47% of Australian Gamers Are Female

[Steven Bogos]

47% of Australian Gamers Are Female

The survey also pegs the average age of Australian gamers at 32 years old.

The Interactive Games and Entertainment Association (IGEA) in Australia recently ran a survey of 1220 households, and 3398 individuals about gaming, and has discovered some information about Australia's gaming habits. Most interestingly is the fact that despite the game-playing market traditionally being viewed as one dominated by men, 47% of survey participants who classified themselves as "gamers" were female.

Further statistics show that 65% of Australians play games regularly, and the average age of those gamers is 32, killing yet another myth that "video games are for children." In fact, only 20% of people who called themselves gamers were in the 1-15 year-old age group.

As for what games these gamers are playing, the most popular choice was "social network games" (such as Facebook's Farmville) at 24%, followed by "online role-playing games" (such as Blizzard's World of Warcraft) at 15%. Gamers typically play video games every day for around an hour.

As for gaming families, gaming Mums are more likely to play on a PC, while gaming Dads are more likely to break out the Xbox or PlayStation. 86% of parents who game, game with their children.

And as for why these gamers game, "fun," was the top reason for PC and console gamers, "passing time," for mobile gamers, "keeping the mind active" for older adult gamers and "social interaction" for yonger adult gamers.

Be sure to check out the full list of statistics here [http://www.igea.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Digital-Australia-2014-Key-Findings.pdf].

What do you think of these kinds of surveys? These days, pretty much everyone has a smartphone capable of playing games. Everyone can be a "gamer", but that doesn't necessarily mean they subscribe to gaming culture to the same extent that "gaming enthusiasts" (such as those of you with enough interest to read a website such as The Escapist) do.

After all, I drive a car, but i'm the furthest from what you would call a "car enthusiast."

Source: Digital Australia [http://www.igea.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Digital-Australia-2014-Key-Findings.pdf]

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[marurder]

What do you think of these kinds of surveys? These days, pretty much everyone has a smartphone capable of playing games. Everyone can be a "gamer", but that doesn't necessarily mean they subscribe to gaming culture to the same extent that "gaming enthusiasts" (such as those of you with enough interest to read a website such as The Escapist) do.

This. This is exactly the problem with 'gamers' that feel they are the 'real' gamers. (I refer to the OP). I think it is a good thing that people feel it socially acceptable to refer to themselves as gamers whether the OP's attitude may accept it or not. I have mentioned in earlier posts before that some 'gamers' (those that may subscribe strongly to the 'culture' are a little phobic or distrustful of newcomers).

By alienating others you only make the gaming culture more divided (as we see this happening more and more) - PS's users fighting XBox, and PC users against all. And the the whole point is to have 'fun'. I think the OP attitudes may be out of touch with real people and maybe too focused on the hardcore gaming community here.

I mean, America likes dividing itself up more and more and that leads to various forms of media and culture to be attacked by other interest groups vying for power. Just look at FOX. But by making gaming a household value (fun) it become mainstream and therefor acceptable. You may want to attack the report for not differentiating between 'hardcore' gamer and someone that plays games. But I think that is just divisive.

This report is good as it can be used to help propel and shape better laws (classification) and assist budding developers to make more games for markets (globally even) that haven't been tapped that much.

 

[Legion]

What do you think of these kinds of surveys? These days, pretty much everyone has a smartphone capable of playing games. Everyone can be a "gamer", but that doesn't necessarily mean they subscribe to gaming culture to the same extent that "gaming enthusiasts" (such as those of you with enough interest to read a website such as The Escapist) do.

This. This is exactly the problem with 'gamers' that feel they are the 'real' gamers. (I refer to the OP). I think it is a good thing that people feel it socially acceptable to refer to themselves as gamers whether the OP's attitude may accept it or not. I have mentioned in earlier posts before that some 'gamers' (those that may subscribe strongly to the 'culture' are a little phobic or distrustful of newcomers).

By alienating others you only make the gaming culture more divided (as we see this happening more and more) - PS's users fighting XBox, and PC users against all. And the the whole point is to have 'fun'. I think the OP attitudes may be out of touch with real people and maybe too focused on the hardcore gaming community here.

I mean, America likes dividing itself up more and more and that leads to various forms of media and culture to be attacked by other interest groups vying for power. Just look at FOX. But by making gaming a household value (fun) it become mainstream and therefor acceptable. You may want to attack the report for not differentiating between 'hardcore' gamer and someone that plays games. But I think that is just divisive.

This report is good as it can be used to help propel and shape better laws (classification) and assist budding developers to make more games for markets (globally even) that haven't been tapped that much.

Except it can't because it is far too vague.

Most gamers are 32 years old. That means nothing if you don't know what kinds of games they are playing. For a triple A developer whose experience is in first person shooters, if those 32 year olds are only playing Bejewelled, then the report is absolutely worthless.

The need to "divide" is so that the statistics have enough detail to actually provide data to work off of. Game development is itself divided. Studios usually focus on only a couple of genres, they don't all of them. So they need to know who is playing their kind to determine who to aim it at.

For triple A developers to start aiming towards other markets than heterosexual, Caucasian males, they need to specifically see the kind of percentage of people (age/sex/ethnicity) who are playing the kind of games that they make.

If 81% of gamers were Indian 81 year old Grandmothers playing Candy Crush, that'd mean nothing for a company such as Activision who mostly create first person shooters on consoles, when trying to determine who to market their games for.

It works the other way around of course. Phone games are not aimed at the typical players of COD or WOW, because those are generally speaking not the kind of people who make up the majority of their current consumer base.

To use an example most people will know of. Take MLP for instance. The fact of the matter is that a large amount of people watching it are adult males. But how many of those adult males are the kind who will go out and by the merchandise or watch it on television when it airs?

By not looking into the specifics of how much they are into it, and simply going "Well most viewers are adult males" the logical response would be to start aiming the show at those adult males.

Which doesn't make any sense at all.

From a social perspective, yes, the whole hardcore/casual thing is rather pointless. But from a development point, it is essential to know who is playing what, why, how and how much.

The industry do not see gaming the same way we do. A lot of people often seem to forget that. Their bottom line is money and who will give them the most. So it doesn't matter who plays the most games, it's who will play their games the most.

 

[Drummodino]

Can someone tell me where these female Australian gamers are? I'd love to meet some of them, but they seem a lot less common than us male Aussie gamers. I think I met one female gamer when I lived in a college boarding house out of about 215 residents. In contrast there were at least a dozen men I'd call serious gamers, and many more FIFA/COD etc players.

Obviously this survey included a lot of casual smartphone/social media gamers. If we were to just include "hardcore" gamers (for lack of a better term), I think the results would be very different.

 

[josemlopes]

What do you think of these kinds of surveys? These days, pretty much everyone has a smartphone capable of playing games. Everyone can be a "gamer", but that doesn't necessarily mean they subscribe to gaming culture to the same extent that "gaming enthusiasts" (such as those of you with enough interest to read a website such as The Escapist) do.

I think it has more to do with target audiences, like from those 47% how many of them play from an Xbox/PS3/PC (not facebook)? If you develop facebook games you wont target the 30 year old male audience by doing a game they like (open world RPG for example) and if you do Xbox/PS3/PC games you arent going to do a game that targets the people that mostly only play on facebook or cellphone.

So for what this is trying to show it does matter a lot what these people are actually playing.

 

[Adzma]

Obviously this survey included a lot of casual smartphone/social media gamers. If we were to just include "hardcore" gamers (for lack of a better term), I think the results would be very different.

Bingo. If you want to see what the demographics are for Australian women who fit into the "hardcore" category would be, just go to PAX. Last year it was about a 90% male to 10% female ratio.

 

[Aerosteam]

What exactly was this survey meant to do? All I got from it was lots of people who aren't young males play social network and mobile games, with my response being "no shit".

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

"Gamers" is an umbrella term meaning anyone who plays (computer) games. Like any genus, there are species; Casual, hardcore, etc.

People who play Farmville a few minutes everyday have the right to call themselves a gamer as much as someone who plays Halo for 8 hours.

 

[Kahani]

killing yet another myth

I don't think anything here can really be described as "killing a myth", given that the results are exactly the same as every other survey that has been done on the subject.
http://www.theesa.com/facts/gameplayer.asp
http://www.esrb.org/about/video-game-industry-statistics.jsp

As for who counts as a "gamer", it depends very much on why you're interested in the question. Obviously if you're trying to market "Blooddeath 12: The Shootening", you're not going to care about the kind of people who only play Facebook cow-clickers. But if you're more interested in simply knowing who might be part of the potential audience for games in general, it's quite useful to know that the audience is, in fact, pretty much everyone. While no game is ever going to appeal to everyone, the more it's reinforced that games are not only played by teenage boys, the more likely people who aren't teenage boys are to have games made for them.

 

[Karadalis]

See the problem with all this is that 47 % might sound impressive at first... but if a good chunk of these 47% consists of women playing facebook games and mobile games then there is still no female market for tripple A games.

Thats the reason why male protagonists are so abundant, because tripple A titles are aparantly mostly bought by the male audience. Mind you thats just a theory but it would explain why female protagonists never really cought on in the big budget games market.

The publishers do know their audiences very well, to well perhaps... and we all know how afraid the big publishers are with taking risks. But atleast it explains their train of thought.

They are not mysoginistic or sexist because they have an agenda... they are chicken shits that dont want to risk alienating their rather fickle core audience from wich they know will definatly buy their games if they pander to them.

 

[Galen Marek]

Just because they don't play triple A games doesn't mean they aren't a gamer.
This data is actually pretty valuable to Triple A publishers. It tells them to change their business model and target audience and where they produce their games, which they are doing. Go figure.

 

[Karadalis]

Just because they don't play triple A games doesn't mean they aren't a gamer.
This data is actually pretty valuable to Triple A publishers. It tells them to change their business model and target audience and where they produce their games, which they are doing. Go figure.

A) No it doesnt mean they arent gamers, it just means they have a different taste.

B) Big publishers allready have entire divisions targeting the facebook games and mobile games market. How do you think the latest iteration of Dungeon keeper came to be? Yeah... thats what you get when big publishers target new markets... lives great aint it?

C) Point B doesnt mean that suddenly they will abandone the "traditional" triple A market. EA is not going to give up Bioware in leu for the facebook generation. On the other hand its unrealistic to ask for more female centric tripple A titles when most female gamers arent necesary interested in tripple A games.

A statistic of the % of female gamers who are invested in the big budged games market would be much more helpfull then such a generalized number that encompasses everything from the soccer mom playing Wii sports to the IT girl playing flappy bird on her mobile.

 

[OldNewNewOld]

snip

Because the people who play smartphone games aren't even similar to the people who buy games for their consoles or PC?
Because they like different things and if developer tried to get them on board they would have to completely ruin the games for the other? Because those people are the reason why we got Dungeon Keeper mobile and that it has mostly 5 star reviews?

And most importantly, this is bad because people will use this as an argument why developer should change the current games to pander to the non-existing consumer base.

Whether you like it or not, there is a huge difference between real gamer and those who occasionally play a smartphone game.
Or are you telling me that a person who buy a post stamp once in the blue moon to send a letter is a stamp collector? Someone who watches a movie on TV once every few weeks is a moviegoer? Someone who read 3 books in their life is a bookworm? Someone who took a photography with his phone is a photographer? I'm not a cook for making myself a sandwich, nor am I a gourmand for eating breakfast, launch and dinner.

There is a huge difference between people who take a hobby seriously and people who do it once every now and then. The industry should be well aware of those people and they should know that they shouldn't give up on the other, more serious consumer base just to get few more bux because they will lose the other.

They play farmvile? Good for them. But don't come telling me who game X should change because "47% of all gamer are females". The statistic is fundamentally flawed. Or are you telling me that 100% of all people are gourmands?

 

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

In fact, only 20% of people who called themselves gamers were in the 1-15 year-old age group.

I really have to wonder how many 1 year olds self identify as gamers? And how do the people taking the survey translate? Parents around the world would love to be let in on that little secret, I'm sure.

 

[Erttheking]

snip

Because those people are the reason why we got Dungeon Keeper mobile and that it has mostly 5 star reviews?

No, EA being slimey assholes is the reason it has 5 stars. It has a five star rating on google because only ratings of five stars go there.

OT: You know, before I even clicked on this article I said to myself that there would just be accusations of them all being mobile gamers. Seriously, the internet is starting to feel like a boring routine.

 

[Canadish]

snip

Because those people are the reason why we got Dungeon Keeper mobile and that it has mostly 5 star reviews?

No, EA being slimey assholes is the reason it has 5 stars. It has a five star rating on google because only ratings of five stars go there.

OT: You know, before I even clicked on this article I said to myself that there would just be accusations of them all being mobile gamers. Seriously, the internet is starting to feel like a boring routine.

To be fair, the study is lacking in any detailed classification. I'm just glad to see folks here showing critical thinking and not just accepting the statistics as presented. "Gamer" is too broad a term and the fact it's the hot, trendy thing at the moment makes me even more skeptical.

It's the men as well, I'd be curious to know how many of those participants just play mobile games/the Marios when they visit cousin Billy's house, regardless of gender.

 

[Madmonk12345]

The reason why women play more mobile games? Facebook games?

Because it turns out that con men aren't picky. They'll take anyone, unlike the actual gaming community and modern games designed as they are. Facebook games are often far more progressive than modern games on the market; the only problem is that they're designed to steal your money.

 

[havoc33]

Almost every girl I know is a gamer if you want to be technical about it. But only TWO of them ever buy and play AAA titles. For the rest it's all simple mobile games, or the Sims, that's it. Even my gf who can enjoy the casual round of Mario Kart or whatever, would never ever buy a console herself and look for the latest AAA title (this is by her own admission btw).