47% of Australian Gamers Are Female

[Trishbot]

There is a difference between a gamer and a games enthusiast.

Games are games, even the crummy ones. As a gamer myself, I'd probably rather play Bejeweled or Angry Birds over something like, say, Duke Nukem Forever or Superman 64...

Not everyone has to play Dark Souls to be a gamer.

Lemme just edit a few things for you....

"There is a difference between a Gamer and a 'games enthusiast'.

Casual Games aren't games, especially the crummy ones, . As a non-gamer myself, I'd probably rather play Bejeweled or Angry Birds over something like, say, Duke Nukem Forever or Superman 64 because I'm a casual.

Everyone has to play Dark Souls to be a gamer."

I know you're joking... but....

"Casual games are games (it's in the title), even the crummy ones (they're just crummy games, like Too Human and Aliens: Colonial Marines). As a HARDCORE gamer myself, I have totally played Bejeweled and Angry Birds and enjoyed them more than Duke Nukem Forever or Superman 64, but not as much as I enjoyed Xenoblade Chronicles, Resident Evil Remake, or Ninja Gaiden Black, because even hardcore gamers can play casual games from time to time, just like NASCAR drivers can drive a family minivan around town.

Everyone SHOULD play Dark Souls because it's a great game. But it's not a game for everyone."

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

The survey means nothing since the term "gamer" was left up to the survey participant to decide on. It is therefore entirely meaningless since it could mean one of a multitude of different things depending on who was asked. I for example would not classify someone who plays "social network games" or "mobile games" as a gamer. The first of those clocked 24% so the survey is meaningless. These are people who play games certainly, but not all of them are "gamers".

 

[Karadalis]

Could people focus less on this artificial brought up argument of who is and who isnt a gamer please and focus more on where these % numbers actually end up in todays gaming market?

THATS the interesting question.. THATS what we could use more data of.

Who plays what game and for what reasons and more importantly how many female gamers are really interested in the tripple A market.

And the myth about compelling female protagonists?

FAT CHANCE

Those have been presented to the market before and they where all rejected kept for lara and samus.

Also Women who claim that a well developed character would get them to play zombie apocalypse number 578923 just say that to not seem shallow or to hide their lack of interest in the matter.

No masterfully crafted protagonist is gonna make you interested in a zombie shooter if youre not interested in shooting zombies. Same goes for all those zombie survival games that pop up. Look at the last of us for example.

Or dead isle (if it actually had fleshed out characters... whose trailer generated a huge interest in the game, didnt meant that tons of female gamers flocked to the stores to buy their copy. My sister who mainly plays JRPGs like the Tales or alchemist series would never play it. Nor would she play Borderlands 2 or Bioshock infinite because she doesnt care for shooters. Same for strategy games or western RPGs where you dont play other peoples story out but are more of an avatar representation of yourselfe.

So while she is a Gamer by all means she is not part of the tripple A market... cause lets face it.. the only Japanese RPGs you could call tripple A nowadays are the final fantasy games, and we all saw what it did to the poor thing. And in the JRPG market there is a surprisingly wealth of female lead characters.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

The survey should've come with a particular definition for "gamer" rather than let everyone use their own definition. Otherwise what's it supposed to be gauging?

 

[Ishigami]

What do you think of these kinds of surveys?

Not much as it of little consequence for the part of the industry I care about.

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."

Pretty much this. I like cars yet I still don?t care about the FIAT Panda?

 

[wulfy42]

I am a gamer.

I have played games my whole life, starting on the trash 80 and apple II, and even created them for years.

My wife would be considered a gamer by this pole. She is.....but she is a casual gamer who only plays games on her IPAD. I have, in the past, gotten her to play a few games on the Wii....and lightgun games on other systems (Elemental gearbolt being by far her (and my) favorite lightgun game).

She...is in no way....a "gamer" girl though. She has no patience for any game that takes more then 3 seconds to figure out. I couldn't get her to play an RPG or FPS if her life depended on it. Forget about platform games, the remote would be through the window in .2 seconds.

I have heard of these elusive gamer girls. I even know people who have married them (online of course, my town isn't big enough to have any of these exotic creatures). I do have many friends, and have had many many more friends, who are gamers. They are all male. Many of them are now married. None of their wives are gamers. Many of their wives play on facebook or play other casual games. In fact, many women as a whole play on facebook or casual games on IPAD and that is their only source of gaming.

That makes them casual gamers I guess....but not "gamers" as in the kind of people who go to a store and buy a gaming system, buy physical games to put into a system etc.

I wish there was more girls who enjoy gaming. I do know they exist. I have, joking aside (hard to tell humor on the internet I know) actually REALLY have seen some. I remember back in the days when I would play dance dance revolution at arcades (against dinosaurs of course), that there was one or two female players as well. It was always shocking to see them. I think I saw 1 female player at a Guitar hero competition I participated in as well. I will say that the numbers are skewed to extremes where I live....with well over 99% of gamers (as in...xbox/ps oweners/players...not even hardcore but invested in gaming as a hobby and not just as a time waster)...are male.

Now, that being said, I have seen many females SELLING games at game stores. In theory, they played games. One would at least imagine that is the case. But as far as finding actual female gamers in real life? I have not had much luck. I have always been jelous of those who have found someone of the opposite sex that enjoys their favorite hobby as well. I used to put alot of effort into finding games both me and my wife could play (Elebits on the Wii, Light gun games, bejewled...and the original plants vs zombies..which I count as a real game that she really enjoyed!). I gave up a few years ago after we got ipads as she went down a dark rabbit hole of casual games and was lost to me. I just look for new casual "candy crush, peggle etc" type games for her occasionally and throw them into her cage to keep her happy (The cage being her Ipad which has taken over her life..and not just from casual games, she's always tweeting, posting on facebook, watching youtube etc on there).

All that aside, I have always found Australian girls extremely attractive (no, my wife isn't Australian, but she also isn't on this website) so if 47% of them really played games, then perhaps Australia is actually heaven? If we kill enough enemies in games do we get sent to Australia where 7 Australian gamer girls see to our every need in between gaming sessions? Perhaps we should start a new religion?

 

[BoogieManFL]

To me there are 3 kinds of "Gamers"

Social network game players / Phone game app players
Gamers who play very few or only one genre of games, such as MMOs or sports games.
Then the hardcore gamers who play a wide variety of different genres


I bet a lot of the people who were polled are in group 1. Sure they *could* be called gamers, but there is a big difference in the Farmville/Free Game/Phone Game players, and those who buy/play a wide variety of games.

But all in all, I'll say you're a gamer if that is typically your favorite activity to do in your free time before most other things.

 

[TheMadDoctorsCat]

Geez, people are awfully caustic towards these self-identified gamers for somehow not being real gamers, whatever that means.

Yeah, I agree with this... I've played 200+ hours of "Skyrim" and I don't count myself as a "gamer" by the definitions applied by most people here.

Personally I think it's great that we're seeing a wider audience of people who take part in the videogaming industry with different tastes and needs. It encourages the publishers to diversify, and gives the creators impetus to use ideas that maybe they wouldn't have thought would sell before now.

Now it's true that we also have the negative side of it, exemplified in the likes of "Dungeon Keeper Mobile". But here's the thing - I don't know anybody who's bought it or played it. Obviously some people DO buy into this crap, otherwise they wouldn't keep selling it; but you'd hope that once they've been "burned" once or twice they'd "get wise". I would prefer to believe that the majority of my fellow bipeds are not so damn stupid that they don't learn from this stuff.

What I'm more worried about is that they come to believe that ALL games are cynical cash-extractors. We could be teaching a huge subset of people that games are just the tools of con-artists. That would not be good.

EDIT: And by BoogieMan's definitions, above, I'd be in subset #2. I play games as a hobby but tend to stick to my favorite genres. And I rarely buy new games, especially AAA ones.

 

[Robert Marrs]

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.

The results would be very different. This is why the "well half of gamers are women" statistic that people throw around when they want to make a point needs to be evaluated by anyone who wants to use it. Women do make up about half of gamers WHEN you include smartphone games. Pretty much every human with a smartphone plays some sort of game on it. I think its safe to say the numbers would be closer to 75% male 25% female just based on my 17 years playing video games and interacting with many different people but even that is probably being generous.

I don't know why people are so obsessed with trying to prove its a level playing field because it simply is not. Actually I know exactly why people are so obsessed with it. Because anytime there are more men than women in a group its seen as sexist or exclusionary and there is a push to try and change it. You have to draw up the illusion that the target demographic is much more diverse than it really is in hopes that major developers will adjust the way they make games to meet the needs of that market.

People for some reason fail to realize that large companies like that do their research and probably have a more accurate description of their target audience than anyone here. So if anything they will see that shift first and games will change as a result. That is really the only thing that will change gaming diversity and representation in the long run. Not brow-beating and social shaming but ACTUAL demographic shifts. If it really was 50/50 the games we get would represent that. Ultimately its just another failed tactic of the politically correct, social justice warrior crowd, trying to change things (in some ways for the better I must admit) by lying, shaming and shutting down conversation with accusations of misogyny anytime someone challenges it.

TLDR: NO company is going to ignore 50% of their market share. No amount of internalized misogyny is going to convince EA that its ok to only make $500,000 instead of $1,000,000. If 50% of gamers NOT including facebook and mobile games (which is an entirely different market) were women there would be a massive shift in diversity when it comes to AAA titles. The fact that this has not happened should tell anyone who enjoys a nice dose of logic in their day that without the mobile and social market the demographic would be an overwhelming majority of males.

 

[EndlessSporadic]

Geez, people are awfully caustic towards these self-identified gamers for somehow not being real gamers, whatever that means.

People confuse "real gamer" with "non-casual gamer". Casual gamers are those who play solely on mobile devices.

What percentage of women are non-casual gamers? That is somewhere around 20%.

 

[Lightknight]

Now that these studies are opened up to iOS/Android games and the like as well as for people who have ever played solitaire, the studies mean almost nothing to me. Break them up into gaming genres and platform and I'd value the results much more.

 

[TheMadDoctorsCat]

Ultimately its just another failed tactic of the politically correct, social justice warrior crowd, trying to change things (in some ways for the better I must admit) by lying, shaming and shutting down conversation with accusations of misogyny anytime someone challenges it.

WHAAAAT??!!!

Where the heck is this even COMING from?

When has ANYBODY ever made an accusation like that?

It's a damn survey guys. It's not the militant feminist's movement to spoil videogames, if there ever was such a thing, which there probably wasn't, because with the amount of young white male petulance I'm seeing in this thread, who the hell would WANT to be associated with you? Right now I don't.

"Ultimately its just another failed tactic of the politically correct, social justice warrior crowd, trying to change things (in some ways for the better I must admit) by lying, shaming and shutting down conversation with accusations of misogyny anytime someone challenges it."

Look, from most of the rest of your comment you seem like a pretty reasonable guy (I'm assuming you are a guy here). So just... read back over what you just wrote in that last paragraph. And read that again, will you, and tell me how it comes off as anything other than the paranoid ramblings of a spoilt, entitled personality? As do many of the comments in this thread. Sorry to pick on you, but as an example of the kind of casual delusional thinking that goes on here... well, that's it, isn't it?

Holy crap guys, it's like we live in a parallel universe or something.

I've been playing games for twenty years and have yet to see a single instance of "accusations of misogyny shutting down conversation", except those mentioned on web forums apparently dominated by men / boys with some severe cases of persecution mania that, as far as I can tell, aren't based on anything that's actually happened in real life, or even in the mass media.

"Shutting down conversation"? We should be so damn lucky. There is a very real subset of misogynist gamers out there, and unfortunately - going on what's happened to certain female journalists and developers - they aren't shutting up any time soon.

I mean, just read some of the comments in this thread and try and justify to me how any conversation is being "shut down". Seems to me it's carrying on just fine!

And while we're on the subject: "The politically correct social justice warrior crowd"? Holy crap. There are actually people who take it for granted that that's a "thing"?

The worst part is that we DO have problems to deal with. While some publishers apparently think so little of us that they market "mature" games with the label: "Your mom's going to hate this!" there are entire sub-sections of media that will call for sensationalist outcry every time it's revealed that a murderer played "Call of Duty" when he wasn't, well, murdering people.

What's needed to tackle these problems is a sensible, rational, empathetic response that recognises what the other side's thinking / feeling, realises WHY they're thinking / feeling it, and is able to find a solution that works to everyone's advantage. Instead we have this.

I posted that even though I played games, I didn't want to call myself a "gamer". I didn't want to be labelled that way. This is why.

Sorry for the rant, but the amount of empty-headed rage here that seems to be accepted as "the norm" just depresses me.

It's a damn survey. It's not "Mein Kampf".

 

[Eri]

Playing Farmville or Candy Crush does not make you a gamer. Just like going to a movie doesn't make you a film buff, or taking a photo on your phone means photography is your hobby.

 

[SwagLordYoloson]

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.

Not hard to find them at least from my experience, most girls in my university course are gamers, and most of my coworkers game including the women. All up I couldn't count all the female gamers I know because I am sure I would be forgetting some. That is at least the culture I have found in my IT course and Software development industry. Not that anyone really has time to game more than a few hours a day when they have a full time job and are studying in the off time.

I'd say that the only 'serious gamers' I know left are those that dropped out of university to 'go pro' at DOTA 2.

Just my experience in Brisbane.

 

[Jenvas1306]

I breathe but Im not an air enthusiast...

People who play games frequently are gamers, get the eff over it!

No it doesnt matter that they dont suit the stereotype of a gamer.
No it doesnt matter that they are over 30.
No it doesnt matter what games they play.
No they dont need to focus on details of their favorite games to make up tests for others to prove they are gamers.
And for effs sake, no it doesnt matter what genitals they have.

Would you, who, in this scenario, goes for a jogg every morning, scoff at someone who is just this single time going for a walk when you meet them in the park?
No, you wouldnt care, you would just do your thing for your reasons.

 

[Robert Marrs]

Ultimately its just another failed tactic of the politically correct, social justice warrior crowd, trying to change things (in some ways for the better I must admit) by lying, shaming and shutting down conversation with accusations of misogyny anytime someone challenges it.

WHAAAAT??!!!

Where the heck is this even COMING from?

When has ANYBODY ever made an accusation like that?

It's a damn survey guys. It's not the militant feminist's movement to spoil videogames, if there ever was such a thing, which there probably wasn't, because with the amount of young white male petulance I'm seeing in this thread, who the hell would WANT to be associated with you? Right now I don't.

"Ultimately its just another failed tactic of the politically correct, social justice warrior crowd, trying to change things (in some ways for the better I must admit) by lying, shaming and shutting down conversation with accusations of misogyny anytime someone challenges it."

Look, from most of the rest of your comment you seem like a pretty reasonable guy (I'm assuming you are a guy here). So just... read back over what you just wrote in that last paragraph. And read that again, will you, and tell me how it comes off as anything other than the paranoid ramblings of a spoilt, entitled personality? As do many of the comments in this thread. Sorry to pick on you, but as an example of the kind of casual delusional thinking that goes on here... well, that's it, isn't it?

Holy crap guys, it's like we live in a parallel universe or something.

I've been playing games for twenty years and have yet to see a single instance of "accusations of misogyny shutting down conversation", except those mentioned on web forums apparently dominated by men / boys with some severe cases of persecution mania that, as far as I can tell, aren't based on anything that's actually happened in real life, or even in the mass media.

"Shutting down conversation"? We should be so damn lucky. There is a very real subset of misogynist gamers out there, and unfortunately - going on what's happened to certain female journalists and developers - they aren't shutting up any time soon.

I mean, just read some of the comments in this thread and try and justify to me how any conversation is being "shut down". Seems to me it's carrying on just fine!

And while we're on the subject: "The politically correct social justice warrior crowd"? Holy crap. There are actually people who take it for granted that that's a "thing"?

The worst part is that we DO have problems to deal with. While some publishers apparently think so little of us that they market "mature" games with the label: "Your mom's going to hate this!" there are entire sub-sections of media that will call for sensationalist outcry every time it's revealed that a murderer played "Call of Duty" when he wasn't, well, murdering people.

What's needed to tackle these problems is a sensible, rational, empathetic response that recognises what the other side's thinking / feeling, realises WHY they're thinking / feeling it, and is able to find a solution that works to everyone's advantage. Instead we have this.

I posted that even though I played games, I didn't want to call myself a "gamer". I didn't want to be labelled that way. This is why.

Sorry for the rant, but the amount of empty-headed rage here that seems to be accepted as "the norm" just depresses me.

It's a damn survey. It's not "Mein Kampf".

I think we have some error in communication which is really my fault. I'm not directly accusing THIS survey of being some feminist ploy to take away our precious games. I was drawing the correlation between peoples obsession with everything being "equal" to the point of absurdity and the people who are guaranteed to use surveys like this to further their political agenda. Its not the survey that is bad or even the results.

It is the people who will use the survey and its results as a political soapbox when if you actually dissect the survey you find it in no way supports the points those kinds of people will try to make. If you try to explain that to people usually you are met with snark and underhanded accusations of being some basement dwelling neckbeard who hates women. There are people on both sides of the fence who DO want to shut down the discussion. The problem is one side is easily dismissed as trolls or ACTUAL misogynists while the other side gets to use the guise of moral high ground to shut people up. Meanwhile the rational people who just want to discuss problems without trying to inject political ideology are lost in the crowd. There is no neutral ground to discuss problems that we have and both sides are to blame.

 

[Jenvas1306]

Playing Farmville or Candy Crush does not make you a gamer. Just like going to a movie doesn't make you a film buff, or taking a photo on your phone means photography is your hobby.

why doesnt it make the person a gamer? is farmville not a game?
what if that person has 500+ hours on those games?

so what makes a person a gamer?

 

[fohfuu]

I read the Escapist every day, and I only play entry level stuff (visual novels, portal, mobile games etc.). Does that somehow make me more of a gamer than my mum, who spends several hours a day playing Bejewelled/Papa Pear/Witch Saga or whatever? Maybe. My brother plays League as pretty much a full-time job now, but he doesn't keep as up to date with gamer culture and news as me. Am I more of a gamer than him? Probably not.
I believe that if you are immersed in any set of games and the culture that surrounds the games you play, you are a gamer, whether that's the Flappy Bird fanatic or the teenagers who play COD, but hey, that's just my opinion.
I know this is my first post, by the way, but I only made an account to take tests and used the site for about a year before that

 

[Eri]

Playing Farmville or Candy Crush does not make you a gamer. Just like going to a movie doesn't make you a film buff, or taking a photo on your phone means photography is your hobby.

why doesnt it make the person a gamer? is farmville not a game?
what if that person has 500+ hours on those games?

so what makes a person a gamer?

I've taken over 500 photos on my phone, that doesn't make photography my hobby.