Two girls for every boy

[jujube]

except at TC.

The CEA study found that 65 percent of women in the 25-34 age bracket play video games, while only 35 percent of men in that group said that they play video games. Apparently, the key factor involved with these findings is the increasing popularity of casual games, especially among women.

Women were found to be slightly less likely than men in the 25-34 bracket to play traditional console games on systems like the PlayStation 2 or Xbox, while they gravitated more heavily towards simple types of games like Tetris or other puzzle games and card games like solitaire.

Steve Koenig, a senior analyst at the Consumer Electronics Association, said that the CEA study did not specifically ask women why they preferred casual games, but he explained that unlike traditional console video games, casual titles are generally "nonviolent, and are not necessarily supercompetitive against other players."
i think the words "casual" and "simple" are thrown around a bit too much in this article, and maybe this demonstrates a lack of knowledge of the game and its players by the author. regardless, the statistics (women gamers age 25-34 outnumber their male counterparts nearly 2 to 1??) suggest there are many many female players out there, assuming the study was done properly.

Although boys in high school performed better than girls in math 20 years ago, the researchers found, that is no longer the case. The reason, they said, is simple: Girls used to take fewer advanced math courses than boys, but now they are taking just as many.
yep, sounds simple to me. equal participation = equal results. is there any reason to believe a female would not continue to improve at tetris in an environment like the TC forum, where we're organizing tournaments and challenging each others' records, pushing each other to improve through praise and a little humiliation? women aren't afraid to lose sometimes, are they? http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_lol.gif


and now my favorite quote i found. this is from an interview with Alexey Pajitnov done in 1999.
Tetris is very unusual in that it is widely played by women, a distinction in a computer game universe that is often mapped by the tastes and habits of male players. "There is just something about it that is so appealing," said Linda Helin, the general manager of XS New York, a game arcade and cybercafe in Times Square. "I still play it."

Mr. Pajitnov said he is not surprised. "Tetris is very nonviolent," he said. "Women don't feel bad that this is some kind of stupid male activity. And Tetris is a kind of game which helps you order the world. You fight against chaos. I'm not sure it is very politically correct, but that's what women prefer to do."

here's another lovely quote from the ancient article. just going off topic here for the moment because it made me laugh:
"I'm getting some royalties," he said beneath his breath, conceding that the game's economic life is all but over. "I'm losing my humor sense about it."

back on topic. why are there so few female members at TC? is the atmosphere too competitive for the "casual player?" there are a lot of females playing tetris, and most of them have the internet, so what gives.

[rednefed]

I'm sure quite a few play tetris friends. But there's a huge TGM crowd here, and virtually none of the western population has heard of it, male or female. Guideline tetris plays well for casuals, and most people won't go farther than beating level 15 of marathon mode.

[muf]

I think you have to take into account that people will say they play Tetris even though they mean they play N-Blox during lunch breaks or something equally inane. I only know of one girl personally that plays Tetris, and she's into TetriNET. All of my other friends, both gender, can mostly be considered gamers in the broad sense, but none of them are even able to clear Easy mode in Ti.

[caffeine]

A female TC member told me it was hard to get into any of the discussion because the site is very esoteric. She's pretty much right, though.

[Red_Star]

There was a few girls that played Cultris regularly. A couple of them are always on the top 20 and one girl won the Cultris tournament. There has to be a good amount of female tetris players that play tetris competitively.

I agree that this site is esoteric but with the kind of things that are usually being discussed it is hard to avoid it. This affects both men and women though (I don't have much knowledge about most stuff people discuss on TC).

The reason their isn't many female TC members could just be that the competitive, female tetris players haven't found TC yet.

[colour_thief]

A female TC member told me it was hard to get into any of the discussion because the site is very esoteric. She's pretty much right, though.

If it wasn't esoteric there wouldn't be much point in coming here, so... Yeah. I'm not sure how someone could complain about that. We're friendly enough to answer honest questions too... I can't see how we could be any better really.

[Phydeaux]

Lots of girls play Tetris Splash, and that's just those with the mics on, so I can see how this would be true.

[caffeine]

I think there are ways to improve. For example, on more than one occasion I have spotted blogs that linked here and quoted some lengthy sentence off the wiki of our Tetris jargon kind of to show how crazy we are about Tetris.

[DDRKirby(ISQ)]

http://www.xanga.com/DDRKirbyISQ/666101253/this-is-a-post-about-tetris.html http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif

[Blink]

i remember tetrinet2 had dozens of girls playing, about half the community were females. I notice girls love the multiplayer aspect of tetris - Tetris DS, cultris, tetris splash and tetrinet all have a good amount of females. Tetrisconcept threads are primarily about singleplayer games and 20g, using terms many people don't understand, and I think that scares some of them away because it's too foreign to them and it looks too nerdy from an outsider's view. Even my girlfriend who loves tetris and plays as much as I do thinks this website is too nerdy.

[paul]

when u play dr. mario for wiiware u see TONS of females miis. it might be...50/50 actually.

(anyone wanna play it with me? pm me for fc)

[DIGITAL]

I'd take a stab and say it's the social aspect of multiplayer that attracts more females. TC is more singleplayer focused and the result are more esoteric discussions as opposed to ones that are more casual. Even if TC did attract a more multiplayer centric crowd, it would probably still lack the casual nature present in multiplayer communities. You can't really change TC without changing its audience.

That said, the jargon used on this site is only seemingly daunting. Casuals just have to take some time to learn the terms that describe the game mechanics. I'd hate to dumb down every sentence just to please people that aren't willing to sacrifice a couple of minutes to look at the glossary. Not to say that everything is already simplified and streamlined on the wiki, but how ridiculous would it be to explain what DAS, lock delay, etc. is on every article? There are some complicated stuff on the wiki but the purpose of those is to appeal to the jargon-familiared crowd, not the casual crowd.

[PetitPrince]

That said, the jargon used on this site is only seemingly daunting. Casuals just have to take some time to learn the terms that describe the game mechanics. I'd hate to dumb down every sentence just to please people that aren't willing to sacrifice a couple of minutes to look at the glossary. Not to say that everything is already simplified and streamlined on the wiki, but how ridiculous would it be to explain what DAS, lock delay, etc. is on every article? There are some complicated stuff on the wiki but the purpose of those is to appeal to the jargon-familiared crowd, not the casual crowd.
phpBB word replacement + <abbr> (or <accroynm>) tag with one simple definition in it ?

[Rosti LFC]

I would simply say that it's because women tend not to take games to the levels of a serious hobby in the same way that guys do. I'm sure a lot of girls play Tetris DS, but I really doubt that any of them play it often enough or take the game seriously enough to bring themselves to the sort of elite and hardcore fanbase that TC incorporates.

They still play it, they just don't pile hours and hours into the games like we do.

[muf]

They still play it, they just don't pile hours and hours into the games like we do.
I would say there are enoug that do pile hours into the game, but are just content with taking the game as it is without understanding its mechanics inside and out.

[paul]

i think they have sex in their free time.

[caffeine]

The women I know from Tetris Worlds and Tetris Splash invested more time into the game than I ever did. I also remember one in particular "SEXYMOM" who was all about playing to improve her skill. I remember another who was flat out addicted to the game to the point where it was affecting her marriage. One from Tetris Splash had a very competitive persona. Generally all the women I got to know preferred playing in the room where the top competitors played. In general, however, I'd say guys are simply better than girls in Tetris. I've always attributed this to men being superior in spatial reasoning, which is well documented (http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED358016&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED358016).

[Rosti LFC]

The women I know from Tetris Worlds and Tetris Splash invested more time into the game than I ever did. I also remember one in particular "SEXYMOM" who was all about playing to improve her skill. I remember another who was flat out addicted to the game to the point where it was affecting her marriage. One from Tetris Splash had a very competitive persona.

But you're talking about specific people rather than general, and it's still Tetris Splash, which isn't the most hardcore of Tetris games in my opinion. It is odd that we have pretty much no female active members, but we have had a few. I tend to find women are a minority on internet messageboards anyway, generally regardless of the subject matter.

[caffeine]

I'm talking about women in general from the ones I know, and I'm using examples. It's Tetris Worlds, too--not just Splash. What is the hardcore scene you're talking about? Tnet? There were some fierce female players on Tnet, I remember.

[Phydeaux]

Tetris Splash is about as hardcore as it's going to get in America. Remember how just a year ago there were a few of you gushing about it's mechanics and programmable controls.

Which, btw, don't translate over to multiplayer. Which is a bitch for trying to use my arcade stick.

[caffeine]

Which, btw, don't translate over to multiplayer.
Yes huh.

[Phydeaux]

Why was that? It seems almost like a stupid "they had to intentionally do this" design flaw.

[caffeine]

What do you mean? I said "yes huh" as in "yes, everything does translate over to multiplayer."

[Phydeaux]

Huh? It doesn't for me. I'll go double check.

[Udy]

I play with the advanced set up on Tetris Splash.
For it to work in multiplayer I have to go into options, move away from my chosen set up then back again.
If I do this every time the controls work in multiplayer, if I don't they revert to basic.

Weird!

[caffeine]

I know what you guys are talking about, and if you just top out a game of single player first, the multiplayer will be fine.

[Phydeaux]

I know what you guys are talking about, and if you just top out a game of single player first, the multiplayer will be fine.
It's a feature, not a bug!

[jujube]

if this were another $10 tetris game (http://zone.tetris.com/default.htm) you could drop a message about it to the development team and they'd work on the problem.
oh, this technique also works with a free tetris game (http://www.facebook.com/r.php?referrer=112&app_id=2376198867&app_data=http_253A_252F_252Fwidgets.tetrisfriends. com_252Ffb_flash_252F) too.

Tetris Splash is available for download on X-Box 360, isn't it? is there any reason a bug can't be fixed so players can download an update? if the dev team doesn't exist anymore over a year after the game was released that's one thing, but if Microsoft doesn't want to accommodate easy interaction between players and devs that doesn't make any sense. your average jodie X-Box owner doesn't care if her disc drive is broken, or the servers are down, or the controller sucks, or the game she wants to play has an annoying bug. it's "stupid Microsoft"s fault.

[paul]

if this were another $10 tetris game (http://zone.tetris.com/default.htm) you could drop a message about it to the development team and they'd work on the problem.
oh, this technique also works with a free tetris game (http://www.facebook.com/r.php?referrer=112&app_id=2376198867&app_data=http_253A_252F_252Fwidgets.tetrisfriends. com_252Ffb_flash_252F) too.

Tetris Splash is available for download on X-Box 360, isn't it? is there any reason a bug can't be fixed so players can download an update? if the dev team doesn't exist anymore over a year after the game was released that's one thing, but if Microsoft doesn't want to accommodate easy interaction between players and devs that doesn't make any sense. your average jodie X-Box owner doesn't care if her disc drive is broken, or the servers are down, or the controller sucks, or the game she wants to play has an annoying bug. it's "stupid Microsoft"s fault.

how exactly is this microsofts fault again?

[jujube]

jodie buys an X-Box 360 for $lot and Tetris Splash for $little.
she can't get the controller to setup and work correctly.
she can't tell the development team about the problem.
she tells all her friends to buy a Wii and wait for Tetris Wii to be released.
Microsoft didn't help jodie contact the game dev team to complain about the problem, and they also didn't contact the devs themselves to get a simple problem fixed for the people who spent $lot for a system that is useless without playable games.

[paul]

why doesnt she call mc donalds? if they dont help its their fault too.

[Udy]

It is a ridiculous bug though and exactly the kind of thing that the console industry has thrived on by not having in their games.

[jujube]

yeah, exactly. this is something very out of place, especially a multiplayer-related bug on a multiplayer-centric game system. it gives me the impression that Microsoft only cares about Halo players and nobody else.

and i don't necessarily blame Microsoft for releasing the game without doing extensive testing themselves, if it only has a $10 sticker. but if they don't know about the bug, that's most definitely their fault for not listening to the players or not giving the players a voice (i don't own a 360 but i know personal messages can be sent between X-Box live subscribers). if they're not going to test the game thoroughly they can't just assume it will work properly. if they were aware of the bug, there's no reason they couldn't point it out to the game devs and obtain a patch for it, or at the very least send a message to every player concerning the problem and the workaround.

[caffeine]

I'd dig up the developers posts about bugs in Tetris Splash from the Xbox forums, but I'm busy now.