Women in Games
The week's Escapist is about Women in Games. Possibly most interesting is a dissection of gaming and gender from the view of evolutionary psychology:
"If we were to whisk a young hunter-gatherer male out of the remote past into the present, dress him up in whatever the current uniform of youth happens to be and plunk him down in front of a videogame console, what kind of entertainment would he prefer? Something that he is optimized for, of course. It would be something in which he throws rocks powerfully and accurately at prey. Guns do that very well. He would also want to track his prey over a large spatial map, involving all manner of interesting problems in spatial analysis. Lastly, he'd want something challenging his ability to analyze and anticipate prey behavior. Golly gee, sounds just like a shooter, doesn't it?"
"If we were to whisk a young hunter-gatherer male out of the remote past into the present, dress him up in whatever the current uniform of youth happens to be and plunk him down in front of a videogame console, what kind of entertainment would he prefer? Something that he is optimized for, of course. It would be something in which he throws rocks powerfully and accurately at prey. Guns do that very well. He would also want to track his prey over a large spatial map, involving all manner of interesting problems in spatial analysis. Lastly, he'd want something challenging his ability to analyze and anticipate prey behavior. Golly gee, sounds just like a shooter, doesn't it?"