they excelled at playing musical instruments/singing with a heavy bias towards the classical genre and assumed the college kids were either couldn’t play and/or didn’t have what it took to get into one of the nation’s most competitive conservatory programs.  IME, this was only true of a tiny minority of the conservatory students but the stereotype dies hard because that tiny minority can be quite open about their disdain for those who aren’t like themselves.

Another, less good solution would be the legitimize gold selling and powerlevelling through cash, either by allowing third parties to do it in the TOS or by Blizzard taking over the business as an enforced monopoly (it is THEIR IP after all).

Cheating isn’t fun.

If they didn’t spend the time, then they don’t have the skill.

What if they rerolled an alt?

you can’t seem to tell the difference between “bad” and “not for me.”

Oh yes I can. “Bad” is MMOs. “Not for me” is FPS, fighters, RTS and sports games (I’m more of a table top CCG or CMG player meself).

MMOs are objectively bad *as games*. That’s because their fans usually want them to be good *simulations* or *narratives*, and that seeking simulationist or narrativist solutions is actively detrimental to seeking gamist solutions to problems.

a) No equal access to moves/game pieces. Time invested >> Skill.

b) Game exploration and self-improvement beyond a nebulous and arbitrary limit set by developpers is forbidden (bans on people who seek rule corner cases that are clearly within the game rules like Exodus did, and not external hacks or helper programs).

c) Lack of depth, i.e. skill == spreadsheet gaming. MMOs tend to have a very limited subset of winning strategies, equivalent to a poor RTS’s limited number of viable build orders. This weakness is somewhat mitigated by the constant nerfing or boosting of classes (which again discourages exploration, as someone who seeks optimal builds is by definition going to cause the nerfage of his own character by the devs).

I love how the WOW apologists call the practice of paying money instead of paying time to be ‘cheating’, when it is in fact the most successful alternative strategy for competitor MMOs.

i.e. the rise of free to play games with micropayment transactions, with higher tier gear being available either through in-game currency that you can accumulate by spending time, or buy with out of game currence.

These games are the only viable competing model to WoW, because there’s more or less only room for one subscription service MMO in the market (with numerous hanger-ons that can’t really compete).

I think the best way to summarize it is this.  Average men are given the benefit of the doubt in job interviews and other areas, but average women are not.  Many women feel the need to be better than average to have the same opportunities as an average man.

As for MMORPGs, lots of people like them, so they’re good games.  They’re meant to be entertaining and they succeed at entertaining many people.  That’s all that matters.

I don’t play Magic. Anymore. I play WoW miniatures, and I made about 3000$ off it in the last 3 months. So whatever. Even when I was still playing, I only drafted for the past year or so (pure skill, no Mr. Wallet syndrome there) and played only Constructed in PTQs, Champs or Nationals (where money is no object… nobody in the room is outspent, because everybody has access to all the cards either because they bought them or their friends lent them to them). Mr. Wallet in collectible games is an *access* problem (i.e. people who don’t have money just can’t even get in the room to compete, much less get beaten) not a *game design* problem. WoW’s problems are structural, i.e. you can’t even play without going through the levelling bullshit, and a level 80 will beat a lower level character in PVP every single time.

As for your opinion of Magic’s metagame, it would have been true pre-Ravnica, but if WotC has one good thing to themselves, it’s that they learn from modern good design practices and don’t stay stuck in past tradition bullshit (see the vastly superior game that is D&D;4E to previous editions). Post-Ravnica there’s roughly a dozen viable tourney decks at any given time. Which is more variety than WoW MMO can boast.

Casual players will find any game to be a decent game. Only hardcore/pro players will ever figure out whether a game is good or not. A game is good if it has depth, which means that as knowledge of the game increases through exploration it remains complex/interesting. In the ideal game, a person who knows EVERYTHING about the game finds it still as complex and entertaining as someone just starting… in fact, in most good games, they find it MORE complex and entertaining. This is a common component of every popular competitive game; Magic, Starcraft, Street Fighter 2, Counterstrike and certain other select FPSs (i.e. not Halo). In WoW, in contrast, someone who knows more about the rules of the game (i.e. knows about pathing, aggro, etc) and goes too far with that knowledge is banhammered, because the game breaks down and becomes stupid easy at that level of knowledge and the designers think it’s better to ban their good players than to learn how to design a game properly.

And rereading the blurb from the article, it’s funny to me how suddenly “wasting time playing video games” is supposed to be a good thing that women should be doing because somehow they will osmotically pick up technological know-how. 

I’ve been playing WoW for two years.  I haven’t learned any new things to do on or with my computer.  And even if I had, that’s not the point.

The point is, suddenly, if you’re a guy, it’s okay to be slacker.  If you’re a girl, and you’re not slacking like the guys, there is something wrong with you.  But only if you slack correctly, with video games.  Because stuff girls down on their down time DOESN’T COUNT. 

That’s what’s fucked up about the article.

And seriously, I like MMORPGs.  I’ve never liked any other video game, from Atari to PS3 to Wii to whatever.  I am totally into my WoW.  It’s because it’s narrative.  It’s because if I don’t want to quest, I can find some people to RP with or just go bang on a boss’s head for an hour or two.  And I don’t know who you’ve been playing with, but the groups I play with never go “by the book” on boss fights or anything else.  We go by the group.  We go with our strengths and weaknesses and who has shown up and what they are capable of.  If you play with a playbook, no wonder your WoW experience has been crap.  Half the time, the strategies they outline on tankspot and elitistjerks is totally nonworkable for real-world players because you are in a 25 man Naxx raid doing Gluth without a hunter to ice trap or an unkillable DK to take the leftover zombies.  You do the best with what you can, and you beat the shit out of the boss.  My group, rabble that we are, have defeated Malygos in two tries with dangerously undergeared groups and silly strategies. 

Guys like you are why games are no fun.  “We have to do it this way cause the guy who beat this boss before did it this way!  Waaaaaah!”

speedbudget: Well that’s what I said, no? We’re in agreement. WoW breaks down when you play it *as a game* and is quite fine as a narrative (I don’t know how it fares as a simulation though). That’s why I don’t play it as a game. There are so many *deep* games out there that I find it pretty worthless to see so many people still trying to play this at a high level (a la elitistjerks) when it is, in the end, a pretty piss poor game when you play it that way.

If the game still stayed fun when you pursued optimal strategies, then it would be a good game and we wouldn’t have this conversation in the first place. Because even when playing with ‘elitist jerks’ you’d still be having fun. You’d be learning how to play the game better, and it would open new realms of possibilities and strategies you hadn’t thought of, and you’d want to pursue these and other strategies because such exploration would be *fun*.

OTOH, you play Magic with the top Constructed decks, the game is still fun… it’s in fact MORE fun than playing with some junk deck. You get into an entirely different level, where you’re playing your opponent instead of your cards (sort of like high level poker) and trying to trick him into making bad moves.

These guys are exactly the same as me.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/7/24/

I have to actively choose to NOT get serious into some games in order for it to stay fun for other people around me. So I bought a couple boardgames and I’m *NOT* looking at them over on boardgamegeeks.com so that I can continue playing with my gf and friends. Except I itch to calculate the most efficient build orders *every*... *single*... *time* I play.

Pursuing high level gameplay is so rewarding and fun (with *good* games) that once you’ve started doing it, it’s pretty hard not to keep going at it in every single game. A game for me is a puzzle to be broken. Period.

Chet is short for Chock full of shit, right? Addictions are not interchangeable, stupid.  I have no problem with books, TV, chocolate, alcohol, exercise, or gambling.  The Internet - yeah, big time.  Found this out when my DSL got cut.  Had it explained by the ed psych expert.  Something about feedback and dopamine combined with the screen and vision.

Since I’m recovering, I’ll be having someone pull the DSL now - bye.

They also grade nastily because “it’s preparation for grad school”.

You know what? They’re lying: classes in grad school are graded much more leniently than they are in undergrad.

QFT. 

Heard the same BS in high school from some teachers to justify the browbeating and the picking of students whose grades were below 90%.  They often said things like “college is the bigtime” and “if you can’t excel here, you can’t excel in college”.  Funnily enough, most of us found college to be far less stressful and time-consuming even with class overloads, working part-time, and participating in extracurriculars. 

Oftentimes, I had to help deprogram my high school’s alums who were still in high school or just starting their first year of college of the idea that college was going to be such an overwhelming experience because so many college guidance counselors got it into their heads that there is a 1:1 correlation between the difficulty in gaining admission to an institution and the difficulty, rigor, and quantity of the academic coursework at those places. 

From my own experience and those of classmates who attended Ivy/Ivy-level institutions, that notion is so far off the mark it isn’t funny.  Unless we’re talking institutions like MIT or UChicago in which case the academic climate would be the same/slightly harder than high school, the most difficult part is getting in and barring illness, financial problems, or life crises….almost everyone should be able to complete the program with a 3.0 or better*.

I’m at what’s sometimes known as the “MIT of the north” so I’m not sure exactly where I stand. Our program does have a 70% drop-out/switch rate. Part of our problem is that we end up with these postdocs from the theoretical place next door trying to teach classes. They make a lot of assumptions about what people do and do not know (tensors in first term of second year!).

People do get this idea that the transition from high school to university is akin to having to perform open heart surgery on yourself, but for my highschool it wasn’t so bad because many of the people there were lazy anti-intellectuals who went into programs that require very little work or understanding (Rec and Leisure, I’m looking at you!) for those who just want to skate through. I saw a lot of girls (I was at a single gender hs) go into bio-* because they “liked science” but didn’t actually know what they wanted to do. A bunch who didn’t qualify for bio-* went into kinesthesiology or physiotherapy.

On WoW: I’ve only played Guild Wars, which I didn’t like too much. I don’t tend to play MMOs because I’m very shy and I feel like I’m terrible at the games and/or dragging my team down. Add that to the vituperative atmosphere in a lot of WoW servers (is RP better about this?) and it becomes very intimidating for me. A lot of non MMORPGs have this grind/unlockables issue too. For example, the Total War series makes you play through a campaign once to get at some of the factions and a lot of the achievements are grindy (kill a milllion dudes!). Grind isn’t only a MMORPG issue.

Grind isn’t only a MMORPG issue.

True, but it seems to me that in MMOs it’s embraced as a boon. Also, I dislike the fact that it’s being exported into other genres. I understand that grindy, subscription-based games (and now micropayment games) are better *business models* in this day and age than the old model, but I don’t have to like it and I still think it makes for a worst *game*.

If Capcom had arrived with a fighter game you had to grind to unlock characters and moves in to be able to compete at a tournament level, they’d have been laughed out of the market. Nowadays it seems that with the escalating budgets for AAA games (due to the continued graphics chasing of the technophile crowd) and the resulting centralization and oligopolization of the gaming market, there’s less competitors and more incentives to slip in this sort of things into games. They already made it so SSBB players have to grind to compete, who’s to say this isn’t the future (shudder) of competitive gaming? When only the big boys are still around and all the games become grinds and subscription/micropayment models…

On WoW: I’ve only played Guild Wars, which I didn’t like too much. I don’t tend to play MMOs because I’m very shy and I feel like I’m terrible at the games and/or dragging my team down. Add that to the vituperative atmosphere in a lot of WoW servers (is RP better about this?) and it becomes very intimidating for me. A lot of non MMORPGs have this grind/unlockables issue too. For example, the Total War series makes you play through a campaign once to get at some of the factions and a lot of the achievements are grindy (kill a milllion dudes!). Grind isn’t only a MMORPG issue.

Growing up, my parents never allowed me to have video games both due to cost as well as the fact several neighborhood kids who were hardcore gamers became so addicted to them that they ended up flunking their classes and ultimately became high school dropouts. 

Though I dabbled a bit in adventure, first person shooters, and flight simulators(another time sink), I never gone beyond casually gaming once every month or so because I did not want to end up like my neighbors who ended up dropping out as a result of their addictions. 

This was reinforced in undergrad one semester when one CS major classmate/roommate at my undergrad became so addicted to MUDs to the point of almost being placed on academic suspension for skipping too many morning classes, failing to complete academic assignments, and being so addicted to the point of ignoring emails and letters from concerned Profs and the academic dean that they ended up asking me to tell him that he must see them immediately regarding their concerns. 

Just imagine if WOW or similar games were available when I was an undergrad…..

Hmm, a few points:

this is not a random sample so the results might not mean much (for example, most of the students were psych students—are women who go into psych, different from men who go into psych?)

the difference in work time seems to be mostly from paid work (women worked 15 hours more at a paid job on average); as has been said, could part of this be due to the fact that a higher percent of women go to college and so,  on average, are poorer?

it has been found that girls, on average, have more trouble with spatial thinking but this difference goes away if they play more video games (of a certain sort). That might be one reason, they’re looking at video games.

one fact mentioned that makes me doubt some of the quality of the study is that the estimated average leisure time per week is about 8 hours for men and 4 hours for women. Per week? That seems wrong (consider that a study they cite shows in general men have 38 hours per week for leisure time, while women have 34).

You know, I had a lot of nasty-ass apartments in college, but my acquaintences in undergrad these days appear to live in a level of filth which I cannot fully comprehend.

It’s this horrific intersection of helicopter parents’ kids with abused parents’ kids.

In addition, I’ve finally just stopped going over to my friends’ places which are too filthy.  My health can’t take it, and I’m not their damned maid.  I got new friends.

If I had been designing this study, I would have made them make me Sims 2 furniture in Maya. We’ll see who thinks spatially now!

Aren’t there more women in psych anyway? I think it’s one of those female dominated majors.

exholt: I know a bunch of people who could have died for all we knew. They did not leave their houses/dorm rooms for days. Took catassing to a whole new level. People in math often got away with it more because in first year math, the profs are cool with people not showing up to class . . . if they know things. We don’t take attendance. The only way we would have known if they’d passed would have been the smell, but that might have been hard to distinguish from their terrible “I don’t bathe!” stink.

Apparently somebody in a CS minor tried to argue that he should get extra credit for playing so much WoW because it was teaching him about algorithms and emergence.

JohnL, is that study they cite about leisure for people in college? Or did they not include time spent drunk/high as leisure?

When I went to a gifted magnet boarding school, there was a contingent of guys who got addicted to MUDs and failed out.  The MUDs had the same characteristics as the MMOs—tiny rewards carefully spaced to keep you interested.

The difference between an MMO and a good game is fun density.  You find yourself wanting to play an MMO, because you remember a good time you had.  But you keep forgetting that the fun you had only came after eight hours of grinding.  It’s almost a classic example of an addictive drug, something that gives you a little pleasure most of the time, then a big burst unexpectedly, so you have to keep doing it over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over . . .

Anyways, these guys all had a similar type—socially awkward, with parents just this side of abusive.  Neglectful or incapable of giving praise or support.  At the time, I avoided them, but now, looking back, I feel terribly sorry for them.  Their lives were so awful, it wasn’t anything resembling a wonder that they retreated into anything which offered even kind of a reward or success.  I occasionally wonder how the kids who flunked out did.  Probably fine, eventually; most people do.  But still.

Apparently somebody in a CS minor tried to argue that he should get extra credit for playing so much WoW because it was teaching him about algorithms and emergence.

How long did the teacher laugh at that one?

The difference between an MMO and a good game is fun density.  You find yourself wanting to play an MMO, because you remember a good time you had.  But you keep forgetting that the fun you had only came after eight hours of grinding.  It’s almost a classic example of an addictive drug, something that gives you a little pleasure most of the time, then a big burst unexpectedly, so you have to keep doing it over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over . . .

Exactly. Technically it’s built the same way as gambling, except it’s conscious (I’m not sure gambling was consciously designed that way, I think it evolved over time). At E3 or in some press conference, the lead designer will say something like “this game will be so riveting you won’t want to leave your chair” and people *applaud* instead of being appalled. At least many of them aren’t MMO pushers, so they really couldn’t care less if you play an hour or a million on their latest baby. When the same comments comes from MMO designers, I consider it *immoral*, not just wrong-headed or naive.

Guys, BlackBlock is just too hardcore for MMOs. I, for one, stand in awe of his towering epeen.

The nice thing about MMOs, at least from the “Oh Jesus people I can’t deal” perspective, is that it’s an addiction that doesn’t require very much face-to-face or voice-to-voice communication. You don’t have to physically see your dealer, and on a big enough MMO you can find a group to run with that’s exactly as lonely/angry/whatever as you are, but you don’t have to see them ever again. It’s also a lot harder for people you don’t like to continuously harass you like they can do offline (unless of course they’re in your guild). Even griefers will usually give up after a few sessions. You can’t see anyone’s facial expressions either so you don’t have to worry every second about whether they think you’re stupid or annoying or a bad player. People judge you on your appearance, but it’s an appearance you’ve earned by grinding, not a pizza face you’re stuck with because “Retin-A is for girls”. People constantly congratulate you on how awesome your gear is, how good you were on that run - they essentially reinforce the addiction in a way that I don’t think happens so much with other addictions (I don’t think gamblers brag about how much money they lost or alcoholics about how many mickeys they drank in the same way that WoW players will brag about how many hours they spent gathering item x.

You know, I had a lot of nasty-ass apartments in college, but my acquaintences in undergrad these days appear to live in a level of filth which I cannot fully comprehend.

Trust me, the level of filthiness hasn’t changed much from the mid-1990s as I’ve been in friends’ dorms during visits to other campuses that were so filthy that the kitchen reeked of a foul noxious odor and giant rats were literally ramming the overstuffed garbage can trying to get at the garbage each night.  Understandably, I took the top bunk in the spare bed at night, made it a point to spend as little time in the dorm as possible during the day, and NEVER ATE there.

exholt: I know a bunch of people who could have died for all we knew. They did not leave their houses/dorm rooms for days. Took catassing to a whole new level. People in math often got away with it more because in first year math, the profs are cool with people not showing up to class . . . if they know things. We don’t take attendance. The only way we would have known if they’d passed would have been the smell, but that might have been hard to distinguish from their terrible “I don’t bathe!” stink.

Fortunately or unfortunately for my roommate, we were at a small private liberal arts college where average class sizes were small enough…even in most intro classes that Profs will easily notice if a student chose to skip out.  In a 9 am class where there are only 10 students…especially those involving class participation like a foriegn language class…..someone who skips out is kinda hard to overlook, especially if the Profs concerned are the types who make it a point to know us both in and out of class…...sometimes to the point it is common for us to be invited to have dinners at their houses. 

Apparently somebody in a CS minor tried to argue that he should get extra credit for playing so much WoW because it was teaching him about algorithms and emergence.

One of the reasons why there is such a high percentage of flunkouts in many intro classes for CS majors IME is that so many people sign up for the major thinking that playing video/computer games means they have a natural talent for programming. 

By the time they receive their midterms back with grades in the single digits out of 100, most are disabused of such notions, especially when some CS Profs brusquely informs them that they may be better off in another major.  Even in the intro CS class at my undergrad with a kindly Prof who went out of his way to help everyone and explain everything, we still had around a 40% flunkout rate which is extremely low from what I hear from CS major/minor friends at other colleges/universities.

These aren’t the rules of the game, Bloc! These are against the rules of the game.

The game is the rules of the game. The code is the rules of the game. You can’t *cheat* in a videogame, except through external means (hacks).

Also, you’re going to claim you don’t know how aggro works in the game? When you said you’re a tanking priest? Please.

Aggro management is part of the game. Learning the tricks of how it works is the game, as far as tanking goes at least (and DPS people also need to learn to manage their aggro, and healbots, and so on). You draw some sort of imaginary line between that knowledge and the deeper knowledge of knowing that this boss has a particular trick which allows you to aggro it without danger to yourself, because you know that someone who plays the game properly (i.e. seeks the optimal strategy within the game as it exists) breaks the game, because the game is designed crappily. It’s Blizzard’s responsability to patch things they find that aren’t working as intended, not players to steer clear of these corner cases.

Again, the DCI bans cards, it doesn’t ban players for being clever enough to find broken combos. That’s because WotC and the DCI know how to design games, and rectify errors of design, and Blizzard doesn’t.

D&D;, which you praise, has exactly the same structure.

In D&D;, you can start at any level you please (or your DM pleases).

In D&D;, the game starts at level 1, not at level 80.

Oh, and when you can’t put down a book, that’s a day or two. When you can’t rise up from your chair at a movie, it’s an hour and a half to three hours.

When you can’t get out of your chair in a MMO, it’s *neverending*.

Is it just me or is Entomologista always posting at around the same time as Chet?

Sockpuppet much?

Hm. All this talk of leveling and grinding vs. skills and no mention of Progress Quest ?

for example, the Total War series makes you play through a campaign once to get at some of the factions and a lot of the achievements are grindy

You can change settings in the configuration file to “unlock” those other factions.

What Total War really needs is something like Ming Dynasty: Total War or Khmer Empire: Total War. So many factions, so little time.

Oh, and when you can’t put down a book, that’s a day or two.

To be fair, maybe someone has become addicted to Anna Karenina or Rememberance of Things Past. That’s more like two weeks minimum.

Tyro, don’t get in the way of my bad example!

It’s been so illuminating how this discussion has gone towards dissecting BlackBloc’s personal feelings about specific games/certain types of gaming!  That was totally the topic of the post!  And wow, it’s so great to hear how you all…don’t give a shit about the topic and want to talk about which games are “good.”

Mimi, I’m glad someone said it.

Exholt, there are different kinds of poorly/well groomed, especially if you take the cost of the clothing out of it.  Expensive and conformist clothing can still be worn wrinkled on a dirty body, with 3-day-old facial scruff, and hair that hasn’t seen a comb in a while, and inexpensive or creative clothing can be worn neatly, on a person who has clearly showered recently, and put some thought into their appearances.

My main concern is with the idea that Profs like Steve LaBonne feel they have the right to base their judgments of students on their appearance such as “poor grooming.”  As far as I am concerned, so long as the student concerned does his/her work well, is engaged with the class and its materials, and contributes to the class through meaningful class participation that is more than mere parroting of ideas from other more original creative students I could care less about a given student’s grooming habits unless it poses an actual health hazard.

Even then, I am not sure how successful a Prof would be in remedying the issue if the experience of one Prof I had was any indication as there were a few “malodorous” classmates from that “neo-hippie” dorm in that class.  Prevailing campus sentiment and the reactions of that Prof was to live and let live and judge the students by the quality of their academic work and class participation.  After a few weeks, it became a non-issue as other students and the newly visiting Prof learned to accept it. 

The “poorly groomed” statement took me aback as it made me recall one boomer aged parent of a high school friend who recounted how he and his generation were fighting against similar attitudes among Profs and university admins during the 1960’s when they protested to demand the elimination of campus dress/appearance codes on university/college campuses.

Erm yeah, sorry about that. My bad.

Re: dress “codes”. On our first day of classes, one of my profs announced that he was pleased to see that “we finally have some female physics majors who can dress themselves”. He was talking about the girls who brought purses instead of bookbags to class and wore short skirts and heavy makeup. So there’s some “free time” lost too, I guess.

Wow, limes, what a douchehat. I guess male students can carry backpacks and not wear makeup and still be considered “dressed.” I’m surprised and relieved that I went through an entire engineering degree without hearing any memorable sexist bullshit from a professor.

The professors are a lot better than the students. Almost all the profs I’ve met have been super awesome. A lot of the students haven’t. These are the guys who start talking loudly about items from the Rolodex of Love whenever a girl walks into the study room and wonder why they can’t get dates. A lot of the guys have more “leisure time” because they spend all their time in various clubs hitting up people who actually know what they’re doing to write code for them. But girls can’t write Python (which they chose for some reason). They also like to run “date auctions” of the first and second year female students. Stay classy, guys!

NB: prof didn’t actually say this to the class. He said it afterwards.

On our first day of classes, one of my profs announced that he was pleased to see that “we finally have some female physics majors who can dress themselves”.

Wow! What a jackass…...  Wonder if this was one of the Profs who felt that the universities declined the instant campus dress codes mandating long dresses for women and formal suits for men were abolished that my high school friend’s father talked about…....

I always thought the attitude in science was that if you were spending a lot of time thinking about how you looked, then that was time you weren’t spending thinking about science. Undergraduates wearing sport coats to class: I’m looking at you!

If you can’t grow your hair long and wear jeans and a t-shirt to your computer science class, where can you?

Women also get much better grades than men, too. It would be interesting to see how strong the correlation is between study time and grades discounting gender, and if that accounts for the difference in study/leisure time between men and women. Not to say that you aren’t absolutely right on the psychological factors that make women feel the need to put in those extra hours (and encourage men to slack off. Being too much of a studier definitely had a bit of a feminine cast to it at my college. Slacking off and playing video games was more of a guy thing.)

Not to say that you aren’t absolutely right on the psychological factors that make women feel the need to put in those extra hours (and encourage men to slack off. Being too much of a studier definitely had a bit of a feminine cast to it at my college. Slacking off and playing video games was more of a guy thing.)

This may be variable depending on the type of school and the prevailing campus culture.  Don’t know if things have changed since the ‘90s, but the mentality of studying very hard being uncool to the point of encouraging slacking and even considered feminine was IME far more prevalent at larger universities centered on sports, frats/sororities, social clubs, and heavy on-campus partying than at smaller institutions like private liberal arts colleges. 

Studying hard was what everyone did both because most of the student body did take their studies more seriously, on average, than the majority of students I’ve observed at larger universities…including the Ivy/Ivy-level ones and the fact the Profs assigned heavy workloads with the expectation we’d not only completed them…but also analyzed and engaged with it enough to intelligently discuss and even debate over it. 

Heck, it was common for us to enthusiastically continue debating what was discussed in class and relate it to other areas of our lives, ideas, and activities well into the evening and even into the early morning hours of the following day without skipping much of a beat.  Something which struck most friends and classmates, even at larger Ivy/Ivy-level universities as “weird”, “too nerdy” and “being too obsessed with academics”. 

Am not sure of the gender breakdown regarding grades and study times at my undergrad.  While women, on average, excel academically in college and they were a slight majority at my undergrad, the figures could be confounded by the fact that most of the leading/organizing of campus political activist campus organizations at my college were also dominated by women whose extreme devotion to those causes IME often came at the expense of their grades in the process.  Some would, however, argue that this is a far more constructive activity to embark on at the expense of one’s grades than other grade deflating activities such as video gaming, obsessing over campus sports, partying to oblivion, and/or the frat/sorority scene.

On grading in school and uni—first two years of uni were hell on earth, because they were designed to get 50 to 75 per cent of the students to leave uni, so fail rate at exams was set at 50 to 75 per cent. After you did your two-years exam (which took three to four years, because you had to re-take a lot of the minor exams), things got a whole lot better, because you only had about 150 people on 75 places, and not 400.

They “reformed” the system some time ago—I don’t know if it got better, but they added fees, which makes the already strong class selection stronger and will probably give the already priviledged better chances.

junk science: I’m surprised and relieved that I went through an entire engineering degree without hearing any memorable sexist bullshit from a professor.

We had some memorable events with student sexism. Starting with debates about which course to do a common summer party with (“English students! They have the most girls!” “No, psych, they have even more!” “Yes, but those are weird.” “You will all act like grown-ups right now or we’ll ask the theologians!”), to a prof’s innocent suggestion of holding class outside on a nice spring day (“Only if the girls will all wear bikinis!” “OK, if the guys all wear three-piece suits and tasteful ties.” “Or black leather.”)

Exholt, I think you are taking “poorly groomed” to mostly talk about these neo-hippies, whereas I and others are talking about moderately apolitical, lazy-ass guys who have money for nice clothes but never learned to operate a washing machine.  Or a vacuum.  Or dishsoap and a sponge.  We’re emphatically not talking about a dress code, but about hygiene. 

<i>being uncool to the point of encouraging slacking and even considered feminine was IME far more prevalent at larger universities centered on sports, frats/sororities, social clubs, and heavy on-campus partying than at smaller institutions like private liberal arts colleges.<i>

Nah, there’s small colleges out there that are just as bad.  Some small colleges are nuts about a sport, have frats, etc.  I went to one for a year and a half, till I ran screaming in the other direction; it had Div I lacrosse, though everything else was Div III, and had frats but no sororities.  (Bonus points to anyone who can figure out what school it was!)  Lots of kids didn’t stay till graduation.  A good number dropped out or were kicked out, and then a whole other bunch (like me) transferred cause they couldn’t take the stupid.
These kinds of schools are where the upper and upper-middle classes stash their lazy or stupid (or both) offspring, after high school and before one of daddy’s friends gives them a cushy job somewhere.  They can pay the high tuition without scholarships, and then donate whole buildings on top of that if junior gets in a particular lot of trouble.  (This happened.)

and yet there are still those studies hanging on that say men talk more than women in college classrooms - which can have the effect of giving someone who studied less a much higher participation grade.

Some of this has been negated by Profs who actually will deduct points for “negative class participation” like mindlessly parroting ideas advanced earlier by more original creative classmates, dominating class discussion at the expense of other classmates, attempting to BS one’s way through class discussion without fully analyzing/engaging with assigned readings or worse…without reading them at all, making negative insinuations about a student’s intelligence because their ideas/opinions did not accord with theirs, etc. 

This was one reason so many classmates who thought they were shoo-ins for an A by maximizing their class participation grade by doing all of the above and more without thoughtfully contributing their own thoughtful analysis were shocked to be receiving Bs, Cs, and even Fs at the end of the semester/year. 

Exholt, I think you are taking “poorly groomed” to mostly talk about these neo-hippies, whereas I and others are talking about moderately apolitical, lazy-ass guys who have money for nice clothes but never learned to operate a washing machine.  Or a vacuum.  Or dishsoap and a sponge.  We’re emphatically not talking about a dress code, but about hygiene.

I brought up the neo-hippies and the dorm precisely because they fulfill almost every point on that checklist as the stench from that dorm that it positively reeked from a long distance….even in the cold winters we had. 

The stench issue with that dorm and its inhabitants was so well-known that it became fodder for inside campus humor among us and one factor in the horrid town-gown relations at the time.  The stench from the dorm and its inhabitants could easily match and even exceed those of the worst I’ve seen in many unhygienic dorms inhabited by the lazy male undergrads commenters here and I experienced on many campuses. 

Only thing is that the dorm’s inhabitants weren’t doing it because they happened to be mostly male or lazy.  Rather, they deliberately did it to recreate what they thought the hippie lifestyle was like and as a protest/rebellion against what they saw as standards derived from conformist bourgeois capitalism…..kinda interesting when they, on average, came from the wealthiest families on the entire campus according to average parental income stats by dorm.

I always thought the attitude in science was that if you were spending a lot of time thinking about how you looked, then that was time you weren’t spending thinking about science.

Well, it’s scary if women think too much about science. They might turn out to be smarter than men. Better keep them distracted with makeup.

We had some memorable events with student sexism.

Oh, well, obviously. Sexually frustrated and poorly socialized is always a fun combination.

junk science: “I’m surprised and relieved that I went through an entire engineering degree without hearing any memorable sexist bullshit from a professor. “

  I’ll up that from surprised to floored. I worked with electrical and computer science engineers for four years and could not believe the level of across the board (from professor to freshman student) sexism in the department. I am glad your experience was better.

  Just to tie this in to the topic…

  Many of those same people were moderate to hard core gamers and from what I saw traditional “second shift” work was what put a ding in gaming time for most women. Most of the men who lived alone or in same sex cohabitation situations blew off housekeeping for gaming and lived in abject funk. Women living in comparable situations spent a little more time on housework. In opposite sex living situations the women did more housework and the men did more gaming, even though the women were into gaming too.

  There were exceptions to the above descriptions but in general this is what happened. I stopped going to one guy’s house to game because of the level of nasty filth. I am not a neat freak by any means but having a serious concern about the mold you are inhaling from the dishes that have gone from festering to desiccating is where I draw the line. Well, maybe a bit before that.

Well, I didn’t think the engineering students I knew were any less sexist than the average person. I just meant that I hadn’t heard any professors make smartass comments about female students like limes talked about. It could have just been that I wasn’t paying attention.

It occurs to me that college women, in a sexually threatening environment, might also just prefer to spend more time studying or working, rather than having their asses grabbed “all in fun.”  A college man who gets hurt while out partying “had bad luck”; a college woman who gets hurt (including getting raped) while out partying “was asking for it.”  Safer to stay away from that scene altogether.

Steve LaBonne:

I’m much more motivated to be fucking furious that women are not reaping the just rewards of their superior performance after they graduate.

Me too.

There’s also the corollary that women get good grades because they are grinds, they work really hard, while men are just naturally super smart.  A straight-A student who’s female is almost considered unexceptional.

purpleshoes:

and yet there are still those studies hanging on that say men talk more than women in college classrooms - which can have the effect of giving someone who studied less a much higher participation grade. Speaking as someone who consistently got the Hermione Granger treatment for talking in class (What an intimidating, arrogant bitch, eh?) I think this is fair. I used to keep tallies in my notebook of who talked the most by gender, and if I stayed quiet it was like three to one male to female.

When men participate in class they are much more likely to be encouraged, drawn out, and granted ownership of their ideas, while women are discouraged, ignored, or only perfunctorily acknowledged.  This pattern may have diminished but it’s still measurably there.

It continues in business.  I don’t remember if I read about this cartoon here or elsewhere, it’s the one marked on this page as “Glass Ceiling Cartoons 9.”  It shows a group at work around a table, and the (male) group leader says to a female participant, “That’s a very good suggestion, Miss Wilson—perhaps one of the men would like to make it?”  Any one of us who has made a suggestion, had it met blankly, then minutes later, repeated back to us by a man, with the enthusiastic support of other men, knows this one.

By the way, I wouldn’t recommend searching that cartoon database on “feminism” unless you want to see some pretty ugly attitudes about at.