Core Gamers Mostly Male, Casual Gamers Mostly Female, Says NPD

[Harpalyce]

Ah yes, desperate recategorizing in order to get the girls out of the clubhouse continues.

If we were doing this per hours played, or by hours played out of total leisure time (which I think is a much better representation of what qualifies a gamer, e.g., somebody who plays video games with the majority of their leisure time), the split would go back to near 50-50.

More sexist white noise, this time in eau de quick-let's-redraw-the-categories.

 

[Requia]

Ah yes, desperate recategorizing in order to get the girls out of the clubhouse continues.

If we were doing this per hours played, or by hours played out of total leisure time (which I think is a much better representation of what qualifies a gamer, e.g., somebody who plays video games with the majority of their leisure time), the split would go back to near 50-50.

More sexist white noise, this time in eau de quick-let's-redraw-the-categories.

Did you like, just boot up the Internet for the first time? Casuals not being real gamers has been a thing for a lot longer than people have been yammering about women gamers being equal in numbers.

 

[Harpalyce]

Ah yes, desperate recategorizing in order to get the girls out of the clubhouse continues.

If we were doing this per hours played, or by hours played out of total leisure time (which I think is a much better representation of what qualifies a gamer, e.g., somebody who plays video games with the majority of their leisure time), the split would go back to near 50-50.

More sexist white noise, this time in eau de quick-let's-redraw-the-categories.

Did you like, just boot up the Internet for the first time? Casuals not being real gamers has been a thing for a lot longer than people have been yammering about women gamers being equal in numbers.

Don't worry, I've been around awhile. The casual vs. "real gamer" phenomenon has always been exclusionary bullshit. It's just rare to get an example so blatant as people moving the goalposts to redefine 'casual' in an oddly arbitrary manner as to reinforce the gender bias they want to have going on and keep women out of the "real gamer" population.

 

[Harpalyce]

What do you mean regarding leisure time? That men or women get more or less of it (leisure time, that is), or that time spent is a better measure than types of games played?

Though we could totally discuss how women, while being fully employed, in relationships are also still expected to do most of the chores therefore leading to imbalanced leisure time amounts starting from when girls are about 8 compared to their brothers and all depressing studies thereof, I was mainly thinking of a better measure of it.

The no-true-scotsman argument can continue on and on and on for as long as you want, which things are "really" games and which things aren't. If you measure (time playing games)/(total leisure time), that % then balances both for varying leisure time (which is going to go all over the place depending on class, for example, just to take sexism out of it completely for a moment) as well as leaves out that dog-chasing-its-own-tail fight of what is a ~real game~ and what isn't. A more accurate answer with less variables, as a scientist, sounds damn good to me. (The more simple it is, the less points on which it can screw up.)

 

[Harpalyce]

Wow, miss... you may have some severe personal/relationship issues there. Perhaps seeking the help of a psychiatrist or a relationship counselor might be a better plan than tossing that one to the internet as some sort of masked cry for help?

I mean, we can certainly tell you to HTFU and stop being a doormat for your boyfriend (because that isn't normal, kid), but I don't know that we'll be any actual help on that one, beyond pointing out that there clearly IS a problem that needs addressing there.

Just single http://asr.sagepub.com/content/76/6/809.abstract with http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/61984/chores.pdf;jsessionid=7001D71465DCFA4C78E604E121417010 an eye http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/do-girls-have-more-chores-than-boys/ for interesting studies. http://www.eijtur.org/pdf/volumes/eIJTUR-7-1-5_Time_Pieces.pdf http://business.time.com/2012/12/21/closing-the-chore-gap/ http://www.oecd.org/gender/closingthegap.htm (More are likely available; "free time gender gap", "chore gap" are two sets of keywords.)

They finally do a useful study, therefore its sexist white noise. If you consider someone who spends 20 hours on bejeweled a week as the same catorgory as the same one as someone who spends 20 hours playing Dark Souls or DOTA 2 or whatever a week, as the same catorgory when your doing marketing and choosing how to design your game, then you wouldn't be a very smart game developer.

And as said before, a casual game is designed with different rules to a core game. It doesn't matter if you think their different, the game devs know they are and can very easily tell the difference between one.

Honestly? If you base game design on these statistics alone you're a fool, because it's lumping together every different platform. But that gamer spending 20 hours a week on Candy Crush? They're your market. They're your group most likely to give you 5 dollars here and there, and that keeps your game going. They're the ones most dedicated to making gaming part of their lives. And that's what a gamer is, isn't it? Maybe they don't play ~*super duper hardcore*~ games. But they're playing, and they're playing a majority of their free time. They have just made playing video games their number one hobby. That is a gamer. No two ways around it. Sorry that you're getting chafed by this news.

A casual gamer is "not really a gamer". A candy crush fanatic is "not really a gamer". And redefining boundaries just so you can say "oh well, women are only casual gamers, therefore not really gamers at all" is sexist. It's pretty simple, you guys.

 

[Harpalyce]

And once AGAIN you missed the fucking point. In terms of the very basic concepts of game design, casual games are not core games. They run on different rules of design. You literally cannot make a game that is both core and casual.
Secondly, your raging. If you say core games means 'super duper hardcore' games, your either ignorant or just a raging child. And heres the thing about raging children. Your a dime a dozen, and no one remembers or cares about you.

Candy crush fanatics wont buy a new RPG or a new shooter or a new whatever fucking genre you like. Therefore, they a fundamentally different audiences, and therefore to mesh them with core gamers would ruin the whole statistics. Ruins the whole push of feminism in gaming or not, those statistics are far more valid then one that meshes casual gamers and core gamers.

You're. That should be you're, short for you are, instead of your, which is possessive.

(Countdown to real display of raging in three, two...)

And of course Candy Crush fanatics aren't going to buy a new shooter. Your average core gamer who's only interested in RPGs isn't going to particularly be interested in it, either. This 'core gamer' distinction actually brings us very little data in terms of what individual markets are doing and what products may be of interest to those sub-groups. Which was my point. Which you missed. Again. The only difference this study makes, instead of much more logically defining a core gamer as one who spends the majority of their free time on gaming and has made gaming their primary hobby, is to arbitrarily say that one group is less valid for choosing a particular group of games over the other.

A core gamer in definition should be somebody who makes games their primary hobby - not a gamer that only plays a specific subset of games. As others have noticed, there are some pretty big gaps - are people that play DOTAs now casual gamers and therefore invalid? Are people who enjoy retro games now invalid, and what makes Pac Man legit while Candy Crush is right out? Is someone who plays Telltale's games religiously out of bounds because they forgot to make that on their list? What about the lucrative virtual-ccg type video game market? Why do these things get excluded while somebody who plays the most boringly realistic flight simulator - somebody most of us couldn't identify with if that was their thing and only their thing - gets counted as a real gamer by this survey?

My argument is that they've chosen a flawed definition in order to corral out female gamers yet again. There's more discussion in his thread about how their definition is flawed if you need further illumination.

 

[Harpalyce]

You seem really invested in the idea that I'm crying. That's a little weird, dude; I'm not gonna be your fetish. It's cool if you're into crying girls or whatever but maybe go pick on your girlfriend's low self-esteem for that. I'm just kinda bemused that I keep laying out the same idea and you keep passing it up.

I think there are plenty of games - the ones you're pulling exceptions for - that many of us would consider "real games" simply because they weren't originally identified for that casual (predominantly female or neutral) audience. And I could probably find plenty of "core games" that you would demand to not be let in the "core game" property. Unless you're cool with a fourteen year old girl who spends her time playing Star Stable Online to be a "core gamer", or maybe a grandmother of four who spends all her time playing hidden object games with the occasional replay of Wadjet Eye's Wizard of Oz retelling point-and-click to be a core gamer, but I'm getting this impression that you won't be.

Let's say you write off my feminist ramblings as hysteria for a bit. We're still left with this flawed and broken definition. And the effect of this definition is to corral most women gamers in what have been arbitrarily declared 'core' (and valid) versus 'casual' (and invalid). You can say that this is just coincidence, but the effect is still there, and the effect is still kinda hinky.

But hey, it's fine with me if you want to leave it there. I'll be happy to explain my point of view to other folks who want to try and pick up where I'm coming from.

 

[Aaron Sylvester]

"It's not our fault for scaring you off gaming, it's YOUR fault because you don't try hard enough!". I've heard this argument many times.

It's not a argument. It's the harsh reality, the harsh truth. It's what happens. What are women going to do about it? Are they strong and determined to push through the challenges they face in the competitive gaming scene? That is the question.

You know one thing? Why don't men learn knitting? It's obvious that their brain is not capable of the organization, perseverance, calm and patience required for such a thing. It's not because knitting has been presented as a socially feminine thing, and any man who knits is worried to be mocked or be called gay because he'd be surrounded by an all-female community. No, nope, it's nothing like that. The real reason men don't knit is because their brain lacks patience, lacks control and lacks concentration. /sarcasm

That's a dumb example because men aren't actively trying to get into knitting competitions and aren't facing harassment on their way up.

I have said it once and I'll say it again, reversing the roles doesn't work because sexism/etc is 99% an issue revolving around females facing issues/challenges in male spaces.

 

[Guerilla]

You seem really invested in the idea that I'm crying. That's a little weird, dude; I'm not gonna be your fetish. It's cool if you're into crying girls or whatever but maybe go pick on your girlfriend's low self-esteem for that. I'm just kinda bemused that I keep laying out the same idea and you keep passing it up.

I think there are plenty of games - the ones you're pulling exceptions for - that many of us would consider "real games" simply because they weren't originally identified for that casual (predominantly female or neutral) audience. And I could probably find plenty of "core games" that you would demand to not be let in the "core game" property. Unless you're cool with a fourteen year old girl who spends her time playing Star Stable Online to be a "core gamer", or maybe a grandmother of four who spends all her time playing hidden object games with the occasional replay of Wadjet Eye's Wizard of Oz retelling point-and-click to be a core gamer, but I'm getting this impression that you won't be.

Let's say you write off my feminist ramblings as hysteria for a bit. We're still left with this flawed and broken definition. And the effect of this definition is to corral most women gamers in what have been arbitrarily declared 'core' (and valid) versus 'casual' (and invalid). You can say that this is just coincidence, but the effect is still there, and the effect is still kinda hinky.

But hey, it's fine with me if you want to leave it there. I'll be happy to explain my point of view to other folks who want to try and pick up where I'm coming from.

The part about the whining that he describes is EXACTLY what you did in that page. Instead of trying to argue rationally how on earth core games can be the same as casual (they're not...) you took the NPD report as an attack on women to try to exclude them even though the core vs casual distinction has existed forever. It seems that feminists always look for a reason to be offended or cry injustice instead of taking the time to argue like rational human beings.

The definition of core gamer has existed for many years and anyone with a minimum grasp of the gaming industry can understand why. You can't put a game like flappy bird where you just tap the screen in the same category as Divinity Original Sin for example or cinematic action like Uncharted, that's ridiculous. One's an app that gives you some challenge and you play on the bathroom and the other is a full fledged game.

 

[Harpalyce]

The part about the whining that he describes is EXACTLY what you did in that page. Instead of trying to argue rationally how on earth core games can be the same as casual (they're not...) you took the NPD report as an attack on women to try to exclude them even though the core vs casual distinction has existed forever. It seems that feminists always look for a reason to be offended or cry injustice instead of taking the time to argue like rational human beings.

The definition of core gamer has existed for many years and anyone with a minimum grasp of the gaming industry can understand why. You can't put a game like flappy bird where you just tap the screen in the same category as Divinity Original Sin for example or cinematic action like Uncharted, that's ridiculous. One's an app that gives you some challenge and you play on the bathroom and the other is a full fledged game.

You seem to have missed my penultimate paragraph in that post and one that I consider the most important. Let me highlight it again for your consideration.

Let's say you write off my feminist ramblings as hysteria for a bit. We're still left with this flawed and broken definition. And the effect of this definition is to corral most women gamers in what have been arbitrarily declared 'core' (and valid) versus 'casual' (and invalid). You can say that this is just coincidence, but the effect is still there, and the effect is still kinda hinky.

There are plenty of female gamer dominated fields and subgenres that can be considered core gaming in that sense that are getting left out, by the way. For example, the simulation genre, in certain titles, has a history of being female-dominated; as Extra Credits notes in their episode "overlooked" the entire hidden object game industry often outright pitches to women and is dominated by female protagonists, etc etc you get the idea. If things like simulation games and point-and-click games and story-rich hidden object games are considered non-core by this standard, you may have to explain to me a little bit of what core games exactly mean to you instead of saying that everyone knows what it means, as all of these genres go way beyond match-3 or frantic flappy bird style clicking gameplay.

Their definition of 'core' is pretty flawed even if you think I'm speaking nonsense and bunk because they're leaving out some pretty big areas. They decided to define core, for this survey, by genre of game, and they missed a few big ones (MOBAs, virtual CCGs) and a lot of little ones (pinball, arcade, hidden object, point and click). You might be using a better definition based on how the game is coded - but this survey, well, isn't, therefore the two definitions of 'core gamer' are at odds.

Again: even if you think I am full of bullshit and am an actual feminist monster with seven heads spewing propoganda the likes of which corrupt innocent children forever, they are working with a bad definition of 'core gamer', and the effect of that bad definition is excluding female-dominated fields and therefore skewing the end results.

When I see a bad definition that's being used, and the end effect is to invalidate female gamers, yeah, I'm gonna call it as the bullshit it is. Sorry if that gets your feathers all ruffled, but it is what it is.

 

[Guerilla]

Exactly, they missed a few others too that are male dominated and A LOT more popular because they probably added them in one of the other categories as MMO or strategy. This isn't some big anti-woman conspiracy organized by NPD, it's just that they didn't feel like creating a fuckton of categories.

They know full well who the core gamers are, they're the ones not playing cheap android games in the toilet once a while and calling themselves gamers.

 

[Harpalyce]

Suffice to say I see it differently. Women being given a hard time in the gaming community and constantly being de-legitimized is, well, nothing new, and nothing terribly surprising, just sort of depressing to see. To give it a name such as conspiracy would be to legitimize it too much. It's just that gaming is constantly thought of as a male space, and this batch of statistics will no doubt be used to fuel the "but REAL gaming is only for MEN!" fire.

So perhaps it's time to agree to disagree, Guerilla. But thank you for your time talking to me. I appreciate it.

 

[generals3]

The real question is, with all of the many casual games, and all of the casual gamers playing them, why do we still lean on this crutch of refering to this other class of games as the "core?"

Because: "Though Heavy Core is the smallest segment, they spend a significantly higher number of hours gaming in an average week, and have spent roughly twice as much money in the past 3 months on physical or digital games for the computer than Casual PC gamers."

They're the main source of income for the industry so off course they're its core.