Study finds video games turn men on

Science was never really my forte at school. I mean, I did a couple of years of biology and some of it stuck, but I was always more of an English kind of guy--kind of how I ended up writing for a living. That said, one of my fascinations has always been the human mind, and at one time I flirted with the idea of studying criminal psychology. Despite our rapid intellectual and cultural evolution and the subsequent creation of labour-saving inventions like pop-tarts and the iPhone, who we are, and what causes us to do the things we do largely remains a mystery.

When pondering the mind doesn't keep me up at night and I'm left to my own devices, I've been known to play games. My arguable World of Warcraft addiction, in addition to eating several hundred of hours of my time, has actually opened my eyes to some of the more subtle game mechanics which keep people coming back for more. Every player has their own reason for questing that one bubble closer to the constantly moving player level cap, completing their tier six armour set, or grinding Enraged Earth Spirits until they have enough primal earth to finish whatever the hell it is they're crafting. Thottbot, Allakhazam and other sites have become bibles to players trying to calculate exactly how many of monster X they're going to have to kill, and by association the amount of time they'll have to invest to get that all-important payoff.

There's an interesting read over at Eurekalert at the moment looking at men and women and their brain functions while gaming, particularly the direct correlation between territoriality and reward/addiction portions of the brain. No surprise then that guys got a little more into it than the ladies, and it goes a long way to explaining why men love the King of the Hill game types so much.