Pre-Theme 4 : Quantitative research

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Do Men Advance Faster Than Women? Debunking the Gender Performance Gap in Two Massively Multiplayer Online Games - Journal of computer-mediated communication
JCMC Two Year Impact Factor: 3.117
JCMC Five Year Impact Factor: 3.799

IEEE VR 2012 - Drumming in Immersive Virtual Reality

I have chosen the article " Do men advance faster than women in video games. The main focused was to determine if the usual conception that female gamer are usually worst better than male gamer was true.  In a world that tends to a more open world to video games, the question seemed to matter in order to not have the same misspercetion about the gender in the video game world as in the business world or any other world for the matter.

They based their studies upon the USA's population and the chinese population. And in two video games EverQuest II and Chevalier Romance III. Both game offers a long game experience that allows the player to improve his character over time.

Each participant records their timeplayed (which is a option directly in the game), their class of their charactere in the game, their player gender and their interaction in the virtual world. All their data was calculated upon the Kenward-Roger method. Study based on about 10 000 players. (80% male/20% female)

The study could have been wrong in the sense where player could have lied about their gender, but there would be no reason to do so.

The resultat shows that women perform as well as man do over time. There are, by definition, no disctinction to be made between male and female in a video game. (Of that kind at least) And therefore, believing in that way constitutes the first step for unequality in videogames.
But this study opens a door to understand why female are not that very commun on a very competitive level. (E-sport).

This is the limitation of this study. The results may differ upon the type of game studied. Future studies in various game genres and diverse cultures are needed to confirm the generalizability of findings reported here.

But overall, their method was very  rigorous. And they open up a whole new possibility of case study. This is the first of a long serie in order to determine more accuratly the video game industry and the distinction between male and female and might it be the first step of removing the cliches between Male and Female.

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The druming experience was a very interesting article based on virtual reality and the illusion of our body. Do we modify who we are based on how our body looks. Even though this was based on drum (which is a very good music indicator to determine how we react), our virtual body ownership illusion is a great concept to grasp.

This study compares if people will play, act, move differently if they have a different body (Gender, skin tone, etc) in the game and in the reality. So they incarnated different personnalities and see how they react.

Lots of study material to collect the data from each session for each individuals,  based on how the upper body reacts and "danse" to the drum's music and depending on which body they were incarnating.

The difference between male and women didn't matter a lot. Maybe the music isn't a source of differenciation between gender. More of a skin tone matter. Result, yes people play the drum differently depending on how they look in the game and no how they look in real life. The body ownership illusion has completly modify their personnality.

This qualitative study allows to focus on what the researchers are really looking for. This allows a more precise study and a better understanding of things since we can look closer to each result. However, the more result we have, the less possible it is to look closely to each and every result.

This quantitative study allows to have a wide panel of results and that we can determine pattern and diagnose with the results. It's proven to be right since a large number proves that a lot of people reacts, act that way. However, it is hardly possible to have a deeper understanding of thing as the qualitative study.

Both have their benefices and limitations and they are complementary and not distinct.