Over at Wired Chris Kohler looks at the "furious divide" between women and what kind of games they want to play. Kohler partitions women gamers into two camps. The first is the casual game, Tetris and Bejeweled crowd, while the second is the hardcore gaming, get in there with the guys faction. It's not as divided as the two camps framing for the piece would suggest, however. Lisa Sikora, from Microsoft's Casual Games division, however draws a pretty hard line in the piece: "Violence, the use of force as a primary game mechanic, is an excellent way to keep women from playing your game. Negative emotions aren't attractive to women. They don't like heavy, adrenaline-rich, head-to-head sports." Kohler offers the counterpoint from the captain of the Frag Dolls, a competitive clan of female gamers, Morgan Romine: "There are exceptions to every generalization. I've seen the whole spectrum, every color of the rainbow. There are girls who love big guns and bloody creatures."

We can all get along, right?

Women Gamers Duke It Out [Wired]

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