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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."
My wife plays on pogo.com. Simple games, cute sound effects and characters, and a chat window. And they talk about kids and family. That's something I don't hear horny teenage boys talk about, so yes, they are mostly females.
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.
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.
Ditto. I know of women who spend hours EVERY evening playing flash games on MSN or Yahoo. Yet if you ask them, they don't consider themselves gamers and would never think of buying a retail game.