Spreadsheets Are for Girls

Or distinctly less keen on men that use Championship Manager. Can't quite remember which...

I like using spreadsheets for ordering information (mm tidy) but not for doing sums and formulas and that.

Never heard that one. Have heard, however, that it was popular with women because it didn't involve shooting, which is prolly just a slightly less blatant form of sexism than that pedalled by yr lecturer.

Oh, and Martin - words are definitely male/female. For example, "pamphlet" is a pretty feminine word, whereas "crankshaft" is definitely a male one. Just for the sound of it.

And tetris is also supposed to be like cleaning up, too. (All together now: "Huh?")

One thing I have noticed, in my many years of gaming, is that women tend to restrict themselves to the popular games. Most don't get into the little obscurities that make this hobby an interesting one.

I'm with you on cleaning up ?=? pleasure bit. However, I have heard that Tetris' appeal, particularly to women, is based on the opportunity to make aesthetically pleasing arrangements. Although that could be a more highbrow way of saying the same thing.

The story I always repeated was that Tetris was really a Soviet plot to undermine Western office productivity.

It is. Personally, I think that it's largely because women haven't been told over and over again that they aren't supposed to be interested in tetris, like they have been with other games.

Here's another interesting thing: There are a lot of women involved with text-based interactive fiction. It's completly seperated from the rest of the games world now to the point where, despite the fact that 75-100 IF games are released a year, most mainstream gamers think that the genre is dead.

But Pacman = hoovering? Brilliant! I am now trying to think if any of the games I love playing have hidden domestic messages...

Baldurs Gate : desire to kill trolls and learn spells obviously a housewifely desire to rid the home of unwanted pests and to learn new cooking recipes.

DonkeyKong : my love of this gameboy game which contains both monkeys and barrels is possibly a subconscious desire to make soft toys and pickle lots of foodstuffs...who can tell?

Yahoo games..virtual stove and ironing board game. Hmm..this one has me stumped..i have no idea what it represents...unless it is a desire to both broil and then flatten male private parts...

and i prefer quattro.

<3

"The SIMMS"

A new game where you control the lives of a group of Single-Inline Memory Modules.

Are spreadsheets inherently evil or is it just that nobody knows how to create a good one?

Insert ilx.xls joke here.

Also, insert I-thought-this-was-a-laundry-thread joke here.