47% of Australian Gamers Are Female

[Strazdas]

In contrast to 45% of female gamers in US and the average age being 30 (dropped from 37 btw) i think the results are fairly confirmatory. I however an saddened that the investigation didnt bother to check the disparity between genres and types of games. Its easy to say 47% of gamers are females, but when you look at deeper research you find that social games like farmville are dominated by 80%+ female audience while FPS is dominated by 90% male audiences. there are different types different genders play, and its not wrong. However people will take this study and start shouting that "derp COD must padner to females since half of its audience are females" when they would be blatantly wrong. As was proven by multiple games that failed with trying to make female-only protagonist. Its not as simple as half of gamers are female.

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."

They are gamers. And you are a car driver. They are not "Game enthusiasts" like you are not "Car enthusiast". there is nothing wrong with being "just a gamer" though. The enthusiasts are merely an easy way to label people who actively participate in the community rather than simply being part of it. You dont need to visit this site and read all the news every day like i do to be a gamer. I am as much a gamer as the guy that picks up a console during the weekend and never posts on forums.

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.

there is no "Gamer culture". just like there is no "movie culture". There are many different communities whose members are gamers, but gamers are not some homogenouse culture. Though i think you attack the OP for being cofused on "hardcore" gamers unfairly. After all, this is the type of gamers that are going to be reading his articles to begin with.

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.

Ive seen studies that tried to adress this. The findings were interesting. Majority of self-identified gamer males put gaming among top 3 priorities in their life, whereas females usually preferred stuff like shopping for clothes before games but still identified themselves as gamers. This lower priority for games may cause them to be less active in meeting other gamers.

Mind you thats just a theory but it would explain why female protagonists never really cought on in the big budget games market.

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.

not much of a theory. for example this article http://usabilitynews.org/video-games-males-prefer-violence-while-females-prefer-social/ decribe part of it. i dont know the link now but there was an extensive study couple years back posted on the escapist that tried to cypher genders and genres and the genres that AAA industry dominates were dominated by male players. Except RPGs, those had quite a lot of females.

And they tried making games with female protagonists before. they didnt do well financially though. It took very long even for Mirrors Edge to get profitable.

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.

No its not. This data is useless for AAA publishers. it shows aboslutely nothing about their audience, only general gaming. They already are targeting the audience that buys their games. Otherwise they wouldnt sell so well.

snip

people who turn zelda on for 1 hour are still gamers. different type of gamers, but gamers nonetheless. what we need however is a study that differentiates the types instead of putting them all together. the study we got here is completely useless. Its like saying half of worlds population is female and thinking this means anything other than biology.
There is also a need to remove the problem with self-identification. ive seen people who go "i turned computer on by myself in class today, im such a nerd" NO YOU ARE NOT.

snip

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.

False equivalence. Let me correct you here:
There is a huge difference between "Hardcore" gamer and a regular gamer.
There is also a difference between stamp collector and stamp user.
Im sure by now you can make a connection.
Us regular gamers are a subspecies of the gamer genus.

Really though, I just wish we could get past the whole 'gamer' tag all together. I mean, the medium is as common as film or television now, and we don't call people who watch tv 'watchers' so why 'gamers'?

well, to be honest, i do personally identify as tv/movie watcher. and i do watch a lot of them. Minimum 3 movies per week.

To people who disagree: sorry but you are wrong. Playing angry birds on your smartphone does not make you a gamer. Just as making a tornado in a bottle does not make you a scientist! There are arbitrary lines that define someone as a gamer but really, angry birds is not it. I wonder how many of the female gamers just play farmsville and then go: I'm such a gamer. I reply: no you're not. You know why? You refer to COD as: the one with all the guns. And Mass effect as: star wars? And strangely starcraft: also star wars?

If you cannot bring forth a very limited description of modern AAA games then you are not a gamer. That is where I draw my line. You don't even have to play them (personally for me COD can go fuck itself) but you need to know what they are.

You're wrong. See, two can play this game!
If you play games you are a gamer. thats it. There is no other requirement to being a gamer. you may not like it, but that does not matter. that is simple a fact. Gamers are people who play games. Therefore, playing games make you a gamer. Oh and angry birds and farmville are very much games. You do know that NASA made physics engine of angry birds (well they helped anyway). And people can sit for many hours on their farms just like you can sit in your COD. and if you call farmville not a game ill call COD not a game since all you do is press "w" and shoot people. there your playing COD. or better yet, lets pick Counter Strike. essentialy the games mechanics is pressing w and aiming/shooting. yet there are tournaments with millions in prizes. So what makes this game more "Real" than the farmville that is more complex than your COD or CS? the answer is whining of the gamers. Just because you dont think its a real game does not make it true.

Meh, someone that lables himself as a "gamer" is more to me, than just someone how durdles around on his cellphone for 5min waiting on the bus.

Gettin' a free bungee-jump/skydive on your birthday doesn't make you an extreme sports nut. Jogging once a week doesn't make you an athlete. Playing for 5min doesn't make you a "gamer" in the sense of a hobbyist.
I know that's an unpopular opinion nowadays, but that's just how it is to me.

ah, more false equivalences.
Jogging once a week makes you a jogger. Just like gaming once a week makes you a gamer. Athlete equivalence would be gaming enthusiast.

-----------------More added-------------

It's the difference between someone who plays soccer multiple times a week or even daily as a hobby or a profession, and someone who plays football during the break of school because there's nothing better to do.
Would you call the latter a soccer player? Ofcourse not.

This is not about who you are going to call "a gamer", but about statistics that have no substance, because there's no distinction made between these two groups of people.

Ofcourse yes, which is why your whole post is incorrect.
ANd if this is about statistics that have no substance ( i agree here) then why did you spent your entire post trying to tell us what is a "Real gamer"?

http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/5410

In a Gamefaqs poll of 38691 people, just 7.58% claimed to be female.

Broken down for Australia, 8.09% were female, which is a lot less than the 47% this poll is claiming.

There's quite a big contrast between the results of the two polls, so I wonder which source is more accurate and shows truer representation of the Games industry as a whole.

see, the problem is, this poll is that of Gamfaqs users and not of gamers. Not all gamers use gamefaqs, therefore making this pool much less reliable. It is very likely famefaqs ponder to specific audience with its content that skews the results (i use the site myself and it does seem to be very much methodical faqs centric)

How inaccurate can a simple binary poll be?

Very. Because there is no methodology against population bias. For example go to chinatown and ask what ethnicity people are. Very likely, vast majority with be asian. Now, to assume whole new york is mostly asian based on that would be very inaccurate.

Setting aside the definition of 'gamer,' I find these findings similar to the US statistics of gamers. Of course I may be mistaken but I wanna say close to 50% of gamers are female and the average age is late 20s to early 30s. Which reflect this article.

The US statistics is 45% and average age of 30. Yes the findings are close.

Depends on how often you play those games. If you own your own Xbox and you regularly play FIFA, then yeah you're a gamer. If you occasionally play FIFA while at your mate's house but otherwise aren't interested, then no.

What if i regullary play travian (think farmville if you dont know what it is). why am i no longer a gamer even if i spend exact same effort as a person you just called a gamer?

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

funny how you singled out two sucesfull female protagonists that are more known about their boob progression between games and "that game character i want to fuck" than the games themselves.

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.

Congratulations on your post number 666.
Also apparently i am no longer a gamer because i dont buy physical copies of games. Thank you for being allknowing god and deciding for us who is and isnt a gamer.

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

And what if i fit in all 3 categories? oh no, your categorizing seems to be wrong.

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.

and even more false equivalences.
playing farmville definatelly makes you a gamer. playing candy crush makes you mroe thna that - a supporter of king, but thats another topic. Going to a movie does make you a moviegoer. you know, its in the damn name of the thing. you dont want gamers. you want game enthusiasts to be the only ones playing games, and that is wrong.

Based on the general tone of responses in this thread, I'm starting to think hardcore gamers need their own 'Do you even lift' meme.

'Do you even grind', 'Do you even quickscope', 'Do you even make your own PC' all come to mind.

all 3 you mention are actually already memes. especialyl the quickscope one.

By the definition here, my mom is a gamer because she plays Scrabble with friends on her IPad, but if you ask her if what she's looking forward to more: the release of Dark Souls 2 or Lords of Shadow 2, you'll pretty quickly figure out just how meaningless the title really is.

i probably rack more hours on my PC than majority here and i spend up to 4 hours every day socializing with gamers on forums like these. yet i am looking for neither of the games you mention and i dont even know what lords of shadow is. Your measurement of gamer is crap.

nobody cares who's playing farmville, they care about who's playing the latest triple A titles

Oh, they care. They care because farmville is more profitable than any AAA game.

Yeah but the ''real'' gamers are the ones who drop all the money,

if "real" gamers are gamers who drop the most money then the only real gamers are mobile gamers.

Now I'll bet I could name a hundred good games, that most people would agree are good, quality games, some would even call masterpieces. I have doubts there are any games on mobile save plants versus zombies and Angry Birds that would be called masterpieces by anyone.

i couldnt name 100, mainly because i havent even played 100 mobile games to begin with, but there are games other than the two you mention. i would call Hill Climb Racing a masterpiece.

 

[Something Amyss]

[

Because they see there is a buck to be made, and the cost of making a game on the casual platform is an extremely low cost to profit ratio.

Then your argument doesn't hold up.

 

[WeepingAngels]

I guess I want to know why the headline highlights the 47% instead of the 53%.

 

[Something Amyss]

What is your reasoning of this assertion?

You're trying to rationalise arbitrary differences.

Since you're the one making the assertion, I don't need to do anything else. The burden of proof was on you, and you failed to meet it.

 

[Batou667]

This study really needed a breakdown of the demographics by age and gender to be meaningful (hell, it doesn't even mention whether the average age is the mean or the median). Just pointing out that almost half of gamers are women is meaningless, and that statistic can be abused to make silly arguments like "look, half of your userbase is female, so why aren't half of the characters in CoD female, hmmm?" If it turned out that females only actually make up, say, 5% of the military shooter gamerbase, that'd provide a very different message to the devs/publishers.

 

[Wyatt Wilkerson]

all this talk about "real gamers" the gaming community should be happy that people are enjoying games i think its good that games are entering the mainstream to the point where anyone can enjoy a game even if its not a game in the sense of what most people consider games the important part is that people can enjoy a game.

 

[Phasmal]

But they ARNT RL GAMURRRRRRRZ?!?!?

*sigh*

We really should stop this, you know.
I refuse to believe that I and the other lovely ladies of the Escapist are unicorns. We're not that rare and we don't sit around playing casual games all day.
If someone plays games, and says they are a gamer- why do we need to jump on them and draw lines?
I have friends who BARELY play games anymore, wouldn't manage to even START Dark Souls, and have very little 'nerd-cred'.
But nobody feels the need to jump on them and demand they `PROVE THEIR WORTH`. It's fine that they identify as gamers.
... They're all guys.

Do we really wonder why ladies hide on online matches? C'mon. Really?
You guys don't know? You're confused?
I don't buy it.

My suggestion, when you're talking with girls, bring up gaming and see if they bite or get a blank look on their face. I'd say there's a better chance you finding a girl who plays games as you would finding a girl that's a sports junkie. Like other hobbies people think as male-dominated, we're out there, you just have to ask.

I have tried talking about games with girls before and I usually get the blank face reaction, or they try and shift the conversation to another topic. Apart from the one girl I mentioned in my post, the most I ever found was a girl who played Plants vs Zombies. I guess I'm just unlucky, but I've never had a problem finding a guy to discuss gaming with.

To be fair, I have done the blank face before.
Usually it's if I've recently had a run in with the Nerd Police and I don't feel like doing the whole `Oh you play? You don't look like it` dance.

But that's only very rarely- really, I'd love it if guys talked to me about games, but they never do. So I would encourage people to bring it up even if you don't think they play. You never know.
When I do talk about games with guys, it's almost always me who brings it up (and then I find out they only play CoD or Madden.... *sigh*).

 

[wAriot]

My whole family and pretty much all of my friends play games. Me and a couple of my friends are the only ones with actual knowledge of them. Saying "I'm a gamer" is a blank statement that means nothing, because nowadays everyone is.

We need a new word for "real gamers", since that expression is so unwelcome. Not everyone that watches movies is a cinephile. Not everyone that reads books is a bibliophile. Not everyone that owns a car is a car enthusiast.

all this talk about "real gamers" the gaming community should be happy that people are enjoying games i think its good that games are entering the mainstream to the point where anyone can enjoy a game even if its not a game in the sense of what most people consider games the important part is that people can enjoy a game.

If you have no interest in gaming aside from just playing video games, there is no problem, but when you also want to discuss a bit of video game history, the state of the industry, the best stories, music or characters you've ever played, etc., it'd be preferable if the self-considered "gamer" you're discussing with has a bit more experience than just Farmville, Flappy Bird and Call of Duty 35. You know, to have an actual discussion, and not just a monologue.