Eamar said:
Wait, I'm used to seeing people discount social games (something I understand) and perhaps mobile games in these arguments, but since when are MMOs not "real" games (because that's what these arguments are about, let's be honest)? If women were over-represented in RTS games or RPGs, would you take them out of the equation too?
I don't get it.
I'm not sure of the exclusion of MMOs either, but it might have to do with the vast majority of them being freemium in one sense or another, and so use a very different production/distribution model than AAA titles.
On another topic, the real question these surveys should be concentrating on is how many female gamers are willing to drop $60 on a game, since the complaint is, more often than not, that these games are not being marketed/designed for women.
I'm not making a judgement call on this; I do not feel that this is either good or bad. But, the ESA is not helping anyone when they post statistics like "Women 18 or older represent a significantly greater portion of the Game-playing population (36%) than boys age 17 or younger (17%)" (source: http://www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/esa_ef_2014.pdf ). The Publishers know what games most of the 17 and younger year old boys are playing (Madden, CoD, Pokemon) but do any of us know what games most of the 50+ year old women are playing? Or 40+ year old, 15+ year old?
The ESA surveys are often used to take to task publishers for not embracing a full 48% of their audience, but this does not account for what percentage of the women in this 48% will never play one of their titles, even if its marketed specifically for them.
Edited to fix link.