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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."
The rest are slashdotters.
Except me, of course.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
I mean, that is the only game I have ever seen an adult woman play...
I don't read or respond to AC posts
Slashdotters with girlfriends? My world is crumbling! Ahhhhhh!
aren't we all just playing games with each other?
All it takes to fly is to hurl yourself at the ground... and miss. -Douglas Adams
Laura Croft was the only girlfriend i ever had.
My girlfriend's Sims get more action than we do.
AND they own all this cool stuff in their house.
On the bright side, those bastards can't own cars, so I guess it evens out. Plus, my girlfriend can't turn off my Free Will. (usually)
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
Men on the other hand like violent games like Quake. Not that women do not play these kinds of games but being masculine and outdoing each other does not appeal to them as much.
http://saveie6.com/
It's a joystick envy thing.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
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.
No wonder I can't find a date - everyone compatible with me is inside playing violent video games! I'd network with them, but they'd laugh at the speed of my dial-up modem...
Matt Fahrenbacher
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
camps of korean chicks forced to play videogames to skew poll result
I think that's the ultimate fantasy of just about everyone here.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
I really don't think these statistics really indicate the truth.
First off, video games are frequently directed toward males. How often do video game heroines become sex objects? Lara Croft is the easy example, but there are dozens of others in RPGs, fighting games, adventure, horror, and practically every genre.
Perhaps the grain of truth in this is that women may be becoming more technically inclined than they were in the past. Certainly as a university student, the number of women in engineering is on the rise. Also, perhaps they see the presence of video game heroines as a show of the power of femininity in these games. Even while Eidos was building Tomb Raider, they were particularly cautious and uncertain about making their main character a woman.
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.
BTW, this game is really good. Not your average rts/fps clone, but for those who like different games, worth a try .
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
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.
And what proportion of those included the occasional(OK, seven and a half hours during the week) game of solitaire, tetris, and spider?
I wonder if the stipulation of FPS, RPG or RTS playing were made, would the figure be quite so high, it would be nice to see the types of games each demography were playing.
Indeed how was the poll conducted, whether it was taken at game shops, or merely random questioning?
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.
Considering there are lot more "women over 18" than there are "boys aged 6 to 17", this doesn't seem too surprising. While women don't seem to have as big a presence in FPS and RTS games, most women I know who frequently use computers like spending lots of time with things like Snood or Tetris. And my mom spends most of her free time (i.e. pretty much all day) playing Poker on-line.
Regarding average playing time per week--am I the only one who cringes every time I see "How many hours per week do you play video games?" on a survey? I usually end up pulling some kind of average out of my ass, because a) I don't exactly keep logs of game-playing time, and b) how much time I spend playing games per week varies widely, depending on how much free time I have and whether or not I have a game I'm currently hooked on. I don't think I'm all that unique regarding either of those points, so I'm always a bit skeptical of "People spend x hours per week playing video games" statements.
No wonder it makes no fucking sense. Here it is revised:
The number of 18+ women is growing and is more than 18- boys (21%) but the largest demographic is still 18+ men (38%). So that means males represent at least 59% of the market. Ok so "women" outnumber "boys". But boys still play longer than the average gamer and they don't go into it, but I suspect they probably buy more games per capita.
I also wonder how skewed their info on Mature games is since probably a significant part of those sales are those 18- year old boys getting their older brothers/parents to buy them Vice City. Actually, are they just going by who hands (a father buying a game for his daughter) over the money or who the game is for (the daughter)?
What is music when you despise all sound?
I was at an IGDA meet a few weeks ago, and the discussion was on Women in Gaming (which the IGDA have a forum on).
;-)
The idea of "female games" and "male games" was not taken very well. Most women gamers actually play action games, while it is the men (males 18+) who play the "female games" (The Sims[1], EyeToy, Pokemon etc). While the games played by kids did was the same regardless of gender.
[1] I'd argue that this has more to do with the Naked Patch than anything else
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
The real question is why does the ratio between males and females close as women get older? I would say there are two reasons:
--
Luck is just skill you didn't know you had.
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:
6-17.......21....
18+........38.........26......64
The remaining 3% have morphed into an unidentifiable classification.
Hunger is the best sauce.
Try going to the mall, go to the games stores and talk to a few female clerks. You'll find the type I mean without that much trouble.
/. pickup strategy. Any female into computer games is halfway home to stealing the average geek's heart!
Hmmm. I'm seeing a new
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
I think they have it wrong. Playing mind games is not a subset of playing video games. This planet would be a great place to be if women in those numbers played games. The HIP culture would move from racy two-door booming modded cars to the best counterstrike and warcraft players.
Even including games like Sim Online and cell phone games doesnt give you stats like those. Remember EVERY kid under 16 in the western hemisphere plays video games.
But then, if you consider playing mind games in relationships, that about includes all women in the western hemisphere above 16. Hmm.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
What have I been doing with my life! I can't believe that! Do you know what this means?!?!?!? My chances of picking up a gamer chick have just gone WAAAAAY up! All I have to do is figure out what game...God I hope it isn't the sims....
"On the Moon, we have advanced far beyond rules, and manners..."
Why can't all fpga/microcontroller manufacturers just release free optimizing compilers???
72 percent of all statistics are made up.
And similar games seem to get fairly mixed play at our local arcade, but I'd guess it is still about 2 guys to 1 girl I see playing. Girls are coming into the arcade more, and not just to find their boy friends. Driving games and (to a lesser extent) Soul Calibur II seem popular with the girls.
If it were joystick envy they would all be stuck back in time playing The Games: Summer Edition.
I know for sure that game prepared me for my current sex life!
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
but women attract more boys than video games :)
They are incidentally the female analogue of male slashdot posters. They aren't getting laid either.
"You know why you do not see me styling wit my homies? Because I have no homies!!" -Mojo Jojo
I hate to stereo type, but last night it was my mates and I playing 4 player deathmatch DieHard, while she was busy with world domination in Civ3.
Men=Destroy
Women=Create
Awfully simplistic (setting up the troll nets now) I know, but it is one of those stereotypes with a basis in reality. I am not alledging any causality here, only correlation.
To eventually finish my point: There are a larger number of games available that are not purely based around the see-something, shoot-it principle that has worked so admirably in the past. Perhaps it is this that is generating enough interest among the female gamers?
Q.
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So let's say that the average female lifespan is about 78. And women make up about 51% of the population, now, when comparing a group from 6-17 (11 years) with a group that ranges over about 60 years, doesn't really seem like the basis of any fair extrapolation. In all reality this is really a construction by someone to get across an idea that they have and make it appear to be an objective fact.
In addition, I really can't recall how often 6-10 year olds play video games, it may just be that I really don't know any, but I don't think it can be that many, you're primary market (especially the ones your pumping the M rated games to) would be about 12-17 or so.
Actually reading the article reveals that the answer to the title question would be a negative, as when you compare similar age groupings, boys still dominate the consumption and play areas. In the 6-17 range boys are doing 9% more gaming than girls and in the 18+ range, boys are doing 12% more gaming than women.
The lead of the article is Challenging the stereotype that video gaming is the domain of teenage boys, an industry group on Tuesday reported that more women over 18 than young boys are playing games and the average age of players has risen to 29. Now, let's make a logical conclusion, the United States of America has a population of 18+ that far exceeds the 6-17 range, thanks in part to the baby boom and the fact that the secondary boom (which was more in spending than in population) is now moving into the 18+ range.
The survey was compiled from gamer data, not from the general population of the United States. You are taking a section of the population (gamers) and seperating them into four units (women and men, over and under 18) and then comparing two dissimilar segments (in relation to size) and trying to draw a conclusion.
All right, let me be coherent for a second. Essentially what I'm trying to say is that the article is stating the obvious that out of the whole, a larger group will make up a greater percentage. What they needed to do was say, We poled 242 kids under 18, now 220 of those are boys, that's right 91% of gamers under 18 are boys. Now, we polled 806 adults, 3 times the number of kids that we polled. Now, the poll seems to have some mathematical problems based on it's 3% error (because 21+26+38+12 equals 97) and when we factor in the percentages for adults we get that out of the total there were 273 women (rounded up) and 377 men (rounded down), added together this is 650. In this group, 58% of gamers are men and 42% are women, almost a 20 point disparity. Overall men make up 66% of the gaming population.
Now, throw this all out because this survey is trash in regards to following an actual trend as to what gender is growing in game consumption. A real survey would need to be truly blind and poll even non-games to get a good sense of what is going on and see the actual percentages of the entire population which has a larger game following per capita. It's far too late to makes sense.
I'm female and over 18 so I fit in that 26% statistic. I tried the Sims and The Sims Online so can fit that stereotype, but I didn't last very long with either one. I also enjoyed Tomb Raider. However; I've played Castle Wolfenstein and Action Quake. I gave Halflife a go too but got motion sickness on that darn ladder (of all things)!
I know many other women who are playing other FPS games. There are message boards devoted to just such gamers. As well as more devoted to all female clans.
If you want to see alot of women playing games look to the MMORPGs. Tons of women there. Myself, I've been playing them for awhile and have beta tested many of them, including Planetside, which is arguably more of a "male" game. Another tidbit that might surprise some is that one of the things that kept me playing MMORPGs was the PvP aspect of it. I enjoyed the competition even when most of my victims assumed I was male.
Bottom line: don't be so surprised at the statistics nor assume that these 18+ yr old females are only playing one type of game.
~Fricka
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Who said anything about relationships? He said "getting laid."
(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.
This sig wasn't worth reading, was it.
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
-- SYS 64738 --
Hey guys, check out Zockerweibchen (German site) for surprisingly good-looking female counterstrike players.
The Geek Dating Show!
...and on the right we have the Girl-Geeks...
...that would be the people on the other side of the studio... ...oh, come on people it's not that hard... ...look they're over there. No, not the floor, the other side of the studio. For goodness sake! They won't bite! Just look them in the eyes! Ahem. The EYES are a bit further up. Dammit! Go to commercial...
Hi, and welcome to The Show! Whether its hardware or software you're after THIS is the show for YOU! Hah ha!
So, without further ado, lets get on with the show!
On the left hand side of the studio we have the Guy-Geeks...
(cut to scene of large mass of desperate-looking guys)*applause*
(cut to scene of smaller group of desperate looking girls)*applause*
Some of these lucky geeks will leave together for a night of gaming, while the others will leave... alone.
Now to the first round - the personality check: If all the geeks would start by making eye contact with members of the opposite sex...
Hmmn. Maybe it wouldn't work after all...
If you can't think of something nice to say then don't say anything at all. No, REALLY.