Ever since we nearly died from our childhood playground’s cootie epidemic — only to be saved when we decided to play doctor — we’ve known that girls and boys are very, very different. And now, according to the Nielsen Company, there’s yet another reason to slap that “No Girls Allowed” sign on your tree fort: the fairer sex digs PC gaming way more than you.
Wait, what?!
So, what’s the catch? Well, 55% of all PC gameplay minutes can be attributed to females above the age of 25; that much is true. But guess what many of them are playing? That’s right: Solitaire. Barebones, no frills Solitaire. So much so, in fact, that Solitaire is the single most-played PC game, with 17 million players in December 2008.
The majority of female players – and therefore, most PC gamers – are casual gamers. Granted, Nielsen’s subjects allow their every online move to be monitored by some monolithic company, but other than that, we presume that they’re normal people.
So, what do we take away from this? For one, if you give people a game and the hardware to run it – whether manly man or girly girl – they’ll play it. Bundle Windows with a few games that prominently feature knights, kings, and queens sans the cards and we might be onto something. And second, that curvy Night Elf that keeps interrupting your grinding session with another, far more sinister variety of grinding? Probably a dude.
