Vermeulen Lotte, Núñez Castellar Elena, Van Looy Jan
Department of Communication Sciences, iMinds-MICT-Ghent University , Ghent, Belgium .
Cyberpsychol Behav Soc Netw. 2014 May;17(5):303-9. doi: 10.1089/cyber.2013.0331. Epub 2014 Apr 11.
Abstract The present study investigated the effect of opponent gender on the game experience of female players. Concretely, it looked into skill perception and player emotions of women in same gender and cross-gender game competition. We set up a 2×2×2 (male vs. female opponent×low vs. high competitive women×lost vs. won game) experimental design in which women were instructed to play against a proclaimed male and female competitor. Unknowingly, however, participants played against an AI, which was configured to produce a winning and a losing condition for each opponent by manipulating difficulty. Results indicated that opponent gender only had an effect on perceived stress, which was higher with male opponents. Moreover, players evaluated their own gaming skills as lower and the skills of presumed male opponents as higher when they thought they were playing against men. Importantly, our results also showed that the above described pattern for self-perceived skills and perceived opponent skills was modulated by trait competitiveness with a larger effect size for low competitive women. Overall, this study illustrates that gender dynamics affect the play experience of women in cross-gender gaming competition. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.
摘要 本研究调查了对手性别对女性玩家游戏体验的影响。具体而言，研究探讨了女性在同性别和跨性别游戏竞争中的技能感知和玩家情绪。我们设置了一个2×2×2（男性对手与女性对手×低竞争型女性与高竞争型女性×游戏失败与游戏获胜）的实验设计，其中女性被指示与宣称的男性和女性竞争对手进行比赛。然而，参与者在不知情的情况下与人工智能进行比赛，该人工智能通过操纵难度为每个对手设置了获胜和失败的情况。结果表明，对手性别仅对感知到的压力有影响，男性对手带来的压力更大。此外，当玩家认为自己在与男性比赛时，他们对自己游戏技能的评价较低，而对假定男性对手的技能评价较高。重要的是，我们的结果还表明，上述自我感知技能和感知对手技能的模式受到特质竞争力的调节，低竞争型女性的效应量更大。总体而言，本研究表明性别动态会影响女性在跨性别游戏竞争中的游戏体验。文中讨论了对未来研究的启示和建议。
