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64% of Online Gamers Are Female
According to a report discussed on 1up, a new study by the Nielsen folks finds that more than half of the 117 Million U.S. online gamers are women. From the article: "The study's announcement release doesn't break down what games they're playing, though we expect sites like pogo.com, which feature a multitude of Flash-based games are rather high on the list. Even more surprising is how many older gamers are playing. While the teenage market dominates in numbers, the study says more than 15 million gamers, about 8%, are actually at least 45 years old."
well, about 20% of those -say- they're women...
I think they just counted female avatars.
. o O ( TwO hEaDs ArE mOrE tHaN oNe... )
Just because 64% of the characters are female doesn't mean the people playing them are in real life. Like the old joke about IRC goes - The men are men, the women are men, and the children are FBI agents.
Where men are men, women are men and 14 year old girls are FBI agents...
In my house it's my girlfriend who plays games online the majority of the time. I hardly play online at all, but when I do it's on my DS or maybe a FPS; more indepth "proper" games (if there is such a thing). My girlfriend likes to play on gamerival on the simple little flash games where you just have to do very simple little word puzzles or arranging blocks.
So it is believable, but it might not be how you think - I doubt they are running round fragging everyone they see, or playing WoW (although some might...)
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
I guess they consider solitaire.
You can't get there from here.
Dunno about everybody else but most of the girls I meet in chatrooms and online games are guys playing as girls. Some of the rest are Dateline plants trolling for men, but that's not my thing.
Anyway, what's the Second Life slang for guys playing as girls? Gurlz or something?
Many actual Real Life(TM) girls play as male game characters so they won't get hit on or bothered.
I play mail and female characters in SL. The guy character gets left alone except by sex workers who want to sell him their wares. He's much like the real me and fairly boring to game with.
The girl character, who is not at all like me, has an incredibly active social thing going on and has accumulated dozens of friends without even trying. She's fun to play because she's so different from me. But she does get hit on all the time just because she appears to be female. It's common for complete strangers to walk up and make all sorts of rather forward comments.
My guy character gets none of that.
I have a new appreciation for some of the hassle girls go through.
Sig for hire.
Even women think reality sucks!
Now get a life and join the WoW online sensation before we all murder you!
64 percent of all shoes sold are to men...and 47 percent of all statistics are made up.
I find it hard to believe the sample they surveyed are an accurate representation of the general population. Most females I know have almost no interest in gaming at all.
It's going to have to take alot of grannies playing poker and solitaire to make up that 64%.
PS. Isn't the higher number of male gamers one of the reasons people claim males are the majority in the IT industry?
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
It really depends on how you define the term "gamer". To many people, a "gamer" isn't just someone who happens to play games at some arbitrary point in their free time, it's someone whose primary hobby is playing games. When they're not working, studying, or otherwise busy, they're reading about games, playing games, or otherwise involved in game-related activities (e.g. posting on game message boards, designing characters, planning on the next game to buy, etc.). I know a lot of women who play games, but I wouldn't call them gamers. Even though they play games, when they're not playing games they don't immerse themselves in game-related activities, they have a distinct separation between game playing and the rest of their life.
90% of Online Gamers Are Fat Hairy Mail Truckers Pretending To Be Teenage Girls
http://verkiezingen2006.nl/
The Internet is the only place where: Men are really Women Women are really Men And the children are really the FBI I doubt that figure is anywhere close to an accurate representation of the "real numbers" if the number of female gamers I know is any indicator. :(
dupe!
yeah, right. I game on xbox live and judging by the voices I hear on the headset at best 10% of gamers are female.
Real life vs Internet
fakegirl:Soo big boy, I..
Red:You're not a girl!
fakegirl:What! Ofcourse I am!
Red:A REAL girl?
bystander:Who's a girl?
bystander:I like girls!
Red:Shut up you!
fakegirl:Yes, I am really a girl.. tee hee hee
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
I have a vague idea about how they conducted this study.
/s irc.efnet.org /j world-of-warcraft /say So how many of you guys are women?
1) www.mirc.com
2) install
3)
4)
5)
6) count the results
Seriously, though. I don't doubt these results at all, but I would love to see the figures of hours spent per week and compare it between the sexes. The results would surely favor men to be the biggest users.
So does anyone know how many female gamers we have in a game like World of Warcraft? I'm sure the numbers stated above are taken from flash based games and alike.
Full Tilt
64% of online gamers play Hello Kitty Island Adventure. Coincidence?
I believe online poker is quite popular with woman; they are able to play it anonymously without the feelings of intimidation they would probably receive in a face-to-face environment. There are so many egotistical overbearing men in real life is it any wonder that online anonymity would be popular with girls, from dating sites where men can't grab their asses, to online gaming where they can pretend they are men..?
Women playing online games at a greater rate than men makes sense to me. Every woman I've known, no matter how much she avoids video games in general, will play Tetris for hours on end. The flash puzzle games all over the web are exactly what women like to play. While men may be playing online, they're sticking to MMORPGs, FPS and RTS. And for the other figure mentioned: 8% of gamers being 45+ doesn't seem that outlandish to me. The first video games came out in the early 70's. A 45 year old today would have been 11 when Pong came out. The number of "old" people playing video games will probably see a dramatic increase over the coming years, about the time the Nintendo generation hits 45+.
.. 100% of those 20% followed their survey reply with 'r U lesbAin? my PuSSy is hott 4u. wAnna cYber?'
I would say that 20% of the people playing MMO's are women. IRL that is. So flash games must be like 90% female gamers.
I knew i was spending to much time away from my pc ...
The study isn't about RPG players; it includes games like crossword puzzles, Boggle, and Sudoku. So I believe the 64% number.
Is how many under males under 24 frequent Digg
This was done by a company that prides itself on accurracy and is taken seriously by every major corporation out there vying for the consumer "entertainment" dollar.
Somehow, reality being what it is, you having stupid kneejerk prejudices does not make them true. Thanksfully.
I know a huge share of the market is pre-family, and most of those are male. But in the post-family crowd, the target audience of said company, many more women play things that the pubecent crowd would not believe them capable of.
Personally I know 11 women who play WoW, 3 who play EQ2, and 8 who play BF2 religeously. Somehow I find these numbers might actually be low. But I'll take them at face value.
.
Most players are pussies.
Some will get it, some will see a troll; I'll have to take that chance:)
From my experience in WoW and FFxI, this seems about right. And no, I am not talking about avatars but my experience in both games using vent,so unless some people are faking voices out there on a steady basis the percentage seems right on. Also the percentage of us old folk playing I always guessed at about 10%. BTW all bets are off for Xmas and spring breaks when the younger set absolutely overwhelm the games. Ecartman
If you're talking MMORPGs or Half Life offshoots like CounterStrike or Day of Defeat, or any other first person shooter like that; No. Maybe 5 out of 50 gamers in that sense are female. Those are the only online games. I don't care what you say. I don't care what survey results you have. And those are the chicks you stay away from most of the time. How many women pay attention to Slashdot?
Okay, so you're saying that there's a 36% percent chance that the hot female night elf I cybered with last night was really a man?
"With a name like 'Cryinggam', I figured she just needed a little comforting!"
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
On WoW, most sexilly claded female dark elves characters had (teenage) masculine voices whenever we got them on teamspeak ...
64% of US online gamers are female. That is unless you think only americans play online..
--Which doesn't necessarily say much for everybody who isn't a gamer, given that something like 95% of the population are also TV addicts.
Dream on.
-FL
Woe are the times when FPSs are considered "in-depth" games.
"On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog." - P. Steiner
--
make install -not war
There are no girls on the internet.
Perl, n. A language spoken by Eskimos.
Jokes about female avatars being all men aside, it's quite possible that this result is true. However this is only for online gaming, not gaming in general.
;)) would spend a lot more time chatting than men (which tended more often to go exploring and slaying monsters).
;))
Given that on average women tend to be more adept of social activities than men (at least that's my experience), it isn't surprising at all that women go for games where they are in contact with other people.
In my long experience with online RPGs (from MUDs all the way to WoW and Guild Wars), women (as in confirmed women
Online gaming is usually more appropriated to socializing (pretty much the only exception being FPSs and RTSs) than offline gaming (unless you invite your buddies over for a session of drinking and blasting each other out with RPGs
Some are lonely old men. The rest are FBI agents.
The next time someone is busted for IRC-chat with an FBI agent, he should claim he was looking for horny old men who lie about their age. He'd be right, 'cause that's all there is after you take away the FBI agents.
Then Yahoo! Games and pogo.com are the only things stopping her from harrassing you for yet another crack for yet another Mah-Jong game.
... I most certainly am not interested in women shooting up other people, period.
Is that "female" as in 40 year old man, or "female" as in 25 year old FBI agent?
Everytime one of these studies comes out, its "big news" all over again. WildTangent did a study and got the same results 5 years ago. Those of us in the online gaming industry have been using "Females First" as our mantra when we design or market online games for the past decade.
I don't see why they're surprised that it shows more old people playing. They've already indicated they realized the study is missing some crucial information and thus flawed.
...that the online gaming skill of the males has now dropped significantly, as though one hand is now continually preoccupied.
There's already several comments here about the hassle women and/or female avatars receive. I'd just like to say, as a Scotsman who wears a kilt on occasion, that women are also a pain in the neck when they encounter someone of the opposite sex in a skirt. Men by and large have learnt not to try and put their hands up someone's skirt. Yes, I know men do this, but seriously women are worse.
Although men probably complain less when they think the kilt-lifting woman is attractive. Reciprocity is a wonderful thing. Beats trading insults as a way of flirting...
My wife is a real gambler and sport addict I see her all the time posting at sport communities like Digg and allaboutsport.info
Oh crap. What am I doing? It was so fun and addictive,
I guess I still have Roller Rescue to play...
I'd rather be a well known drunk than an anonymous alcoholic.
I was a god at our school for essentially creating a portable Firefox and installing Flash on it. During Senior Thesis class, we had free reign over the computer lab to work on our thesis, and we spent most of it playing flash games. Maybe not the same games -- we played games like the Black Knight and whack-the-penguin -- but we played them nonetheless.
Well, and Doom. We also played networked Doom off of USB flash drives. But you get the point.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
That may not be what this study is about, but I'd estimate far more than 5 out of 50. I would guess they tend to avoid you, though.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Am i missing something here? How did this get modded insightful? Someone please enlighten me, because I'm lost
The Nielsen study probably focused on casual gaming sites, such as Pogo.com, Yahoo Games, and MSN Games. The games on there are mostly casual games, such as Bejeweled, Zuma, and your simple card & board games (Spades, Hearts, Backgammon, etc.). If you spend some time around these sites, especially in the lobby/chat areas, you'll find that the audience IS mainly women, talking about their kids and family, etc.
Are they gamers? Sure they are, since they DO play games (and for long periods of time too!). Would they call themselves gamers? Oh heavens no, it's just something they do to pass the time. How many of them are there? Quite a lot, since these sites are often home to hundreds of thousands of players. (Take a look at the concurrent population on some of these sites, especially during the weekdays)
-- jchenx
I wouldn't exactly call bored secretaries playing Yahoo games "gamers". . .
I once knew a girl who spent tons of time playing.... Runescape. I tried it at her suggestion and decided that it was the most mind-numbingly boring thing I'd ever attempted. So why did she play?
"She was away from home, didn't know too many people, and probably used it as a social outlet." The preceding sentence is likely true, but it's also a gross oversimplification. It is not as though she had any respect for the people she interacted with in the MMO world: She said they were all "idiot teenagers." But then, this is a girl who freely admitted that many of her real-life 'friends' were people who were younger than she was or who she considered not to be terribly intelligent: She liked to surround herself with idiots so that she looked better to herself by comparison. Runescape was a convenient idiot-zoo for her.
I started playing online poker about 1 month ago, and was really impressed about the number of women there (not girls, tho :)). About 40% women at least.
morcego
Seriously, look at the responses. Everytime I see one saying "oh they pretend to be female" it makes me think "wow that guy really needs to get a social life and stop talking about his she-male fantasies" Sorry but I'm not trolling, this is just what comes to mind to anyone that understands people. Oh and your insecurities, but that comes from not knowing how to talk to women without thinking "boobies".
Somehow, I'm having a hard time believing this number. Here are the stats: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_access_in_th e_United_States. The total number of people who could potentially play online is 204M, including 3 year olds and 80 year olds. So they want to tell me that the majority of users with internet connection play games online? I call bullshit on this one. Online gaming in toddlers and old farts is at negligible levels, and most of the folks I know (age group 25-40) don't play online even though some of them have gaming consoles. And these aren't just some random folks - they're geeks who live and breathe the Internet. They're just too busy to waste massive amounts of time on playing online and I bet so are most of the rest of adult US population. That leaves us with kids 10 to roughly 23 years old.
I LIKE THOSE ODDS!
get this shit out of here... this topic has been done, and the consensus was made: your definition of "gamer" differs from the real world's if you're going to include a bored housewife or widowed grandma in the same group as a 13-hour-a-day MMORPG player or CPL-hopeful FPS junkie
"64% of online gamers..." that 4% makes this statistic at least 58% more unbeliveable. Do we need to distinguish between games found online (pogo.com etc) and online games (WoW, Counterstrike)?
[apologies to NetHack Wizards]
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Where men are men, the women are mostly men and children are FBI Agents. Mercilessly plagirised from an MOTD near you.
I think it was modded "informative" as a joke. As in "now we stand informed that you're looking at gay porno". This deliberate misuse of the moderation system will likely get caught in meta-moderation.
Last I checked the post stood at -1 (30% Informative, 70% Troll), which sounds about right.
On the Internets, no one knows you are a dog. I'll bet they are just a bunch of shemales. You know, chicks with dicks.
Perhaps 64% is actually a signal that the statistic is fake.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
We live in a pretty free society. You have the right to wear anything you want, subject to decency laws of the area/society of course. As soon as you step out into public, you should realise that the freedom to wear what you want, also has consequences. If you wear short skirts, you're going to get hit on, and most likely pretty aggressively. That's a consequence of what you wear.
What you wear will affect how people treat you. You can wear almost anything you want, but you should know that it will affect others. If you dress up attractively, then expect to be attracted to. Isn't this just common sense?
If the attention of others curtails your freedom to wear what you want, then welcome to the myth of being free. Perfect freedom is only possible if you do not interact with anyone. We give up freedom as soon as we step outside the door onto the footpath.
I'm not saying that badly behaved guys shouldn't be responsibile for a bad situation. I'm just weary of girls who complain about bad attention, when they're attracting them like magnets with what they wear. I'm sure that you, as a GoddessOfDeath, does not suffer this affliction, what with the scythe and black flowing robe and all.
Back to topic
...100% of online gamers like to waste time and money.
....wouldn't you think it...
Girls get lots of offers - many not very good ones, but some good - without having to work for it.
I guarantee you that girls spend a lot more time talking about, and thinking about how to get men interested in them than men do. How much time do you spend on your look before you go to a bar? How much money have you spent on clothes and make-up, and lotions, and shoes? Attractive women spend A TON!
often the girls go for good looking fucktards that treat them like dirt
Another misguided statement. Yes, I will agree lot's of attractive girls go for guys that treat them like dirt, but it is not because they are good looking, and it is not because they are fucktards... It is because women are drawn to many aspects of the asshole guys. They are generally confident, and they are generally leaders. Girls want a guy who is going to lead in a relationship, and not make them feel uncomfortable. Don't believe me? Ask any attractive woman (ugly girls don't count) what makes them more uncomfortable; a guy who is treating them poorly, or a guy who is treating them too nicely. One comes off as arrogant (which can even be somewhat attractive), the other comes off as creepy. Creepy is generally much worse.
Men also use looks as an excuse way too much. Girls are not like you, they do not instantly make up their minds on who they like based on looks. Men do. A hot chick walks up to you and says something dumb, and looks embarrased, you will probably be like "great! i might have a shot with this one". A hot guy rolls on some chick and says in a mumbly insecure voice "hey, my name is Chodeboy, what do you do?" she will run. Looks may matter, but they don't matter as much as you think they do, luckily for men.
Girls get a lot of things that men don't pick up on. Body language, eye contact, voice tone just to name a few. Attractive women don't need your help in keeping guys in check. They have grown very good at it. They get a lot of practice. Women are not dumb, they are different, a liberal crowd like slashdot should understand that.
You take it, I don't want it...
How much money have you spent on clothes and make-up, and lotions, and shoes?
I'm no longer single. When I was dating I wouldn't go out dressed like a hobo. Also how superficial are you if you're only attracted to the ones that are made up to the hilt and spend all their time on that crap? My fiancee does spend some time and money on being an attractive female. But she doesn't spend TONS of time and money on it and if she did we'd have a problem.
Yes, I will agree lot's of attractive girls go for guys that treat them like dirt, but it is not because they are good looking, and it is not because they are fucktards... It is because women are drawn to many aspects of the asshole guys
Yes and alcoholics only drink because they're drawn to it. I can't stand apologists who try to excuse other people's behviour or their own. Except in the case of mental illness or unwilfully being drugged, a person is responsible for their own behaviour despite their desires.
Men also use looks as an excuse way too much. Girls are not like you, they do not instantly make up their minds on who they like based on looks
Dude, you're in denial. Women and men can both be incredibly superficial.
Girls get a lot of things that men don't pick up on. Body language, eye contact, voice tone just to name a few
Tell that to a player that can pick up one girl after the next. Again, you're making stupid generalisations. Some men are very good at picking up on and manipulating body language and audio visual cues.
Women are not dumb, they are different, a liberal crowd like slashdot should understand that.
Some women are very stupid. (Dumb's a bad word. Doesn't mean what you think it does. Look it up.) Some men are very stupid too. I don't think either sex has a monopoly. But women do seem much more attracted to the alpha jerk than men to the alpha bimb. Drop an alpha jerk into a room full of otherwise intelligent single women and watch them flock to him. Drop a bimbo into a room full of guys and some will flock while others will walk away. Still others learn with time that women like that aren't worth the effort. Few women seem to learn at all. They just go after one alpha jerk after another. I'm telling you this is what I've seen from personal experience.
Of course there are intelligent women. I'm very lucky to be with one. I don't treat her as anything but an equal (Yes different, but an equal and I value her opinion and her wants/needs/feelings very highly).
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
How much money have you spent on clothes and make-up, and lotions, and shoes? Attractive women spend A TON!
Bollocks! Many attractive women look fantastice in a £10 pair of jeans, a t-shirt and no make-up or other rubbish. I should know - I married one :)
There is no reason to think that women are that different from men when it comes to online gaming.
When I installed WOW and started out, I thought of the low WAF when it comes to spending hours on online killing sprees and other such mayhem fun.
So I introduced my wife to the game.
And now she is having as much fun as I do, exploring the world and enjoying the game.
Women can enjoy, running arround with a warhammer banging monsters, just as much as anybody else!
So lets face it! There is no 'math gene' and some of the female avatars actually are women.
You can get it fast, you can get it good, You can get it cheap. Pick two!
They may be pussies, but they are not technically female.
OMG! Yes, its true, you got me, all the time I spend online, if not Im not here reading /. Im off playing a damn flash game, cause you know most of us females cant handle anything more...
Continue about your day - nothing more here. :)
Is chess is an online game if you play it through yahoo? Chess was a game way before you could play it on the internet so people already knowing how to play it can easily pick it up online. I don't think that girls are playing video games like guys are just because when I was young I played video games as much as my parents would let me. I'm not saying that girls aren't good at video games but it's alot easier to pick up anything when your younger. Games that don't count as far as real video games include Mario party and Mario Kart. Mario party requires no skill period.
" I think that freedom is Americas biggest export. Atleast untill China can stamp it out for 20 cents a unit."
I just hit 34 and I have been playing for about 11 years now, My wife is heavily into pogo style games (she is also 34, we are 9 days apart) while my kids play games like pogo or toontown, warcraft3 and CS, and console games. they are 10 and 11
"Attractive women spend A TON!"
But men don't care. Watch, a fit girl wearing crappy old faded everyday clothes will get more attention than the fat or ugly girl in the expensive cocktail dress with a $250 hairstyle. Basically the only clothes you can wear that actually affect your attractiveness are ones that show a lot of cleavage or thigh.
I think this depends on what sort of programming you do.
I'm not saying that it's not male-dominated by any means, but there are certain types of development work that seem to have more women in them than others.
At least where I've worked, there seem to be a lot more women in database systems programming than in other areas. I have no idea why this is, and it could have had more to do with the projects and companies involved than the work itself, but that was my experience.
In general, the projects where I have seen more women in development roles were the ones that were of longer duration and where hours/work-environment was more flexible. In particular, maintainance-phase projects (aka "Never-Ending Projects") with predictable workloads had a lot of older programmers with kids in school, both men and women. Most of the "death marches" that I've worked on were either all- or nearly-all male, and mostly unmarried or married but without kids.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
You probably won't read this, but I am going to respond anyways...
You seem to be bitterly defending certain things that I don't really disagree with. Yeah, I know some guys are really good at picking up on subtle communication, and yes, they are much better at picking up chicks, and it has nothing to do with how good looking they are. However, I guarantee you that they dress well and stand out in a crowd. I also guarantee you that THEY spent time on that stuff, it is only natural to a select few. But in general women are better at it, because that is what they talk about. Ask them.
And to your comments about women who go for assholes being like alcoholics, that is retarded. Women and men have been socially conditioned for thousands of years to pick up on certain traits and find them attractive. You do not choose who you are attracted to, anyone who says that they do is lying. You do choose who you are with, but when people are very attracted to someone else it can be very difficult to get away from, regardless how bad it is logically.
Yes, girls like alpha males. That is how the world works, in every species. People are naturally attracted to those that increase their chances of pushing forward their bloodline, even if their conscious choices do not reflect this (condoms).
Superficial is different than selective. I am saying people are more attracted to others that stand out and look like they take care of themselves. The actual price of jeans isn't as important as the sense of fasion. And the time and money isn't always spent directly, a girl watching the real world is learning how the dynamics of social events work. I fucking hate watching the real world.
As to being in denial, about what? You will find just as many attractive women with good looking jerks as you will with bad looking ones. It is a fact that women are less interested in the looks of men. The reason this doesn't always hold true is because the girl hasn't met the guy yet, or, because the guy is good looking, he is more confident and acts accordingly. This is what really is attracting the women. I know plenty of good looking guys that struggle with women.
I don't like the Chicago Bears because they kicked my Bills ass.
You take it, I don't want it...
I have two siters who play the ps2 more than me and its mine. They r always on it. I quess guys r more into outdoor activities than women.