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."

Comments

I -knew- it!

[Mordant]

Man, that explains why that choad who keeps kicking my ass at CounterStrike uses 'MrsRobinson' as her handle, and keeps making off-the-wall references to Botox and estrogen therapy while she's fragging my ass into oblivion!

Balanced survey?

[bartjan]

"The survey was conducted online with 3,613 respondents between mid-December and mid-January, the company said."

I guess they forgot to mention that the survey was only open between midnight and 5 a.m. during that period and placed only on webpages containing word games and puzzles?

My Ma

[Anonymous Codger]

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.

Women over 40 online

[schnits0r]

I tinhk you misunderstood what they mean by "biggest".

Percentage

[ParticleGirl]

What percentage of the overall survey participants were women over 40? Because these findings state that a higher percentage of women over 40 play games daily than the interviewed men or teens. So if in their survey of 3500 people there are only 100 women over 40, but most of them play games all the time, it doesn't mean that they outnumber the men or teens. It just means that, if women over 40 are online, or gamers, or computer literate (we don't know what the universe of the survey is-- did they interview everyone in a games forum somewhere? Call random households? Send email to people with AOL accounts?) they're very likely to play wordgames in the wee hours of the morning.

Be careful with statistics. Especially if you're trying to figure out if you're outnumbered [yet].

The common stereotype

[philthedrill]

My first thought was, "Woah" until I read the article. The first thought that comes to my mind when someone says "gamer" is someone who plays an FPS or RTS, but with "games" defined in the much broader sense, this is less shocking (although the late hours are somewhat of a surprise). Plus, most computers can play these games without the latest hardware or fastest connection.

Re:The common stereotype

[*weasel]

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.

Re:The common stereotype

[*weasel]

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.

I'm Sorry But Someone Has To Say It

[kaellinn18]

Maybe it's because women over 40 are the only ones gullible enough to be using AOL? :-) Here come the flamebait mods!!

who conducted the survey?

[fireduck]

AOL. I have no idea exactly how it was conducted, other than "online", but I'd be surprised if they surveyed people other than AOL users. Sure, AOL is the biggest ISP, and you'd expect a large number of gamers, but the truly hardcore would have moved off AOL a long time ago and gotten broadband. So what are you left with? The casual gamers for whom low latency performance is not an issue (i.e., people playing at yahoo games). So it's not surprising that it's mostly women in that sample group...

Wake up....

[AutumnLeaf]

and smell the coffee. There is a huge game community on the internet that has nothing to do with frags, and it's bigger than the frag-oriented community. Friendlier too. And literate. Th3y can sp311, and form complete sentences.

better link for survey results

[fireduck]

here

so it wasn't run through AOL, but an outside firm, which probably got a more representative sample.

But, there's lots of interesting statistics to go through. such as "Nearly Twice as Many Adults Have Played Internet Games for More than Eight Consecutive Hours than Teenagers"

Re:Sure is

[Anonymous Coward]

i know a bunch of old ladies that are addicted to Pogo.com, Yahoo games, ect...

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).

Frag and Stitch sessions

[bmyers]

My wife was in a sewing class the other day, and two of the other four women there were online gamers -- one (19 yrs old) played DAOC and the other (mid 50's) played Ultima Online. They said they play for many hours per week.

I'm not sure if it's statistically significant, but a 50% gamer ratio at a sewing class has gotta mean something!

Re:Sure is

[edbarrett]

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)

Because your moms is human too. How do you think you got here?

Survey link, facts, info

[Anonymous Coward]

The AOL press release is here. The precis: women over 40 who play games are more likely to play for extended time periods than gamers from other demographics. This does not mean that 15-year-old CounterStrike players are "outnumbered by middle aged and older women" playing PopCap.

The survey itself was conducted by Digital Marketing Services, a joint AOL/MARC Research company that does online opinion survey research. Although online polls suffer from various biases, the OpinionPlace.com polls use pre-interview demo weights to help reduce some of those skews. (Though my doubts are not, of course, dissipated by their reassurances.)

Finally, candidate for "most disturbing graf" must be this:

Despite busy schedules, female gamers over 40 make time for their preferred hobby. Twenty-eight percent of them play games between midnight and 5:00 a.m., considerably more than men or teenage game-players. In fact, nearly half of these women (44 percent) said that they spend less time watching TV or movies, reading, exercising or spending time outside as a result of their online gaming habits.

-Watchful Babbler (where's that damned account password?)

Yep, Survey is BS.

[JavaLord]

AOL got opinionplace.com to do the survey for them. Now if you look behind the BS that opinionplace and AOL throw at you about how "scientific" their data is, go to the opinion palace webpage and check out their FAQ. They give people AADVANTAGE miles for every survey they fill out. What are AAdvantage miles? They are American Airlines miles used twards getting a discount on flights.

This skews the data in all sorts of wierd ways, starting with the people taking it are the types who would sign up for such programs on the internet. Not to mention, how many 15 year old males care about Frequent flyer miles? Hell, how many savvy internet users would give their personal information up for some survey scam?

The conclusion drawn from this survey should be "Women over 40 are more likely to have gator installed on their machine and participate in stupid online surveys for some minimal payoff".....ok maybe that was a bit harsh....

If there is one truth about statistics in general, it's that if you play around with the numbers enough you can make surveys say whatever you want.