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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."
If you are going to lump all women over the age of 18 together and compare that to middle school and high school boys, I guess you could say that the numbers add up in favor of the disproportionately large population.
Does this mean that 21% are actually female, or that 21% identify themselves as female when playing online games? I suspect the latter. Polls based on a self-selecting group of individuals are never valid.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Yeah, your gut instinct is probably more reliable than a poll that is merely based on actual research data.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
How does this mean there are more boys playing games than girls? The post is comparing two different age brackets.
more women over 18 than young boys are playing games
This means there is a higher % of women from 18 to ~80 playing games than boys 6 to 17. Well duh... there is a hell of a lot more people in the latter age bracket. Completely stupid stats.
I.O.U One Sig.
Who writes this stuff? Do people read more than just the headlines anymore?
I believe the headline compares "women" and "boys." Not "women" and "men." It is a long believed notion that videogame players are "little boys playing mario in the basement." The point is that times have changed. No longer are girls given "Barbie sidescroller junk" games. The sims and more are starting to appeal to them.
In addition, the main group of gamers is getting older. People who were teens or so when Nintendo, Atari, Commodore came out are grown up now. And you can look at the way game focuses have changed as a result (the successful platforms (PS2 and XBox) are the ones catering to older guys: more violence, mayhem, etc). On the other hand, consoles like Nintendo are pointed towards the same audience (and this is probably where women are playing most). I guess I've gone off on a tangent though, so I'll stop now. My point is that, to answer your question, yes, people read the headlines.
Why is this so suprising? Who has more disposible income? A 12 year old boy, or a 21 year old girl? While it's not the stereotype, I think it makes plenty of sense if you think about it.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
The real question is why does the ratio between males and females close as women get older? I would say there are two reasons:
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Luck is just skill you didn't know you had.
Do they include online games like pogo.com? I don't care what you say, something bejeweled and bingo are not true "games". They are, but good luck selling something like bejeweled for 40 bucks a pop. And I doubt they spend .00001 of a percent as much as valve on HL2 or something.
Also, I know from personal experince that the only people who answer surveys are stay at home types and female. When I worked for a survey place it was easily 25 women respondants for every 1 male respondants. And we didn't exclusivly call from 9a to 5p either. We worked till 10p.
I would see my wife playing video games. A few months ago I bought a GBA SP cause it looked cool and I kept hearing great things about Advance Wars. Little did I know that 75% of it's use is by my wife who never touched my PS2. The 3D games "make her dizzy" she says. Seems she real likes the old school platformers like Yoshi's Island. She said she used to play it as a kid(much to my surprise). My daughter is almost as bad with the GBA, except I am ALLOWED to restrict her video game time. Probably going to need to get another SP within a few months if I ever want to finish Advance Wars. *sigh*
No Sig For You
I looked through the article, but I didn't see the question they asked respondents. Consider the difference between "Have you purchased a video game in the past 12 months?", "Have you played a video game in the past 12 months?", and "Have you played a video game more than 10 times in the past 12 months?"
The first question would garner affirmative responses from parents, spouses, boy/girlfriends, grandparents and aunts/uncles. If we consider that women make most "gift" purchases, then women should show a history of purchasing video games even if they don't play games.
The second question would get hits from women whose partners pester them to play the occasional game, as well as those with idle interest in playing the occasional game.
Only the third question would really reveal whether we are talking about gamers.
That being said, I'm a married woman who loves games. And I don't work in R&D -- I'm a marketer. My husband? A software architect who finds games geeky.
Andrea
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