Warcraft reduces sex drive

In a post-Gamergate world, playing video games often comes with a bad connotation. There are, of course, plenty of men and women! Much has been said about the impact of gaming culture on the politics on young men—but could gaming also have an effect on their sex lives? A new study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine has looked at the link between video games and sexual health in adult men. On one hand, the study's results seem fairly favorable for the gamer population: After surveying Italian men, the researchers found that those who played video games were less likely to report suffering from premature ejaculation than non-gamers.

The portrayal of men and women in video games , as in other media, is a subject of research in gender studies and is discussed in the context of sexism in video gaming. Although women make up about half of video game players, they are significantly underrepresented as characters in mainstream games, despite the prominence of iconic heroines such as Samus Aran or Lara Croft. The portrayal of women in games often reflects traditional gender roles , sexual objectification , or stereotypes such as that of the " damsel in distress ". Male characters are often stereotypically depicted as big and muscular, and LGBT characters have been slow to appear in video games as a result of the heteronormativity of the medium. Women have a major role of being cast as supporting characters because of gamer preferences and sales. Research indicates that how genders are portrayed in games can influence players' perception of gender roles, and that young girls prefer to play a character of their own gender much more than boys do.

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