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)?
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
Women love pogo.com
nothing
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.
If they're talking about headgames.
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.
Whereas if you make it massively massive and give you stats to grind up doing the (same, repetitive) activity, its hardcore gaming?
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
A massive influx of lonely Slashdot males have been seen to register on AOL Games, PopCap Games, and EA's Pogo.com.
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)
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
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.