I don't get on Facebook as often as I used to but whenever I do I get endless stupid ads. I saw an ad about gaming and how women make up almost half of all the gamers. I could swear I heard that men make up about 80% of gamers. Can someone clarify that? There are plenty of women who enjoy gaming, and I would've loved it if the women I've dated had been gamers. I do see the gaming industry doing the same thing as other industries in our current era. Over obsess about diversity/representation while crapping on your main block of customers.
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The studies that say that "Half of gamers are women" usually include casual or mobile-exclusive games as part of it. When you get to women who are actually, shall we say, "enthusiast gamers" the percentage does drop significantly. There is also something to be said about them, in general, preferring different games.
For instance, my fiance plays games so we have a shared passion, but we play VERY different games. I like strategy, poli-sim, city builders, shooters, and racing games. She prefers puzzle, casual (think stuff like Turbo Dismount), and life-sim games. Even for games we both like (Fallout and Elder Scrolls), we play different. I prefer a challenge, I like building my kit and fighting style, I like the gameplay, and I like having to manage my supplies and inventory. She likes turning on God Mode and using the fact that she has infinite health and money to dick around, as well as experience the story without having to worry about if she has enough supplies to defeat a Deathclaw without it punching her in the face.
Makes sense that generally speaking different games would appeal to men and women. So I wonder why the obsession with going on and on about women for games where they generally aren’t interested
Likely the same reasons behind all the diversity/feminist propaganda, particularly in pressuring everyone (women included of course) into women becoming shit versions of men, and men becoming shit versions of women.
Forcing women into a primarily male space also seems to be a great way to dilute or destroy it, and they can virtue signal while doing it so win/win.
useful rule of thumb: whenever you see a statistic that is used to promote diversity, assume that it's misleading (at best) or a complete fabrication (at worst)
As others said, "Gamer" by their definition is "anyone who has played any game one singular time".
The study it references (though doesn't cite) breaks down what games by genre are played. If you were looking for a "gamer" by your not quite defined definition (or at least for me it would be), you'd probably look at Shooters (male-dominant), strategy games (male-dominant), or MMOs (male-dominant, but much less so than the others).
Fun aside fact from that study: Men play women in games at about double the rate that women play men. Whether that means men are simply less sexist, or that men wish to gain the advantages of women in MMOs, or that men are bestial things that wish to control all the movements of women, is open to interpretation (I know which one Sarkeesan would say), but it is fun to note that men are more gender-equal than women as it comes to gamer preferences.
Which would imply female-led games would do better. Except MOST men, and most women both, still prefer their own gender to play as, and as stated, shooters/strategy/MMOs are male-dominated.
Women, from the study, liked find-the-object, match-three, and other puzzle games. The further away from pure puzzle game you go, the less women you get. When you get a full-on RPG with character building and equipment that uses match-3 mechanics, you lose a LOT of female audience.
As for why they're shitting on their existing customer base... The saying "A bird in hand is worth two in bushes" exists for a reason. Because it is a lesson that needs to be told, that people need to learn. They see the mythical "female market" for their products, a massive buyer-base, and want that money. Except that money doesn't exist. And they assume their existing customer base will be forever loyal, that the bird in hand cannot be lost.
For sure for sure.
I remember a guild back in Perfect World with a veno-MAN-cer who claimed "trap" status (since only female character models could be venomancers), and it caused all sorts of guild drama even though the guy himself didn't give one fuck about it and was clearly and obviously male. The female avatar alone created a simp-circle, though that wasn't the nomenclature of the era.
The 50/50 came from a poll where everyone was asked if they ever played any game in the last year. So if your mom played solitair on her computer in the last year then she is a gamer.
This is from 2017 that explains a bit.
https://quanticfoundry.com/2017/01/19/female-gamers-by-genre/
Is a bit old considering how fast things change.
Most girl "gamers" are in fact playing stuff like candy crush and puzzle games on their phone. Also they do like stuff like animal crossing, probably among us and games like that.
Second they are less likely to pay for games. Men are more likely to pay for games then women by a huge margin. 70% of people who consider themselves gamers are men.
Another important thing to take in to account that a lot of players just tried it a bit, I know some LoL players from work who consider themselves players but played it a few times in the course of 2 weeks and that was it.
Some games have a high women player count but I think it is more along the lines of you make men hate the game. That is the only way I can figure that dragon age inquisition had 40% women players, I could not stand it despite playing and loving origins.
They consider your 90 year grandma that plays Candy Crush to be a gamer.
When they use the term "gamer" they include people who primarily play mobile games which many, including myself, would not consider actual gamers. I believe it was somewhere in the high 90 percent range that mobile games are played by women.
If you are only talking about console and PC gaming then yes, well over 80% of the gamer base are men.
My mother is a "female gamer" who plays Candy Crush and similar. She also thought Totoro is a Pokemon. So there is that.
Totoro, Totodile, close enough.
Totodile best Johto starter, fite me.
(What's with that new game Arceus something something? The starters are from different regions?? )
All you have to do to see the true demographics of the people buying and playing what most around here would consider games is go to gaming conventions and GameStops. Girls do play games, just in fewer numbers, and it’s usually ‘click to win’ games on phones.
Same with comics. Go to comic shops and count the number of men vs women. Women do read comics, just fewer, and they’ll tend not to be as avid about it as the men on top of that. Anyone in the industry knows the real numbers because we collect that data and make decisions on it. The stereotype of who plays games is mostly true because that’s who mostly plays games.
Streaming might change that a bit because you can have some tits and play a game and start an only fans, but that’s still few and far between for the actual gaming audience. If you look at their demographic numbers, you’ll find mostly men too.
Female gamers know this too and most actually enjoy it because it makes their dating lives a lot easier. They’re queens among gamers whereas in a general dating market they’d usually go down a few points.
That’s another thing I hadn’t considered when it comes to the market for this stuff. Girls often let the guy buy things like that and just enjoy the spoils. They’ll buy disposable things for themselves like clothes but there’s rarely any investment there when it comes to that sort of thing. Same with them going to bars. They’ll let the guy buy all the drinks, then go with him as he spends more money on all the things.
That statistic includes all games, including animal crossing and casual mobile games. I can say as a woman, the only semi-intense games I play are Zelda games (Breath of the Wild lately). Other than that, I prefer life sims and relaxing stuff like animal crossing, Stardew valley, the sims series, some mario games, etc. I would never play a shooter game for example. I find those boring and pointless. So if you define “gamer” as someone who plays shooter or intense online multiplayer games all the time, yes that would be mainly (but not all) men.
OT:
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Thanks!
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This narrative resurfaced recently, but I've only seen a couple blips about it this time around. The study in question that they've dredged back up was from several years back (I want to say it was from 2013, but I can't find the link right now), and was roundly denounced because it counted casual mobile games in the survey. This skewed the results to make it appear as if over half of all "gamers" were female. If you remove the female mobile game-players from the equation it drops to the levels one might expect, with the largest population of gamers being male, 18-whatever, with primary platforms being both console and PC.
So, yeah, there are a lot of women out there that play games on their phones, tablets, and other non-PC/non-Console platforms, but not nearly enough to put a blip on the radar of the PC and Console development world like the screeching harpies on the Internet would have you believe.
their definition of "gamer" is so tortured that my grandma probably counts as one for doing word search puzzles in a book.
Groups like the IGDA (International Game Developer Association) do breakdowns of what types of games each gender play. It also does breakdowns of how many of each age/gender play. They then play around with those stats to try to make it seem more equal (woman in this group are equal in size to these 2 male groups, see they're even).
The actual audience ratio goes (largest to smallest): Casual & Mobile > Farming > MMORPG > JRPG (27%) > WRPG (25%) ... Sports & Racing > FPS (1%)