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

[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.

 

[Therumancer]

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

Core gamers were defined as those who play "core" games for five or more hours per week.

Market research firm the NPD Group (who you may know as the guys who provide sales numbers for games every month) has conducted a large-scale survey of American PC gamers, and come up with some interesting observations. The 6,225 members survey were split into three groups - Heavy Core, Light Core, and Casual. Heavy Core gamers play "core" games for five or more hours per week, while Light Core gamers still enjoy core games, but do so for less than five hours a week, and Casual gamers only play non-core games. The survey found that the majority of gamers in the two "core" groups were male, while the casual group was "overwhelmingly female."

Just FYI, In order to qualify as a core gamer for the survey, respondents had to currently play Action/Adventure, Fighting, Flight, Massively Multi-Player (MMO), Racing, Real Time Strategy, Role-Playing, Shooter, or Sport games on a PC/Mac.

The largest segment is Casual at 56 percent, with Light Core at 24 percent, and Heavy Core at 20 percent. 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.

Of all the participants surveyed, 51% were male and 49% were female. The survey also determined that 37% of all participants above the age of 9 identified as someone who played PC games, and the average play time per week is 6.4 hours.

A few interesting patterns were discerned about PC gamers spending habits too. 46% of respondents had visited a digital storefront to buy games in the last year, and "half of PC gamers who play digital and/or physical games on the computer are expecting there to always be a sale right around the corner," said NPD analyst Liam Callahan.

Source: NPD Group [https://www.npd.com/wps/portal/npd/us/news/press-releases/37-percent-of-us-population-age-9-and-older-currently-plays-pc-games/]

Permalink

What are they considering "core" games, that's a big question.

That said, yeah, girls tend to like their hidden object and adventure games and the like. Games which seem to wind up entirely under the radar of sites like this, and thus tend to not be considered when questions like 'the number of female protagonists' come up.

The thing is though if you chopped off some parts of that casual market and put into the core, the results might be a lot different. I'd point out that years ago "Adventure Games" like Sierra's "Quest" series were a big deal and you saw tons of these titles released by a lot of companies. For whatever reason the major companies stopped producing them although they have always been out there, albeit somewhat neglected, and it seems they are on the rise again. The "Nancy Drew" series which is a hybrid adventure game series has a truly staggering number of installments if I remember. I simply wonder what the results would be if you put those kind of adventure games (ignoring pure hidden object ones I guess back into the core where they were years ago.

I'd also point out that corporate greed probably has something to do with this trend as well. Things that start out being aimed at a niche market never stay there when the bean counters get involved, and inevitably die when they fall short of increasingly high predicted profit margins, or when a company decides it wants to stop supporting a product properly or ensure it's quality. I look at the minimum age of those in the study here and how MMOs were on the core gamer list and how Disney has cancelled numerous MMOs for kids or all age groups, "Pixie Hollow", "Pirates Of The Caribbean", and "Toontown" all of which apparently saw very limited support and were axed despite a fair number of players in their community. I believe Sony also killed "Free Realms". I'm not sure if there are any kid-friendly MMOs out there (no snide comments about WoW please) and if the study went that young it probably loads it a bit given the current environment.

 

[Dastardly]

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.

That's not what that stat says. It says IN THE PAST THREE MONTHS.

Hardcore gamers spend in bursts -- ie, releases.

Casual gamers spend a little at a time, but seem to do it pretty often.

When you measure over a small amount of time, the burst is what will show. I'm not saying your conclusion is necessarily incorrect, but rather that's not what this statistic shows. You'd need to look at annual data.

 

[C.S.Strowbridge]

That comparison with movies is unfortunate considering that movies don't cost 60$ and that GTAV has a 2 BILLION dollar revenue putting it in the top three of best grossing movies of all time if compared with them.

It doesn't matter how much it costs when you are talking about the size of the audience. You don't need make a game that will please the majority of people, because the majority of people are not buying your game. Roughly 100 million people in the United States play games according to this survey. Only 33 million people worldwide bought GTAV. The Tomb Raider remake was aiming for 7 million units sold.

On the other hand, 68% of people saw at least one movie in 2012, or about 225 million. It will probably be about the same this year. The Avengers sold close to 100 million tickets, which isn't even the record. Selling 7 million tickets would only make a movie $57 million. That wouldn't be enough to make the top 50 this year.

This is why I pointed out the NISVS survey and the MRA reaction. Just because you have the numbers doesn't mean you know what to do with them.

Movies cost ten dollars, videogames cost 60$ and last MANY hours, you can't seriously make the comparison between sales and ignore the actual revenue.... It's like comparing car sales to smartphone sales. The fact of the matter is that videogames have become a very popular medium whether you want to accept it or not but it will never have the ease of access of movies so comparison between sales is myopic.

Are you intentionally ignoring what I wrote? Because what I wrote isn't complicated.

I'll try again.

You don't have to aim for a wide audience, because you only need to appeal to 2% of the audience to be a hit.

Got it?

And why do you keep bringing up MRAs? Why do you care so much about them?

Why do you keep bringing up feminists?

And I brought up MRAs here to make a point. Just because you have numbers doesn't mean you know what they mean.

 

[darkorion69]

Only two gender identity choice being possible in this study makes this too exclusionary for its findings to be accurately representative of the gender division in gaming. It is of additional concern that only core gamers were defined, whereas non-core gamers were lumped together; again in an exclusionary manner. If we are aiming to increase gender diversity in gaming, then we must find ways to be inclusive even in the terms with which we frame our discussion. Before someone claims I am jumping in as a SJW (Social Justice Warrior) here, please note that I am currently studying to become a Sociology Professor. As such I am only sharing my perspective on this topic to foster further discussion; not lecturing anyone on how they should post on the Internet.

 

[Thorn14]

To those saying "Who cares if there are hardcore or casual games, why must we have walls?": The fact that IAP are now becoming a common trend with seemingly little backlash is why I am against the fusion of the two.

Casual games tend to be free to play games that are designed to be played while on a bus or in a waiting room that try to siphon cash out of you through addicting gameplay but slow progress. See: Dungeon Keeper.

I don't want that crap in the type of games I play.

 

[Guerilla]

Are you intentionally ignoring what I wrote? Because what I wrote isn't complicated.

I'll try again.

You don't have to aim for a wide audience, because you only need to appeal to 2% of the audience to be a hit.

Got it?

I think we might be discussing different subjects. The whole point of my posts was to disagree with your claim that each game is a niche product which you tried to prove by comparing them to movies. They're not. It's like calling car models niche because they don't sell as much as smartphones. There's a different "ease of access" of products between different industries which explains the different sales, that doesn't in any way mean that a product is niche. Plus based on your logic each movie is niche too because only a very small percentage goes to see each compared to the entirely of cinema goers. What was your point?

 

[deadish]

Why is it I get the feeling at least one person is going to use this as justification as to why we shouldn't care about women in gaming.

What do you mean by "care"?

Complain on the Internet? Give click-bait SJW articles/videos page views?

Do you believe you are changing anything?

The game industry goes where the money is. What people "think" is irrelevant to them. Only what people pay is important.

 

[Dragonbums]

Why is it I get the feeling at least one person is going to use this as justification as to why we shouldn't care about women in gaming.

What do you mean by "care"?

Complain on the Internet? Give click-bait SJW articles/videos page views?

Do you believe you are changing anything?

The game industry goes where the money is. What people "think" is irrelevant to them. Only what people pay is important.

Not really. Plenty of companies have implemented products because people wanted them enough vocally. For instance McDonald's had no reason to implement healthy foods into their kids meals. After all the health nuts complaining about them aren't an active buyer of their product. They did it anyway and they got a new market. Now they have health nuts - who previously wouldn't touch their food with a 10 foot pole and regular consumers. Videogames seems to be the only industry where no matter how vocal a large minority gets they will find any excuse to not do it.

 

[prpshrt]

This is like saying HR core employees mostly female, male employees mostly there as a short term job while they're looking for something else. Almost sounds like gaming's being accused for being mostly male. Big deal if a hobby is enjoyed by more of one gender than the other.

 

[C.S.Strowbridge]

Are you intentionally ignoring what I wrote? Because what I wrote isn't complicated.

I'll try again.

You don't have to aim for a wide audience, because you only need to appeal to 2% of the audience to be a hit.

Got it?

I think we might be discussing different subjects. The whole point of my posts was to disagree with your claim that each game is a niche product which you tried to prove by comparing them to movies. They're not. It's like calling car models niche because they don't sell as much as smartphones.

And you would be 100% correct if you said that. ... Except for the fact that Smartphones and model cars are not in the same market.

Model cars are a niche market. Comics are a niche market. Nitting supplies is a niche market. These are all hobby / entertainment that appeals to a tiny fraction of the population.

Mainstream TV is not a niche market. $100 million movies are not a niche market.

Plus based on your logic each movie is niche too because only a very small percentage goes to see each compared to the entirely of cinema goers.

More people saw Guardians of the Galaxy than bought GTAV. GTAV is the best-selling video game of all time. The average summer blockbuster needs to sell 25 million tickets to break even. That's domestically. The average video game is a hit with a fraction of that number.

On the other hand, a found footage horror film is a niche product.