If you consider the phylogeny of video games, the odds are truly against women. The main genres are action, adventure, fighting, puzzle, simulations, sports, and strategy. Lanza points out that women intrinsically want something different in a game. A guy will say, 'Look what I did - it took me three hours, but I got to level fifteen. You just aren't likely to find women thwarting Rommel's tanks until the wee hours.
Males are much more likely to regard that time as a good shift.
There is a dogged persistence in young boys, especially, that convinces them to play Nintendo until they simulate an epileptic seizure, or run a joystick until their wrist locks up. It isn't hard to see that if women are turned off by blood and gore, reliving battles of yesteryear or replaying the 1996 NBA All-Star game, the offerings from the gaming world are pretty limited. There are patternists and dramatists. There are thorny code problems, and breakthroughs in artificial intelligence may be required. It wasn't until 1992 that a new genre began to take the gaming world by storm.