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Women Over 40 Biggest Online Gamers
Ooby writes "MSNBC and Reuters are reporting that women over 40 are the biggest online gamers, according to a study conducted by AOL. What's even more interesting than being outnumbered by middle aged and older women is this: 'More than a quarter of those women, the survey found, play their favorite games between midnight and 5 a.m. Women in the poll tended to favor word and puzzle games.' I thought that was prime time for FPS kids."
My 76-year-old mother has been a gamer for years, since she got her first Atari game console. When I helped her set up her new eMac a couple months ago, one of the first things she had me do was transfer all her old classic games over from her old Mac. She likes puzzle and card games the most, but she's been known to play blow-em-ups as well.
No sig? Sigh...
It's sad, but I have to raise my hand too. Since I bought my mother a computer several years ago she's become a fanatical "online gamer". She started off with a Bingo game on Yahoo which moved to Pogo.com I believe, then she started playing other games like some balloon popit game. Then she really started getting into it heavy when she moved on to using Yahoo Messenger WITH voice and camera. This is a 65 year old grandmother I'm talking about chatting on Yahoo Messenger like she's a 14 year old freshman. WTF? Why can't I have a normal mother that just bakes cookies instead of talking to dirty old men on the Internet? (she's a widow).
I'm not sure if it's statistically significant, but a 50% gamer ratio at a sewing class has gotta mean something!
#man woman
segmentation fault - core dumped.
Exactly - when they include puzzle, card and word-games in your 'online gaming' survey, they're going to get results that are going to be used disingenuously.
This is analogous to suggesting that women play the majority of 'games' in real life, because the number of female Bridge clubs vastly outweighs the gender seperation in professional athletics.
The qualification of 'online game' to begin with is the problem.
No-one would likely argue that there is a gender distribution in free low-tech online games roughly consistent with population distribution overall.
The interesting question of 'women in games' is: why aren't women playing console games, massmogs, multiplayer strategy/fps/rpg/etc?
Truly, what end does this survey tell us? That women aren't afraid of the computer or the internet? Did anyone ever assert that being technophobes is responsible for the gender gap in commercial gaming?
Simply, there are more people playing poker on yahoo games alone than are playing counterstrike. There are vastly more people who play games on AOL than all massmogs combined. The male-dominated games become statistically insignificant when the net is cast this wide. Particularly when they obviate distinctions between gamers willing to pay for games, pay monthly for games, and deal with 3d cards and driver updates to play online games.
Again, the only questions that are interesting are: where are the women in commercial online gaming, and why aren't they showing up?
and this survey answers neither.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
Because they're too complicated and hard to pick up
First, this is purely misogynistic. If this was the case then no-one would be a 'new' player in counter-strike, quake, or unreal. Unless you're suggesting that women are somehow genetically inferior to men, then one would expect that as many men would pass on multiplayer games as women. By extension, this would suggest that only as many men would take to multiplayer games as women do.
Seeing as how males are taking up the hobby more quickly than females - there just isn't much logical weight to that argument.
I mean, if you played basketball in real life against Michael Jordan every day and constantly got your ass kicked, would YOU want to keep playing?
Shouldn't they run into the Michael Jordan of Hearts or Bridge just as often though? Perhaps though, that's part of it. On Yahoo, you can see the ranking of the other players, and generally have a good idea of your chances at winning.
This is of course completely discounting the lack of importance that card game players typically place on winning as the ultimate indication of their having fun.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"