Slashdot Mirror
More Women Than Men Play Games After 25
GameDailyBiz is running an article on a study recently conducted by the Consumer Electronics Association. They found that, in the demographic of people aged 25-34, more women than men play games. This is largely the result of the 'casual' games market. From the article: "The CEA study found that 65 percent of women in the 25-34 age bracket play videogames, while only 35 percent of men in that group said that they play videogames. Apparently, the key factor involved with these findings is the increasing popularity of casual games, especially among women. Women were found to be slightly less likely than men in the 25-34 bracket to play traditional console games on systems like the PlayStation 2 or Xbox, while they gravitated more heavily towards simple types of games like Tetris or other puzzle games and card games like solitaire."
ALL the women I have ever met play games
Do I look fat in this?
Do these shoes match?
How do you like my hair?
How old do I look?
What are you thinking about?
Can I borrow your credit card?
A new dating service has been formed targetting females aged 24-35, promissing to link up gamers with gamerettes. Stock in Russian Mail-order Brides reported down.
They just needed something besides killing. I mean, ever since NagMaster 2000 came out....
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
Women are more likely than men to be stay-at-home parents, so wouldn't that give women more opportunities to play casual games during their free time (and not get in trouble for doing the same thing in the office)?
"More Women Than Men Play Games After 25"
Because men have full-time jobs.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Millions and millions of people play these pre-installed MS games. Most of them women in an office setting.
From my experience it is a time thing. Most guys of or about that age used to play time intensive (either in learning curve or actual gameplay) games but no longer find time to do so. Further more these same guys do not find satisfaction playing solitaire, bejewelled, whatever. I mean how many of us/we/me still find Konami games satisfying? I don't. The only short term game I play is settlers online.
However I find a lot of ladies of my age prefer the immediate intellectual satisfaction of a short term, intensive game satisfying. Perhaps it is a gender preference (I knew a lot of girls that loved Doom, but I haven't kept in touch with them), but almost all the lady gamers I know play short, intense type games or social games.
Rambling rant over
I don't think solitaire, bejewelled, mahjongg, etc. are worth putting in the same category.
It's not gaming, it's killing time.
Only simple if you give up before it gets difficult.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
...and some of them even like computers, too.
Women love pogo.com
nothing
Tequilas? I'd sure like to be invited to _that_ LAN party.
Quote: "Now, to get the ring of righteous freedom, I'm gonna need all your knickers."
I thought I TOLD her to get back in the kitchen!
*duck*
I wish my wife were more of a gamer, then I wouldn't get chewed out for the months-long blocks of time lost when I find a new addiction.
Looks like someone had a bad breakup...
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
If they're talking about headgames.
I thought this was about dating at first.
When I was 18-20, I played games constantly. I was poor, an I could play a $40 video game for weeks of entertainment. At 21-23 my habits varied, work, bars and parties when I had contracting gigs, MMOs and ramen when I was unemployed.
Now I'm 26 and play less video games than my wife. Instead of wasting away infront of the screen I work on my house and my other toys. Why blow $60 on the newest NFS game when I can drop $800 on a new 5 speed manual tranny for the fiero? Why sink $1200 into a new gaming rig when I can sink $2500 on a new HO TDI for the car? Why stare at the flat screen listening to speakers hum an exhaust note when I can fire up the beast, drop the top, and smell the glory of burning tires and diesel?
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
I'm about halfway through a sabbatical year (away from a fairly high-end programming job). During this year, my main activities consist of looking after the house and my two four year old twins.
:-/
If you think I have time to play games during the day, you've got some serious misconceptions !
On the other hand, my wife gets home from her job as a government economist and still manages to play video games most nights.
Really I think what's going on here is that the 35% is total nonsense. They must have surveyed all the guys in a golf club lounge or something.
Lots of people (ie: me) like better easy, quick, intelligent and fun games than long lasting games with a story. It's the case with most women I know and knew. My girlfriend loves playing tetris, mariobros and super monkeyball. And I think these are the games I'll be playing the most. Why? 2 words: Quick & Fun.
http://www.soundclick.com/g1mike
A massive influx of lonely Slashdot males have been seen to register on AOL Games, PopCap Games, and EA's Pogo.com.
Anybody remember the ad in it from April of a few years back where they offered a "mail order bride" parody service to get you in touch with Russian gamer girls? They were described as being fans of GURPS and games with heavy detail. Apparently, they got a LOT of calls to the number they gave from desperate guys who didn't realize it was a joke.
You post reminded me ot this.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Simple games can be hard. Complex games can be easy.
Every girlfriend i've ever had has played all sorts of games. It's a real mindf@!#.
I play WoW, my mom plays Solitaire. Are we still in the same category?
Goddess... so many "get back to the kitchen" jokes... it's kinda tacky.
:)
Most women play minor games because they want more time. I'd rather have an involving game that I can play for 10 minutes waiting for something else, or on a short break from working over some insanely involving difficult game that'll suck up hours and hours of my time.
These are more fun when you're taking a break from work, or doing something else.
There are exceptions, mmorpgs and rpgs with lots of small side quests you can do quickly (NOT WoW raids too time consuming) but more like things like side quests in D&D, Ragnarok Online (yeah it has a horrid grind, but it looks cute and you can do most quests aside from the big ones in under a half hour, or just do a little leveling), Adventure Quest, or nethack.
Fast games like solitare, tetris, minesweeper are quick short games you can tidy up on a break, riding the bus, etc... and I'll take those any day, it's nice to start and finish sometimes
Uh-oh! You spoke the politically uncorrect truth on slashdot! To the flamebait for you!!
Yes, nearly all men have to work for a living and therefore do not have the time to play games, while a large percentage of women do not have to work for a living, so can stay at home and do what they please.
Yes we all know it's not PC to say that, but all you have to do is pull your head out of your butt and look around to see that this is the TRUTH. Men have responsbilities, Women have choices.
Yep, I know how it is from experience. That's when I started hating lawyers.
01/20/09
As others have said, this survey is either misleading or not very useful. It's akin to saying 98% of people play sports - well, if you consider tossing a frisbee or even jogging as "sports".
What an uninformed comment. The deal is that both sexes are capable of behaving badly.
My experience was the guy cheated on me, more than once. Community property state meant each party took away exactly 50% of the shared wealth. Ex earns over $100K per year, and pays no alimony, only a small amount of child support - upwards of half of this goes to childcare costs that he uses when the kids spend time with him. The other half is only enough to buy some, but not all required groceries for two explosively growing kids. No car, no clothes, no vacation, nada.
My game of choice? Colorcode by geekboy. Damn thing won't let me enter my score though, even when I've broken top 10. No matter, it's killer addicting.
It's all about methodology:
Do you play video games? "No."
Do you play cards? "Yes."
What kind? "Solitare."
Where? "On my computer."
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
You can believe that if you want, but statistically the women get the house and earn less so the man gets fleeced.
It's not deniable.
However I'm fine with that because the woman usually gets the kids too, she needs the house. But you shouldn't try to pretend like everything is equal.
Cell phones have also started to include games that may be considered casual.
I think the comments about women wanting to spend less time with a game should be thought out more. I see a lot of women playing online RPG's (especially in the fandom world with play by email and posting boards) and while this is a different category than video games it does seem that women are willing to invest time in "gaming" it is just different types of games.
Lane Myer: I have great fear of tools. I once made a birdhouse in woodshop and the fair housing committee condemned it.
I would say that "male dominance forced women into a subservient position where they are resorted to wasting their lives in virtual reality".
/. for hours as well" and I do not have any excuse for myself.
But I am no feminist, and I would just say that games are just games: mature people do not play them. They do not have time.
PS. Obvious rebuttal to my assertions would be "mature people do not hang at
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
The short version: Post-25 age women like playing games more than men? Duh.
;)
Long version:
My love for gaming started with Loderunner and QBert on DOS in the early 1980s when my Dad first brought home a computer.
At my grade school there was one computer with an adventure-text game called something like "Go West" that everyone got to play once a week with a partner. I traded away parts of my lunch to bribe people to give me their slot so I could play more than once a week.
My family was too poor for Atari so I becames friends with girls whose families did have Atari expanding my repetoire to Missle Command, Pitfall, Centipede, Haunted House (anyone remember that one?), Space Invaders among many others.
The putt-putt (miniature) golf in town had an arcade I was not allowed to go very often but when I did I would watch the guys play Dragon Slayer (I think that's what it was called, they had competitions around playing it), play Donkey Kong and then found my true love, Tetris.
I had the high score on that Tetris arcade for months. If when I came someone had beaten it, I wouldn't leave until I had restored myself in the number 1 slot. Once school started I didn't have much time so this was only during the summer.
When the first gameboy came out I was in college. I saved my money and bought one with a Tetris gamecard. Tetris whenever I wanted! Pure bliss! My longterm, college boyfriend installed Super Tetris on his computer so that I would spend more time at his apartment (we both lived off campus at the time).
I didn't get into the console games when they came out because they were too expensive. I was working and going to school full-time while in college and didn't have much disposable income. But I could play games on the computers at the computer lab and the guy who ran the computer lab really liked me and I was one of the few females taking intro to computer programming so I always got a computer when I came in. Hello Zork and EverQuest.
When I actually had my own computer, a Mac, I downloaded and played free games and bought Myst.
Eventually, I bought a gaming PC I had custom ordered online and bought BladeRunner (RPG) and Doom.
I worked at a well-known gaming publishing and media company for a year and got to play all sorts of games at work, networked Quake was a blast, (4-dimensional Tetris on the Nintendo blew my mind).
Throughout the years, I've always also played chess. At one point I was very focused on it, playing it constantly on the computer and studying strategies, I still hope to get back to it.
Right now, definitely post-25, I love playing DOA and Burnout Revenge on the XBOX and this groovy little marble madness game my boyfriend downloaded for me because he thought I'd like it and he was so right. I also adore Kareoke Revolution on the PS2 in spite of my limited singing abilities, especially with a group of friends after a few cocktails. I also play a totally lame, text-only, web-based game called Legend of the Green Dragon which is only possible due to the kick-ass, gameplay automating, greasemonkey script my boyfriend wrote since I'm too lazy to do it myself.
Tetris is still my favorite and while it may be simple, it's far more complex then you can imagine once you get up to the levels where the pieces are flying at you faster then you can effectively pattern match. I just love that.
I think the real key is that once I hit my late 20s, I really didn't care what people thought of me, so playing games became more about having fun then proving to someone else that I'm better at it then they are.
Unless it's Tetris.
Sorry for the long and rambling post. I kind of got carried away.
- tokengeekgrrl
Why can't you accept that different people enjoy different types of games? That doesn't mean that some of them *aren't* games.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
Ok, obviously not everyone here is. But I see a number of scary replies on any women in gaming story (browse at -1 if you want to). Is there any reason for it? Granted, it really probably isn't any different than in the general population...
:) I have no insight as to why so many women do in this age bracket. Hell, I don't even have any friends who are stay-at-home mothers. Personally I'm a professional and do ok for myself and have no intention of having children.
:)
I'm in that age bracket and play games - I'm not a stay-at-home mother, either. However, while I like games like tetris, qbert and lemmings, RPGs (and Diablo-type games like Fate) are my favorite ones.
Enough for me, my post probably sounds rather pointless by now anyway.
I'm a 37 year old woman, I love video games. I own a PS2, Dreamcast and love to play games such as Morrowind on the PC. The fact that I'm single and childless helps with the amount of time I have to play video games, not to mention the disposable income a single (almost 40) individual has to spend on more frivilous things. I don't play online, and prefer to wait until a games has been out a while (and it's cheaper) to purchase it.
As far as the comments the "male" readers have made, about women playing (relationship) games...you guys are the worst about it, this is why I don't date anymore...Video games are much more fun to spend a Saturday night with....
Perhaps you don't understand the concept of a community property state, and the legal implications of this in divorce, it does render splitting of the wealth equally - 50/50, nothing more or less. If a house is involved it must be sold and the proceeds divided if the couple is not wealthy enough, or if the couple did have sufficient assets, the party that does not keep the house must be awarded assets of equal value, for example a stock portfolio.
I'm not pretending anything; nor am I denying anything: I related my observations, which are not inconsistent with other people who live where I do - in fact a buddy has the opposite - he got the house. However if a rational person is to have a well-grounded opinion on this subject he would need hard data, across geographic and economic spectrums, over time and over the variations in local laws. I suspect that in non-community property locales awards may be made inconsistently, leading to these resentments, which are understandable.
I have seen this angry reaction in quite a few men. It suggests that family law inconsistencies are causing more problems than they are solving.