Adi's Maze and the Research Arcade: A Long-term Study on the Impact of Gendered Representation on Player Preferences

Abstract

Gender representation in games is a much discussed topic in the field of games design. A number of papers have explored the issues around sexist, and sexualised representation, and there even evidence that the assumed gender of a character has an impact on player behaviour. We introduce Adi's maze, a simple arcade game with 4 selectable characters, with male, female, and ambiguous gendered representation. In the game, the player has to collect coins in a maze while avoiding enemy NPCs in a similar format to the popular 1980's game Pac-Man. Regardless of the selected character, the player has the same objective to complete. We installed this game on two publicly accessible arcade machines (the Research Arcade) and left them in situ for 18 months. We collected all data regarding the character selection and player behaviour and we report the results from this study. Furthermore, we report insights from the development of the research arcade, and comment on it's effectiveness as a research tool.