Videogames Attract More Women Than Boys?

Thanks to Yahoo!/Reuters for their story about a new Entertainment Software Association poll showing the demographics of gaming. According to the poll, "...26 percent of game players are women 18 or older, while 21 percent are boys 6 to 17", and the survey also revealed that "...the average gamer spends 6.5 hours a week playing games... while boys 6 to 17 average 7.3 hours per week of game time." Explicit games are also on the increase, as "13.2 percent carried a "Mature" or "M" rating, up from 9.9 percent in 2001 and under 8 percent in 2000."

Comments

The answer? No

[m0rph3us0]

The study found that 26 percent of game players are women 18 or older, while at 38 percent are men 18 and up.

Who writes this stuff?
Do people read more than just the headlines anymore?

Don't forget about our favorite...

[Anonymous Coward]

...female gamer.

gamegirladvance.com

Re:unbelievable

[R5900]

Regardless, is the show of women a good sign? If it helps create diversity in video games and help manufacturers build more innovative games than "Adventures of Barbie," then this can only help the industry.

Here, in Europe, new game genres, less focused on violence / male stuff, make suprisingly good results.

Eye Toy is the best example. It is innovative, and appeals at much to men than women, according to my personal experience. And what is really unbelivable (and a good thing) is that it is topping UK Charts. It sells better than newest pokemons!

Fellow slashdotters can also admire this this week's runner-up : Norton Antivirus, who moved from 39th to 8h position, thanks to Microsoft. Exepect an even better result next week..

Re:I knew alot of women who love Boulders gate

[gmenhorn]

It's called Balder's Gate dude.
--
George

Skewed statistics

[LINM]

The age ranges seem to bias the primary comparison. I know how 'techy' everyone is getting nowadays, but I don't think that many 'boys' below 5th grade actually are able to engage in a lot of serious gaming. For starters, they are very young (at 6 years old - the starting range in the study - 'boys' are only in kindergarden and probably cannot even turn on a computer). Furthermore, boys under 18 are likely to be moderated away from excessive gaming (like my old Civilization to dawn marathons at undergrad with people watching). My parents would have taken the hardrive pretty quickly after that.

So when you look at it the 'effective' age range for boys is probably 12-18 compared to a 40 year age range for women.

What probably is better to look at is just that 38% of the gamers are women. Surprisingly high to me, but good for them!

To sum up the numbers:

..............Men........Women
6-17.......21..... ....12......33
18+........38.........26......64
Sum..........59.........38......97

The remaining 3% have morphed into an unidentifiable classification.

Re:Unfortunately for us.... x1488

[Efreet]

(as a slashdotter who has a girlfriend)

If you're desperate, you're incapable (ie, too immature) of taking care of your current problems.

I'd allways thought that was just basic psychology, "if other people like it, it must be good." If you show a photo of a guy ( and it works for girls too) to a hundred girls, and tell half of them that hes married they will on average rate him as much more handsom than the other fifty.

Re:Yes, more women than boys

[Baron von Leezard]

The trouble is that this is a marketing survey. They care about the relative size of their marketing groups: i.e. what percentage of the gaming market is represented by each demographic group. What most people want to know is what is the rate of gaming in each group. The following analysis calculates that (in a relative way, based on their data).

Based on population data from the 2000 US Census, the US population breaks down like this:

female 6-17: 9.6
male 6-17: 9.3
female 18+: 37.8
male 18+: 36.5

The ratio of the percentage of gamers to the percentage of population gives us a relative measure of "gaming likeliness":

female 6-17: 1.25 = 12/9.6
male 6-17: 2.26 = 21/9.3
female 18+: 0.69 = 26/37.8
male 18+: 1.04 = 38/36.5

What the hell does this ratio mean? Well, it can't be translated into an absolute gaming rate since we don't know the total rate of gamers in the population. But it does tell us that males between 6 and 17 are 3.28 (=2.26/0.69) times as likely to be gamers as females over 18.

So the numbers are really not as surprising as they seem to be. However, they are significant from a marketing perspective: women are an important gaming market these days. This is excellent news and should keep things interesting.

The real lesson: statistics are tricky.