Girls and gaming

I have been looking at reviews on the website www.grrlgamer.com and have found the reviews made by girls are very similar to one that would be made by a boy. If i didn't know better then it would not be possible to tell who had written the review. www.grrlgamer.com is a website used by girl gamers that are interested in games that boys would 'usually' be interested in. For example I read a review written about halo 2 and the female perspective is very similar too mine, I found that the writer, Didi Cardoso, was very detailed in explaining the game but also went in to some interesting aspects that I if i was reviewing the game would not have talked about. She wrote of the PC version of Halo 2 and wrote about different things that she had tried, for example attempting to plug an xbox controller in to the PC and finding it did not work. She also writes about the online Halo 2 and how this is one of the most crucial parts to the PC Halo 2. She is correct in saying this because it is a massively popular part to the Halo games.
One thing i did notice about the www.grrlgamer.com site is that it is quite clearly a girls site, there are pictures of animated female 'heroes' around the site and a definite use of the colour pink.

I then moved on to reading some 'editorials' and found some very interesting views. For example after reading the article of "what guys want in games" I believe the female writers to be very strong in their views of "what guys want in games". Their views of what men want are entirely wrong in my opinion, the woman writing this particular post Megan Parker wrote that "Storylines are honestly not what guys seek in games" which is entirely wrong. Speaking to my fellow student i have found that nearly every one of us disagrees with that statement. From reading this and other articles i have only found the female writers to be sterotypical of men. Megan Parker suggests that all men look for in games is guns and violence ""Blowing crap up" is usually the best way to go, but sometimes you can go with "blow crap up and save the princess". It's just enough information for them to realize that they should not blow the princess up." She suggests that men want to just blow stuff up and that we are also not intellegent enough to properly read or understand storylines, she believes that men think storylines gets in the way of "blowing crap up". The female writers believe they are aloud to suggest what men want and become sterotypical but we cannnot suggest that all women want in a game is for example "shopping and make-up", obviously I would not write this in a review but it is effectively what thwey have written about "us", men.

Clearly females do not know their real place, perhaps they should stop writing reviews on men and get back in the kitchen!

Paida and ludus

Paida and ludus as I understand it are two different game play types.

Paida is where you play the game just for fun, there is no outcome or goal to achieve but you get a lot of fun out of the game by doing something.
Ludus is where you play a game to achieve a goal, this could be to beat a boss, get to the end level or to achieve goals and complete missions.

There are a few games where both are included, a good example is Grand Theft Auto games, you can choose to finish missions to achieve reputation, become stronger and unlock new areas or you can choose to just run around shooting at everything in site, drive/fly around or just free-roam around the map in any way you like.

There are also games that consist of ludus mainly, a good example of this would be poker. When people play poker seriously they play for a lot of money and therefore will want to win, for this reason it becomes mainly a ludus game even though fun can be had from the game. Although, poker can also be played as mainly a paida game, it can be played between friends with no money involved, when this happens they are just playing for fun. They do want to win but do not become worried about loosing as it is just friendly.

There are very few games that consist of one type or the other, If a game was made without paida in mind then it would be hard to have any fun on the game and would get very frustrating constantly aiming for a goal. However, it is much easier to make a fun game when the player must complete a goal, without a goal the player gets bored and can run out of things to do after a while. In my opinion there should be no game that exists without one or the other as it would make the game less interesting and people play games for fun.