Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Women are from Facebook, Men are from WoW

With millions of people online socializing, you’d think everyone connected to the Internet is cool with a significant other spending hours online for entertainment. We do it ourselves, so we should be clear on what those hours are all about. No big deal.

But we're not clear, and we're not cool. Why?

Just because you’re fluent in the language and culture of Facebook or Twitter doesn’t mean you’re fluent in the same aspects of online games. The virtual worlds of video games are very different than the social networking worlds. Whether you’re male or female, it’s important to understand that just because we all live in the same world and have access to the same Internet doesn’t mean we are all doing the same sort of things online for entertainment. Or doing them for the same reasons.

Gamers tend to excuse their long hours soaked into a digital world by saying it’s just a hobby like any other hobby – knitting, watching tv, or chatting on a social web site. However, this is hugely inaccurate. The Grand Canyon-sized gulf between the culture, language and immersiveness of video games and the same aspects of other activities leaves outsiders at a complete loss when looking at the back of a gamer’s head.

The “addictive quality” of Facebook keeps a typical user on the site for almost three hours a month. The average user of World of Warcraft is likely to spends more than three hours logged in on a single night. People who abuse MMOs invest as much as 80+ hours a week “playing.”

What’s the difference between Facebook and World of Warcraft? Just about the same difference as that yawing gulf between the expectations of a man vs. a woman in a romantic relationship.

Knitting and Facebook are hobbies – video games are a fully functioning alternate life. If I could get as much emotionally from knitting as I can from playing an online video game, I’d be the Afghan Queen of the Pacific Northwest. It’s time to stop sitting on two sides of a fence arguing, and face some honest assessment of why games are so much better than real life. Just like unresolved conflict in a marriage, refusing to confront the real issues will not make them wither and die from neglect. Convincing an unhappy spouse to play video games is not resolution to relationship problems. Somewhere down the road, the gulf will have to be filled – if not now, when it’s small, later, when it covers a continent.

(Wendy Kays is the author of GameWidow, a primer for non-gamers on the basic whys and wherefores of key video game issues.)