http://punya.educ.msu.edu/publications/aliengames-08.pdf
I read an article discussing gender issues in video games. They tested several hypotheses by forming groups of same gender children of different ages. Each group come up with a game design, and then they gave the game proposals to other children to see if boys preferred games designed by boys, and vice versa for girls. They also studied the game designs to look at the things girls found important in games versus what boys did.
There were some similarities between genders, but many differences. Both genders liked adventure games. But girl designed games in general had more empathy for players by making both male and female options for the main character, while boy designed games thought less of other potential players and only had one sex avatars.
In general, boys were more excited about boy-designed games, which were mostly based on fighting in this experiment. Girls ranked these fighting games as their least favorite. On average, girls preferred the girl-designed games.
Do you think this has anything to do with the age groups of the children involved in the study? It is often said that we want to become others first, and then we want to be ourselves. Could this behavior simply be a desire to “fit-in” with some greater collective, to be “normal,” even if the effect is subconscious?