Lodan's Theory

Male: Playing because I get bored of doing other stuff... oh wait... yeah, mostly i look for friends that are willing to play something...huh... +1 on your theory

I do both, but mostly play to socialize. Even if it's a single player game I still talk to my friends about it.

Obviously nothing much to back it up, but it seem accurate. It's why so many girls consider themselves gamers when they only play COD. lol

Though obviously there would be exceptions to both sides.

Male, play mostly solo. And don't have many friends with who I play regularly.

Coughlin's law: never tell tales about a woman, she'll hear you no matter how far away she is.

im male but i play to socialize. i need a social life somehow

I'm female and I don't give a single flying fuck about socializing. I just love playing games. Even if I write this crying because random crash sent my last 5h of Torchlight to /dev/null, I still love games.

I don't think you understand the basic concept of a theory. If anything this is closest to a general rule which can and will have an extreme amount of variation and can rarely be relied on for fact. really means nothing. Your phase "Male gamers socialize[sic] to play" is grammatically flawed and really means nothing. Abstractions, vagueness and small sample sizes really make your conclusions worthless.

You've also failed to address what socalising is and if games tend to blur the lines between what socalising is and is not. Are facebook games always social? Are online shooters a social experience? Do clients like Steam allow a person to be more social even in single player games due to the overlay? What is the act of being social? You need to have a clear baseline before you can even begin to construct your theory. Definitions change over time and without highlighting the exact data you're trying to represent you'll find your theory useless in a few years. Possibly when games blur realty and digital more.

You've also failed to address a responsible way to gather and compile information quickly. An open-ended answer leaves way to much room for variation and opinion to easily gather information supporting or not-supporting your hypothesis. This leads to abstraction and further categories which will again not help your theory in anyway.

If you're doing a Social Science degree I would strongly suggest burning your 10,000 page joke book. Become a labourer, a researcher or an engineer and contribute to society.
I doubt this was the kind of feed back you were looking for.

mope

both apply to both genders

i like playing with irl friends and i like playing with peopel i meet on the internet.

i play becouse what else in the world can i do? watch tv: lame, play outside: with who and what?, listen to music everyday: WHY IN THE WORLD.

Nope. I just play the fucking game.

Nope, not too accurate really. Male gamers socialize to... socialize. And female gamers play to... play.

No, I believe there are social gamers and anti-social gamers. Gender is not the main cause of personality.

Socialize to play? What does that mean?

I think you're accurate with the females. Very few of them play games to "play" them. And it would explain why so many girls play World of shitty Warcraft and don't really play anything else....

Yay, gender-based over-generalizations founded on ridiculously small sample sizes and with no theoretical backing presented as a 'theory' :/

"female gamers play's to socialize"

Not at all actually. I prefer to play everything, even multiplayer focused games, alone, even if it means having to play with bots. I don't like multiplayer or MMOs, with rare exceptions, like racing games where I don't really have to see the opponents as "people" so much (as in, I just see a bunch of cars driving, no talking/interacting - almost a bot-like experience except for the more competitive feel).

Why? Because I don't like people bothering me; I just want to play the game for the sake of playing it, not because I'm reaching out for new friends or people to talk to. The less I have to socialize, the better. In the rare instances I play co-op, I'll still barely talk, and if so, only to remark about something in-game. If I'm talking to someone while playing single player, it's still usually something about the game I'm playing (for instance: "I found X quest in Y area. You should check it out.") or at least something game related.

None of my female gamer friends play anything online either, so... I can't speak for someone else, but it looks like they behave like me.

I don't want to play with other people. I like to play when and how I want to. Even when I play BF3, I play with teamwork, but it annoys me when people in my squad start talking.

I also tend to avoid multiplayer games in general.

Personally, I do a bit of both. I also socialize while gaming on my other computer, so...

An interesting theory. I think it's overly generalized, but I do think it applies to at least some people. Not me though :)

Depends on the person itself, but i'm not sure if the ultimate goal of play is socializing at all, but to entertain one's self. The "who with" depends completely on the person in question.

Still, you'd need some girl input on the matter, as the latter point can be easily debatable.

Socialize? What is that? Oh... you mean that thing where other people come and annoy the hell out of you. Nope, don't do that.

On a less goofy note: I don't understand the first part of the rule which is supposed to apply to me by your theory. However, that doesn't change the fact that I don't in any way associate socialization with gaming. I play games because I like them and because it keeps me from getting bored. In fact, I really hate games that force me to play with other people- not everyone has friends who own the same game to play co-op (and then comes the problem of us organizing) and playing against other players guarantees that you will occasionally (or often, depending on the game) run into total assholes. All in all, I'm into single player...

Today I would say I fit into your theory. I enjoy games not only for the socialising, but I prefer greatly to play with friends. I will gladly play games I wouldn't play solo much, if at all, if it means I can play with my friends.
But as I started gaming I only played alone. I didn't even talk about the games I played, not even on forums. But I was pretty much the only girl I knew who gamed much at all, so it didn't quite occur to me you could be social about gaming.