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[Tetranet]

It's honestly weird to see some of the comments in here who "don't know female gamers IRL", "hope to meet one someday" etc.

Most women I know under 30 play some type of game or another. And I'm not exactly a person who hangs out in geek circles.

The only consistent non-gamer women are the foreign girls I tend to date And when it happens that they never play a single game, I actually tease them about it. So it doesn't surprise me that gaming is not seen as something a woman does in certain cultures (yet)... but North America? Common as dirt.

Yeah I could say the same. It's much less common in more conservative countries. I took a quick look on the infographic but it doesn't indicate country, so I guess it's automatically about America.

 

[MHWilliams]

I'm surprised at the percentage of women playing consoles.

Perception does not equal reality.

I'm just going to put this out there, but I think if we went back to the late 90s and early 2000s. There would be more of a % for males with RPGs. I think the lack there of in the RPG department has caused this and they aren't considering specific genres of RPGs. If that statistic includes Dragon Age and/or Skyrim or even Fallout 3/NV then I'm baffled.

That's wonderful. I'm probably not aware outside two females I met in high school who enjoyed RPGs. That's not to say anything. In college I never met a female who played Final Fantasy or Grandia. I know there's more of a following towards the newer games because they look good. I'm saying in general those games gain an audience. I'm not shocked, but I'm not aware of anything more than my group of guys who played them growing up.

I guess they're easier now to enjoy because you aren't staring at pixels on the screen or waiting for FMVs.

Put me in the group that finds RPGs to have larger numbers of passionate women playing. Final Fantasy, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and Skyrim, partially because the latter games allow players to choose their race and gender.

hard to believe. ive never actually met a woman who plays anything besides iPhone games

Anecdotal evidence.

 

[ThreePiMatt]

Doesn't this directly contradict the gender numbers that Nintendo put out where Wii U users were like 93% male and only 7% female?

 

[Orayn]

Doesn't this directly contradict the gender numbers that Nintendo put out where Wii U users were like 93% male and only 7% female?

That was specific to Wii U eShop purchases, which don't necessarily represent console gaming as a whole.

 

[besada]

hard to believe. ive never actually met a woman

That's okay, there's always hope.

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

What is the survey person amount? Was it asked from a regular gaming website, in public, phone, etc.? Context is everything.

There's nothing in the article that explains methodology as far as I can tell.

It mentions the info is from EEDAR which is some sort of video-game research & consultancy firm.

 

[jackal27]

You guys seriously don't know any women who play games?

My freaking step-mom plays games on her iPad every single day. Half the people I streetpass are women. My brother's girlfriend imported both him and her leather Monster Hunter 4 cases for their 3DS XL's. My sister-in-law beat Punch Quest by playing like 5 hours a day this summer on vacation. My wife wouldn't say she plays games and she STILL plays Animal Crossing, Mario Kart 8, Rayman Legends, and more with me.

 

[maquiladora]

Serious question here: how was the data acquired? Without some contextualization and explanation of the data, I am hesitant to give a "study" the time of day. Too many Research Methods classes in college have made me overly wary and hypercritical of studies.

Their data partners include Nielsen and NPD.

 

[Not Spaceghost]

I love statistics like this but I hate it when I wish they were just a bit more detailed. I'd love to know gender gap by console break down, number on the Wii vs the 360 etc etc.

Also it'd be cool to know the age distribution as well. I wanna see just what age groups phone games attract, my hypothesis is that they'd be high on both ends of the spectrum, those over 35 and those under 14.

It's a bit curious that they chose to omit PC entirely, it'd be interesting to see how they'd catalog those titles though. The PC has such a diverse group of things on it it could easily be its own survey.

 

[shandy706]

hard to believe. ive never actually met a woman who plays anything besides iPhone games

I'm sorry you haven't met many women.

 

[Nirolak]

hard to believe. ive never actually met a woman who plays anything besides iPhone games

Serious question here: how was the data acquired? Without some contextualization and explanation of the data, I am hesitant to give a "study" the time of day. Too many Research Methods classes in college have made me overly wary and hypercritical of studies.

What is the survey person amount? Was it asked from a regular gaming website, in public, phone, etc.? Context is everything.

If it helps you, the following people pay EEDAR large sums of money for their research services:

 

[orthodoxy1095]

Their data partners include Nielsen and NPD.

That's great for them. I still want to know the actual details of the methodology before we go trumpeting the results from the rooftop. Always err on the side of caution with studies.

Like I said I've had too many classes on research methods to care about what the summary of the data says. I want to see the data and read about how it was collected.

If it helps you, the following people pay EEDAR large sums of money for their research services:

Cool. I'm not saying the data is wrong or that they're misrepresenting it. I just want to see it myself. I find reading the actual data to be far more insightful than reading a summarized report of it.

 

[shandy706]

hard to believe. ive never actually met a woman

I'm sorry you haven't met many women.

Edit***

hard to believe. ive never actually met a woman

That's okay, there's always hope.

Darn it besada!@#!

 

[icecold1983]

That's okay, there's always hope.

wow that was pretty clever

 

[jackal27]

I love statistics like this but I hate it when I wish they were just a bit more detailed. I'd love to know gender gap by console break down, number on the Wii vs the 360 etc etc.

Also it'd be cool to know the age distribution as well. I wanna see just what age groups phone games attract, my hypothesis is that they'd be high on both ends of the spectrum, those over 35 and those under 14.

It's a bit curious that they chose to omit PC entirely, it'd be interesting to see how they'd catalog those titles though. The PC has such a diverse group of things on it it could easily be its own survey.

I bet PC looks very similar to mobile, especially if we're factoring in online games. Just my guess/perception though.

 

[Aeana]

EEDAR is one of the most commonly-used and most-respected firms for research in the gaming sphere. Educate yourselves by at least reading their Wikipedia artcle, but you should really also visit their website.

EDIT: I see Nirolak has also made this point.

 

[Sotha_Sil]

My personal experiences haven't matched those stats (maybe 5% console gamers being girls), but I'm not too surprised by the numbers.

 

[bishoptl]

If it helps you, the following people pay EEDAR large sums of money for their research services:

who are these no-name brands

glorified Flash game providers, the lot of them

 

[yurinka]

Pretty much what I was expecting, very little differences in percentages. Doesn't appear here, but the only more or less important difference is when spending on mobile games.

 

[Bold One]

Cool study, should be celebrated, some are cleared surprised by the data but let's not resort to condescending retorts.

 

[orthodoxy1095]

EEDAR is one of the most commonly-used and most-respected firms for research in the gaming sphere. Educate yourselves by at least reading their Wikipedia artcle, but you should really also visit their website.

EDIT: I see Nirolak has also made this point.

We don't respect data merely because of who obtained it. We respect data because of how it was obtained. It's completely valid to ask for an elaboration on EEDAR's methodology.

 

[Tigress]

We don't respect data merely because of who obtained it. We respect data because of how it was obtained. It's completely valid to ask for an elaboration on EEDAR's methodology.

But it does say something if who collects it has a reputation of being very good about how they collect it and how they interpret it. So yes, if they have gained trust in their ability to get statistics, yes, it does say that there is some measure of trust in their results. I mean you are right, you won't know for sure without looking how it was done yourself, but that doesn't mean that if some one has a good reputation and many people have found their info to be accurate it means we still can't at least put some trust in the info.

And let's be realistic, a lot of times articles posting the studies don't go into how the information is collected. So it will come down to whether you trust the company doing the statistics or not cause you're just not going to get that info.

 

[Curufinwe]

Their data partners include Nielsen and NPD.

That doesn't answer the question.

 

[jim-jam bongs]

It takes a special kind of stupid to get banned with your first post, but there you have it.

 

[orthodoxy1095]

But it does say something if who collects it has a reputation of being very good about how they collect it and how they interpret it. So yes, if they have gained trust in their ability to get statistics, yes, it does say that there is some measure of trust in their results.

Sure, you can trust that they are an ethical organization committed to delivering high quality research. "Dewey Defeats Truman" was the result of well-intentioned, smart and usually accurate pollsters getting it wrong though. Just because there is a history of good study design doesn't mean you can't ask to see the methodology in every future study. In fact, that's what a good consumer of research does.

 

[SatelliteOfLove]

Huh. PC should've shook out closer to even in my mind; perhaps if you go off Steam or something.

I can understand the gulf between perception and reality there because they tend to hide/obscure their gender identity when possible, especially online.

I know this one very, very deeply true from personal experience.

 

[Aeana]

We don't respect data merely because of who obtained it. We respect data because of how it was obtained. It's completely valid to ask for an elaboration on EEDAR's methodology.

You could try asking the person who posted the results of the study for the answer to your question instead of concern trolling in the thread. Nobody here can provide you the answer you seek. The author of the article has been answering questions in the comment section. She's already given some methodology information based on people's questions.

 

[aspiegamer]

When it comes to trying to determine a "total" picture of gaming this might be as good as we ever get on one side of it. The raw demographics, I mean. The other side is money spent/games owned, time spent playing, spent online, etc.

Troubles of trying to decide who to make things for and market things to are doomed to continue missing the mark until we get a total overview. Right now it's like claiming accuracy of a GPS signal with only 2 satellites. You can get sorta-generally close but no one should ever bet anything on the true accuracy. So we usually just get the lowest common denominator of minimal risk and unfortunately there aren't all that many signs of that changing.

 

[Northeastmonk]

Odd, cause to me it's not surprising at all RPGs are attractive to females. Most female gamers (including myself) that i know love RPGs to be honest (I even got the impression that RPGs are seen as a more female type game honestly and that it was already kinda assumed that females gravitated towards those).

And it baffles me that you think Skyrim or Fallout are games that mostly males would enjoy... Why do you think that?

I was referring older RPGs to newer ones.

Vagrant Story
Xenogears
Chrono Trigger
Persona
Valkyrie Profile
Lunar SSSC
Final Fantasy - there was still the big 9999 damage for us guys

I had not been around a lot of female gamers who had played those types of games. Now I see games like Fallout 3 and Skyrim have this massive open world where you can get to the point of observation much faster and the games don't tend to have the 2D art to them. I don't think that points to females at all. I think it points to modern games period. I think a lot of games have gotten rid of this formula to suit a crowd who didn't get into them at that point in time. This is why when I hear "everyone is a gamer no matter what they play and how much they play" I think "oh, because they either can play a simplified RPG longer or they're playing a game just to play it".

 

[orthodoxy1095]

You could try asking the person who posted the results of the study for the answer to your question instead of concern trolling in the thread. Nobody here can provide you the answer you seek. The author of the article has been answering questions in the comment section. She's already given some methodology information based on people's questions.

I'm not concern trolling, thanks very much. In fact, I actually believe the results. They seem fairly reflective of my personal experiences. I just want to know how they were obtained. Just because you lack the intellectual curiosity as a consumer of research to question and challenge data doesn't mean others should be like that.

 

[Harmen]

Interesting and unexpected (for me at least).

I honestly do not know any women that have gaming as a hobby. Funny how inner circles can differ so much from the total population. But yeah, I study biomolecular sciences and about 50% is female in my class (of about 80 people). And during my internship the males were even in the minority, including the chemistry part of the deparment. Also something I did not expect at all before I started it.

Would be interesting to see demographics and their method of research (is there a publication on this?). Not that I doubt it. This actually makes sense given the amount of complaints about the lack of female representation lately.

 

[Bold One]

We'll never get a direct accurate ratio from a head count. Studies like these are as close as we'll get

Perhaps other independent researchers and methods can give a more representive aggregate.

 

[Fehyd]

I'm actually curious as to whether Nielson's figures will match.

According to their 2013 figures from this article...

Nielsen refers to gamers on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 as the “HD console audience.” They are an average age of 28 and are 69 percent male, according to Nielsen’s data.

also, where the heck is "sports" in the console rankings? That really didn't rank above "arcade"? The article I linked gives these as gender breakdowns in the genres.

The HD shooter audience is 78 percent male.
The HD action game audience is 80 percent male.
The HD sports game audience is 85 percent male.

This could account for some of the reasons people's anecdotal evidence feels off.

 

[Nirolak]

We don't respect data merely because of who obtained it. We respect data because of how it was obtained. It's completely valid to ask for an elaboration on EEDAR's methodology.

Feel free to email them. They answer inquires.

This was put up as a free report on gamesindustry.biz by their head of research, so it doesn't have a methodology section (or their normal copyrighting and company notices) like the sales brochures for purchasing reports, but they were answering questions on the article.

It's been four days though so I doubt they would go look now, so their inquiry line is your best bet.

 

[Tigress]

I was referring older RPGs to newer ones.

Vagrant Story
Xenogears
Chrono Trigger
Persona
Valkyrie Profile
Lunar SSSC
Final Fantasy - there was still the big 9999 damage for us guys

I had not been around a lot of female gamers who had played those types of games. Now I see games like Fallout 3 and Skyrim have this massive open world where you can get to the point of observation must faster and the games don't tend to have the 2D art to them. I don't think that points to females at all. I think it points to modern games period. I think a lot of games have gotten rid of this formula to suit a crowd who didn't get into them at that point in time. This is why when I hear "everyone is a gamer no matter what they play and how much they play" I think "oh, because they either can play a simplified RPG longer or they're playing a game just to play it".

Even back in the days of college most female friends I had loved the RPGs like that. Chrono Cross, FFVII. It seemed JRPGs even back then had a lot of female fans. It really does shock me that you see it as male dominated as I always saw it opposite honestly (The friends I knew who played those were females). Especially Final Fantasy and the Chrono series. Persona I didn't know existed and I'm the only one I knew of that knew of Lunar Silver Star Story.

Hell, as I said elsewhere, look how much fanfic there was around Sephiroth that was obviously female fantaisys should answer your question right there.

 

[Aeana]

I'm not concern trolling, thanks very much. In fact, I actually believe the results. They seem fairly reflective of my personal experiences. I just want to know how they were obtained. Just because you lack the intellectual curiosity as a consumer of research to question and challenge data doesn't mean others should be like that.

And now you have been pointed in the right direction for obtaining the answer you seek. If you receive it, I'd love to hear about it.

 

[orthodoxy1095]

Feel free to email them. They answer inquires.

This was put up as a free report on gamesindustry.biz by their head of research, so it doesn't have a methodology section (or their normal copyrighting and company notices) like the sales brochures for purchasing reports, but they were answering questions on the article.

It's been four days though so I doubt they would go look now, so their inquiry line is your best bet.

Guess I'll give it a shot!

 

[ActStriker]

I was referring older RPGs to newer ones.

Vagrant Story
Xenogears
Chrono Trigger
Persona
Valkyrie Profile
Lunar SSSC
Final Fantasy - there was still the big 9999 damage for us guys

I had not been around a lot of female gamers who had played those types of games. Now I see games like Fallout 3 and Skyrim have this massive open world where you can get to the point of observation much faster and the games don't tend to have the 2D art to them. I don't think that points to females at all. I think it points to modern games period. I think a lot of games have gotten rid of this formula to suit a crowd who didn't get into them at that point in time. This is why when I hear "everyone is a gamer no matter what they play and how much they play" I think "oh, because they either can play a simplified RPG longer or they're playing a game just to play it".

What does all this even mean?

 

[CadetMahoney]

Interesting. What's the gender split at video game tournaments?

 

[BocoDragon]

Even back in the days of college most female friends I had loved the RPGs like that. Chrono Cross, FFVII. It seemed JRPGs even back then had a lot of female fans. It really does shock me that you see it as male dominated as I always saw it opposite honestly (The friends I knew who played those were females).

Hell, as I said elsewhere, look how much fanfic there was around Sephiroth that was obviously female fantaisys should answer your question right there.

I definitely had a lot of conversations about FF etc with women back in the late 90s.

I always thought of it as a particularly female-friendly genre too. Still probably mostly men, but it had a lot more female fans than other genres, in my experience.

(I definitely remember a lot of Sephiroth "shrines" on geocities haha.)

 

[Leafhopper]

No one plays fighting games on handheld silly.

 

[IchigoSharingan]

great data......but it's depressing.

Wish women weren't so fucking harassed that by and large they remain cloaked away from being active in voice chats in games.

What can be done about this beyond personal accountability?

Set up a Neogaf gated community of gaming for men/women wherein if you harass a fellow gaffer, your gaf account is banned?

 

[Garrett Hawke]

If it helps you, the following people pay EEDAR large sums of money for their research services:

Amazing.

 

[On Demand]

So the term girl gamer can finally go away? Good.

And maby female characters will have more of a presence now?


Eh. Who am i kidding.

 

[Dunbar]

This is why when I hear "everyone is a gamer no matter what they play and how much they play" I think "oh, because they either can play a simplified RPG longer or they're playing a game just to play it".

I do this all the time. Done it for years, in fact.

Also, I've never been surprised that RPGs are popular among women. For a long time, they were one of the only (if not the only) genres where you could play as a woman, whether as a player-created avatar or as part of a party. Also, they're usually long, involved games with interesting stories and characters - what isn't to like, for anyone?

 

[Northeastmonk]

Even back in the days of college most female friends I had loved the RPGs like that. Chrono Cross, FFVII. It seemed JRPGs even back then had a lot of female fans. It really does shock me that you see it as male dominated as I always saw it opposite honestly (The friends I knew who played those were females).

Hell, as I said elsewhere, look how much fanfic there was around Sephiroth that was obviously female fantaisys should answer your question right there.

I mostly saw the guys with the EGM magazine, the guys who'd play online, or now the guys who buy the majority of the content. Even showing up to EB Games early in the cycle of Xbox I thought the female game store clerk was like some weird 'fetish'. 'Why does she work here?' type of thing. Looking back that was immature and pretty dumb, but it came from hours of talking with other guys about games.

It may of been who I associated myself with back then and even to this day. It feels like it all goes on behind your back some days. My days in college have been mostly meeting guys to play CoD, BF, MMOs, or an RTS. I sort of wish there was an alternative, but that sounds a tad mean spirited. I went to several midnight launches since 2007 and even before that. I always expected the 10-20 guys to show up for an RPG or FPS. The females I assumed were with their boyfriends. It became this awful little stereotype. The guy wearing his hoodie for the 10th midnight launch in a row, etc.

 

[NickFire]

Interesting information. My initial reaction is surprise and a little skepticism at the consoles' data, as my personal life experiences don't support the findings. But I recognize my personal life experiences such as age, geographical locations, social circles through life, personal bias (against counting the original Wii in studies on active console gamers even though it does count to people spending money to make games), the advent of party chat (minimizing chats with non-party players), etc., preclude my personal life experiences from representing anyone other than me.

In conclusion, this study is the kind of thing needed to actually cause change in the behavior of publishers / developers, which is showing them money can be made from targeting a wider audience. It wont ever change the way say a GTA or COD game is designed, but there are tons of companies who have not succeeded at toppling those games who may see an opportunity to make the next blockbuster by trying a new route if they know there is a ready audience.

 

[orthodoxy1095]

Really dude? When the thread first went up I googled the company to try to find their methodology and number of respondents and so on, because I'm like that. And I quickly discovered that they don't share any of that information unless you're paying them. Like, it took a minute or two to work that out, tops.

If you couldn't even do that extremely basic bit of googling, are you sure you're that much more intellectually curious than the rest of us plebes?

I did that basic Googling and found that out as well pal. Which is precisely why I find relying on this data to be silly, even though I think the conclusions are right. Any study you can't read the methodology of is troublesome. That's why I challenged the data, because data that you can't examine and can only rely on summaries of isn't all too useful. I would stand by my claim that just accepting data at its face value is indeed lacking in intellectual curiosity.

 

[BocoDragon]

I mostly saw the guys with the EGM magazine, the guys who'd play online, or now the guys who buy the majority of the content. Even showing up to EB Games early in the cycle of Xbox I thought the female game store clerk was like some weird 'fetish'. 'Why does she work here?' type of thing. Looking back that was immature and pretty dumb, but it came from hours of talking with other guys about games.

It may of been who I associated myself with back then and even to this day. It feels like it all goes on behind your back some days. My days in college have been mostly meeting guys to play CoD, BF, MMOs, or an RTS. I sort of wish there was an alternative, but that sounds a tad mean spirited. I went to several midnight launches since 2007 and even before that. I always expected the 10-20 guys to show up for an RPG. The females I assumed were with their boyfriends. It became this awful little stereotype.

I met a girl who I dated for awhile at the midnight launch of Final Fantasy XIII There were quite a few women there.

It really goes to show you how social perception can often be so wrong... gay people, transgender, female gamer, pot smokers, atheists, etc etc, a lot of people don't wear their status on their sleeve, so we tend to think they exist in far fewer numbers than they actually do.

 

[system11]

Doesn't surprise me at all. Also remember if you wind the clock back 30 years arcades were a place for everyone.