Men: Now a Minority in PC Gaming.

[Vigormortis]

No, they're not both "gamers" because your version of "gamers" wouldn't self-identify as such while "video game hobbyists" would. Even if you want to distort the term gamer to encompass "everyone that has ever played a video game" then it has no descriptive value and the point of this survey would be to say that more than half of PC "video game hobbyists" are women.

Distort? I'm distorting nothing.

Anyone that plays a video game in their spare time; notably those that devote a good portion of that free time to those games; is a gamer, in my book. I don't care what games they're playing, if they're playing video games as a dedicated pass-time, then they're a gamer.

To analogize: people that watch football every once in a while and generally keep up with scores in the newspaper might be "sports fans", but true "sports nuts" are the ones in the statistics and fantasy leagues who keep up with every pick of the draft, have complicated predictive models, and talk about every facet of the game. Gamers are the "sports nuts" of games, just because we don't have a great term apart from "casual gamer" to describe sports fans doesn't mean that everyone who follows football is a sports nut.

Like I said, we have a difference in definition.

You're operating under the definition that "gamer" is an exclusionary term. It's reserved solely for people who fit into a very narrow description that you've conceived of.

For me, as I've said above, a "gamer" is anyone who loves to play video games and spends their spare time playing them. It's not for anyone who's ever played a video game. I don't consider those people who sit in casinos playing video slots to be video gamers. I'm referring to those who actively seek out and play dedicated video games whenever they can or feel the desire to.

You discount those who only like to play "casual" or mobile games. But what of those "dude-bro" players who only play Call of Duty and Madden? Or those people who only play Final Fantasy or some other JRPG series? Or those that only play fighting games? They're avid fans of those games. They talk about them within and without the games. They spend exuberant levels of cash on the games and the systems to play them. They keep up to date on the developers and pro-player scenes associated with the games.

Are these players not gamers? Are they not "hardcore" enough for you to consider them gamers? If you consider them gamers, then how are they any different than those gamers who only play casual and mobile games? If you don't consider them gamers, then where do we draw the line on what a "real gamer" is? How many different games must one play before they're a gamer? How 'devoted' must one be to the medium to be considered a gamer?

This is why so many non-gamers view us in such a negative light, and why so many refuse to identify as a gamer. So many of us spend our time trying to define the term, and by corollary ourselves, in a such a way that we exclude anyone who may be different. Making "gamer" an exclusionary term undermines the very notion of "inclusiveness" so many of us keep insisting gamers strive for.

I'm not suggesting the term be made so broad as to encompass everyone who's ever played a game or just looked at a game screen once. I'm just saying that if someone spends a lot of time playing a video game, they're a gamer, even if you personally don't consider the games they play to be "real games".

snip

I just wanted to say thank you. It's always good to see a different perspective on things.

Though...not that different, in my case. A lot of my female gamer friends have had similar experiences.

Still, it's great to see a generally positive tale for once.

Thank you.

 

[Phasmal]

Why are you posting here, shouldn't you be off playing Farmville?

Filthy casual, can't even keep your crops alive.

I keep trying but there's buttons and things and I get confused and have to fan myself with a handbag or something.
It's awfully complicated. If only I was a manly man, being able to hold controllers and things.

Does it matter? No.
Have I ever met a girl gamer? No.
Have I ever met a male gamer? Many, many, many times.
Is the thread title click bait? Yes.

If all these girls really are playin' the vidja gamz, where are they? Why do they hide the fact? Why don't they socialize like everyone else in real life? Maybe a lot of those 'girls' are g.i.r.ls.

Either way, doesn't matter at all. What kind of point is there to prove here?

How did I miss this post?
Yeah dude, you caught us. We're just all dudes, secretly. We totally had you going, though.

Honestly, who cares if some guy hasn't met any female gamers? I never understand these kind of responses.

 

[Little Gray]

Why are you posting here, shouldn't you be off playing Farmville?

Filthy casual, can't even keep your crops alive.

I keep trying but there's buttons and things and I get confused and have to fan myself with a handbag or something.
It's awfully complicated. If only I was a manly man, being able to hold controllers and things.

Dont worry we will get you that stove shaped controller eventually.

 

[Savagezion]

Hmmm... so

If you have ever made a bet, you must be a a gambler.

If you have ever stolen anything, you must be a thief.

If you have ever lied, you must be a liar.

If you have ever seen someone naked, you must be a pervert.

This logic does not apply to ANY other criteria... why is that?

 

[deth2munkies]

No, they're not both "gamers" because your version of "gamers" wouldn't self-identify as such while "video game hobbyists" would. Even if you want to distort the term gamer to encompass "everyone that has ever played a video game" then it has no descriptive value and the point of this survey would be to say that more than half of PC "video game hobbyists" are women.

Distort? I'm distorting nothing.

Anyone that plays a video game in their spare time; notably those that devote a good portion of that free time to those games; is a gamer in my book. I don't care what games they're playing, if they're playing video games as a dedicated pass-time, then they're a gamer.

To analogize: people that watch football every once in a while and generally keep up with scores in the newspaper might be "sports fans", but true "sports nuts" are the ones in the statistics and fantasy leagues who keep up with every pick of the draft, have complicated predictive models, and talk about every facet of the game. Gamers are the "sports nuts" of games, just because we don't have a great term apart from "casual gamer" to describe sports fans doesn't mean that everyone who follows football is a sports nut.

Like I said, we have a difference in definition.

You're operating under the definition that "gamer" is an exclusionary term. It's reserved solely for people who fit into a very narrow description that you've conceived of.

For me, as I've said above, a "gamer" is anyone who loves to play video games and spends their spare time playing them. It's not for anyone who's ever played a video game. I don't consider those people who sit in casinos paying video slots to be video gamers. I'm referring to those who actively seek out and play dedicated video games whenever they can or feel the desire to.

You discount those who only like to play "casual" or mobile games. But what of those "dude-bro" players who only play Call of Duty and Madden? Or those people who only play Final Fantasy or some other JRPG series? Or those that only play fighting games? They're avid fans of those games. They talk about them within and without the games. They spend exuberant levels of cash on the games and the systems to play them. They keep up to date on the developers and pro-player scenes associated with the games.

Are these players not gamers? Are they not "hardcore" enough for you to consider them gamers? If you consider them gamers, then how are they any different than those gamers who only play casual and mobile games? If you don't consider them gamers, then where do we draw the line on what a "real gamer" is? How many different games must one play before they're a gamer? How 'devoted' must one be to the medium to be considered a gamer?

This is why so many non-gamers view us in such a negative light, and why so many refuse to identify as a gamer. So many of us spend our time trying to define the term, and by corollary ourselves, in a such a way that we exclude anyone who may be different. Making "gamer" an exclusionary term undermines the very notion of "inclusiveness" so many of us keep insisting gamers strive for.

I'm not suggesting the term be made so broad as to encompass everyone who's ever played a game or just looked at a game screen once. I'm just saying that if someone spends a lot of time playing a video game, they're a gamer, even if you personally don't consider the games they play to be "real games".

Every single term establishing a category is BY DEFINITION exclusionary. It may be a cute buzzword to throw around, but you can't claim that any group definition isn't exclusionary, that is the FUNCTION of grouping things. I don't want to split hairs or suggest that there is some minimum threshhold for how serious of a gamer you have to be to qualify. It's enough that you enjoy the medium, self identify, and participate in some way in the culture. If you think that's vague or broad, it's intentional. Anyone of any race, gender, or creed can become a gamer simply by wanting to.

The thing is, the average person who plays Farmville for 3 hours a week is unlikely to meet any one of those 3 prongs. They don't care about gaming or gaming culture, they just enjoy Farmville as a momentary distraction from their daily life and go on having other interests and hobbies, and that's perfectly fine.

Look, I'm of the opinion that gaming culture needs to adapt to becoming more widespread and mainstream and to stop acting like the nerd getting wedgies in the back of the class vowing revenge. We need to deal with the fact that we're growing out of our awkward teen years where we got picked on and are expected to mature as a subculture. That includes inviting everyone in and not acting exclusionary or tolerating any sort of this sexism or racism that has been present in the seedy underbelly since forever. I'm all for women in games. What I'm not for is distorting statistics, making huge sweeping generalizations, and using broad, meaningless labels to write off entire sections of the population.

This study is most likely a distortion of statistics both at the study level and at the journalistic level. My first post had all the study level, but at a journalistic level, this is being reported as women becoming prevalent in the gamer culture, and that's simply not true. Hopefully one day it will be close to 50% and mirror the population, but that day isn't today.

One more aside while I'm thinking about it:

Gamer culture is much more accepting than people give it credit for. With the numerous examples that I've personally either taken part in or seen playing Magic: The Gathering at card shops to every single thread on a gaming forum asking which games someone should start out with, gamers love sharing their hobby. We may squabble amongst ourselves about which is better, but in the end all we really care about is the love for games. In spite of recent events, the vast majority of my time with this subculture has been magnificent and I've seen wonderful things and immense charity and grace in difficult situations. I desire nothing but to see gaming flourish and people to enjoy not only their hobby, but interacting with other like minds and with people who are interested. No matter who those people might be.

 

[Vigormortis]

The thing is, the average person who plays Farmville for 3 hours a week is unlikely to meet any one of those 3 prongs. They don't care about gaming or gaming culture, they just enjoy Farmville as a momentary distraction from their daily life and go on having other interests and hobbies, and that's perfectly fine.

Look, I'm of the opinion that gaming culture needs to adapt to becoming more widespread and mainstream and to stop acting like the nerd getting wedgies in the back of the class vowing revenge. We need to deal with the fact that we're growing out of our awkward teen years where we got picked on and are expected to mature as a subculture. That includes inviting everyone in and not acting exclusionary or tolerating any sort of this sexism or racism that has been present in the seedy underbelly since forever. I'm all for women in games. What I'm not for is distorting statistics, making huge sweeping generalizations, and using broad, meaningless labels to write off entire sections of the population.

This study is most likely a distortion of statistics both at the study level and at the journalistic level. My first post had all the study level, but at a journalistic level, this is being reported as women becoming prevalent in the gamer culture, and that's simply not true. Hopefully one day it will be close to 50% and mirror the population, but that day isn't today.

I never implied twisting or distorting statistics nor did I suggest making any kind of sweeping generalizations. I detest sweeping generalizations. I was simply saying that, by my definition, even dedicated Facebook game players are gamers. That's all.

I'm not identifying them under some ideological blanket term, I'm using the term simply as a descriptor of their pass-time or hobbyist activities.

And really, I don't disagree. In fact, I think you and I are in agreement in a number of areas on this particular topic. It's just that I feel that removing much of the stigma and unnecessarily exclusionary tendencies associated with the term "gamer" can help with that goal.

That's all I was getting at.

 

[Cryselle]

The problem with this is the lack of granularity really. I'm not going to argue whether someone who plays social games is or isn't a gamer, because 'gamer' is a label that means different things to different people.

The problem is, nobody makes video games for 'gamers'. They make video games for FPS lovers, or RPG lovers, or sometimes even lovers of a specific game or series. EA makes Madden games for people who love Madden games, that's literally their target demographic. Wildstar was pretty much created for people who were in love with Vanilla and the Burning Crusade expansion of World of Warcraft. These are some pretty specifically targetted games here, and that's how the industry tends to work. A good study has to at least try to approach the same level of granularity as the subject of the study, or you can't really base any useful conclusions off of it. A Candy Crush player may be as valid to call a gamer as a competitive League of Legends player, but nobody cares when it comes to trying to predict who will line up to buy Bayonetta 2. You can't even ask me what my favorite game is without an immediate "In what genre?" response, because trying to combine all the different genres into a whole is absurd. The same goes for video gaming culture, FPS culture is not fighting game culture is not JRPG fandom is not Facebook gaming.

(Though, on an anecdotal note, both my partner and I own matching Mass Effect sweaters that we wear out on the town together, since we're both big fans of the series. By far more women have recognized and commented on them than men. Make of that what you will, I suppose?)

 

[mad825]

lol wat? This is not a opinion poll. This is objective information that is being gathered here. Surveys need a large sample size, have you never done a scientific survey before?

I have, and you're talking nonsense.

pfffft like hell you have.

Did you miss the part where I said you were free to question the methodology? Like, seriously, don't ask me questions that run contrary to what I wrote. It's either dishonest or ignorant, and both are a waste of time.

Lulz, So let me get this straight, you say that this survey is valid and yet when I question you about it, you refuse and throw rude remarks. Sorry, it sounds like you're on the SJW wagon. it's either dishonest or ignorant, and both are a waste of time, two can play at that game.

 

[Beliyal]

Does it matter? No.
Have I ever met a girl gamer? No.
Have I ever met a male gamer? Many, many, many times.
Is the thread title click bait? Yes.

If all these girls really are playin' the vidja gamz, where are they? Why do they hide the fact? Why don't they socialize like everyone else in real life? Maybe a lot of those 'girls' are g.i.r.ls.

Either way, doesn't matter at all. What kind of point is there to prove here?

Some people already answered you, including a very nice big post that I identify with a lot, but perhaps if more people answer you, maybe you'll understand better why we hide the fact.

We hide it because we are in a position where our enjoyment of video games is questioned, denied, attacked and shamed. Admitting that you play games brought many women into unwanted positions of being laughed at, aggressively checked for gamer-cred, outright accused of lying and often singled out as undesirable ugly bitches or men in disguise (if online).

We hide because of posts like yours.

And if someone IRL said something like you said, you bet your ass that I wouldn't say anything and expose myself to the hostile environment in which I would likely be all alone.

Luckily, things are changing so I'm no longer afraid or reluctant to present myself as someone who plays games, I even wear shirts that obviously tell everyone that I play games or I play on my 2DS in public. But I still remain "the odd one" in the group, unless I manage to find a group of other gamers (who already know that I am a gamer too. I won't ever approach people I don't know and join them in their gaming talk, at least not any time soon, there is just too much risk attached and I simply don't have the will to expose myself to anything social anxiety inducing).

If you want to meet women who play games, try asking nicely and not dismissing them. And don't ever use this rhetoric about how we're some fabled unicorns just because women have not fallen before your feet and proclaimed themselves to be gamers. We are here and we exist and it would be nice to say something welcoming instead of using dated memes to deny our existence.

 

[HalfTangible]

Irrelevant statistics are irrelevant. It does not matter what percentage as a whole are male or female because games do not appeal to the whole they appeal to specific groups.

50.2% out of 1000.

That's 2 people.

TWO. PEOPLE.

(EDIT: well okay, 4 people if you count the 2 men down from the probably 49.8%)

The margin for error is 3-4%.

This entire survey's results could be the result of a TYPO.

Math must not be your strong suit.

50.2% = 50.2/100 = 502/1000

2 people over the halfway mark, 4 more than the remaining.

Margin of error: 3-4% = 30-40 people.

So... no. Not over the margin of error.

 

[Erttheking]

Snip

Um...YES! If you steal something you are by definition a thief! If you gambled, you are a gamblier. If you looked at someone naked (Intentionally that is) you are a pervert. If you lied, you are a liar. You can drop the habit, just like you can drop gaming, but that's it.

 

[Solsbury_Grille]

I don't see that many women investing in a G27 and a copy of Assetto Corsa on Steam.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

I keep reading statistics like this, and I'm sorry, but I never see the evidence. The way its phrased, one would imagine female gamers are everywhere, all the time, playing their games. In the almost 30 years I've been alive, I've met 1 female gamer. Yes yes, anecdotal, blah blah. But my question is this: where are they? Are they too ashamed to admit they're gamers? Do they all just live in Austin or Tokyo or congregate in a single place? Do all female gamers just agree to never admit to liking games and live lives of quiet desperation, denying what they love, simply...'cause? Is it like a Bible thing where if they deny being gamers three times, Half Life 3 comes out?

Also not sure how fair it is to post mobile games in the studies.

 

[Loonyyy]

lol wat? This is not a opinion poll. This is objective information that is being gathered here. Surveys need a large sample size, have you never done a scientific survey before?

I have, and you're talking nonsense.

pfffft like hell you have.

Starting to see why you only got an average grade for that survey. After demonstrating ignorance of the subject, and of the statistical analysis, and complaining that the sample size is too small (without good justification), you jump straight to defending your blatant misrepresentation of surveying with pre-school responses?

Did you miss the part where I said you were free to question the methodology? Like, seriously, don't ask me questions that run contrary to what I wrote. It's either dishonest or ignorant, and both are a waste of time.

Lulz, So let me get this straight, you say that this survey is valid and yet when I question you about it, you refuse and throw rude remarks.

If you got "The survey is valid" from that Zachary, you're either mistaken or lying. Questioning the methodology involves actual claims, and actual testing. Like, is their sample size big enough to make certain claims with the data, or is their sampling biased, or were their questions poorly worded. Complaining that the sample is "small" relative to nothing says nothing. Additionally, checking the original joystiq report, the results are the accumulation of several surveys with a minimum sample size of 1000.

Someone came up with the figure of 3-4% margin of error. If that's the case, I'm pretty sure .5 is included in the 95% CI, so I'm not sure that we can conclude that significantly more or less women or men play games. I'm not 100% on that, since I don't have the full data, or a complete breakdown of useful data, but I'm not going to dig around for someone else's analysis to teach someone first year hypothesis testing.

Crying about rude remarks while bragging about your apparent experience in surveys, yet making basic errors in understanding them, and trying to play the SCIENCE card (Mistakenly), and outright accusing people of lying about their experience, when they demonstrate more knowledge than you. That's pathetic, and another to the end of a series of ad hominem, straight up bullshit and invective.

Sorry, it sounds like you're on the SJW wagon. it's either dishonest or ignorant, and both are a waste of time, two can play at that game.

And then that makes someone an SJW. Pathetic. And as to how pointing out that the sample size complaint isn't so grounded as the ignorant think it is dishonest or ignorant, I'll leave to the more imaginative. I'll have to let the statisticians, mathematicians, scientists, and people participating in surveys that they're SJWs. It's good to see this though. I remember when people disagreed with each other in my first tutorial on hypothesis testing. Everyone decided that everyone was biased, or a Social Justice Warrior, or that they were lying, and they shouted at each other, and science prevailed. Oh wait. The exact opposite. There was a unified method to follow, with rules, and people could check each other's working and see how they came to their conclusions or what their errors were. You can see exactly where people's work differs and who is right according to protocol, based on well understood mathematics. Would be nice if the working was shown here, or if the working is just "SCIENCE" and "I did a survey once".

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

im not particulary convinced, the study seems to have included brwoser games, ok technically are games, but are not the kind of games most of use play on a regular basis

 

[Keoul]

Not a sociopolitical minority, but it's literally a statistical/numerical minority.

Are you parodying something? Because that would be the definition of a minority.

You're not wrong.
It's just that it feels kinda desperate to start saying "YOU'RE ALL MINORITIES NOW!" over a 0.2% lead. Not to mention this is based solely in America so it's kinda misinforming people with a title like that. You'd think with such bold claims it'll at least be a study done in at least 3 countries.

But don't let me stop you or anything.

 

[Bruce]

Your heard that right folks, men are now a minority in PC gaming. According to a study by SuperData Research, 50.2% of all PC gamers are women.

That number spikes up to 53.6% for RPGs and 57.8% for Mobile games.

On the flip side, 66% of all FPS and MMO players are men.

Personally, I think it's a good sign that the PC Game Market has achieved an almost-equality in the gender distribution.

It also brings about an interesting change in perception of gaming as an activity, usually seen as "Something nerdy guys do" it's nice to see that the reality is rather more different. Whilst it has been the case for a long time that men and women seem to be more prominent in certain genres that other, it's nice to see the figures that finally support that.

However, I do caution that this is only one study and suggest people consider a number of sources before forming a firm overall opinion on the matter.

For those still reading, a few questions:

1. Why do you think more women play RPGs than men?

2. Why do you think more men FPSs than women?

3. Mobile, Social or "Casual" games are included in these numbers, do you think they should be discounted, if so, why?


Now, to any men reading the thread, I'll be handing out minority cards for you to use at your leisure. (Please don't hurt me female overlords, I'm joking.)


Source: Here! [http://www.gameranx.com/updates/id/24894/article/women-play-more-pc-games-and-rpgs-than-men/]

This is all IMO, but if I had to venture a guess it goes like this:

1: How the RPG genre evolved in the first place.

Basically in the West when the adventure genre died down, a lot of the developers in that genre moved into RPGs, because it was essentially moving from one narrative based genre to another. Now the thing with the adventure genre is one of the most influential voices in it at the time was Roberta Williams, so it always had a more female friendly face (this is also why hidden object games tend to target women as a market.

Now what that means is that there were certain things taken as "this is what works" from that genre into WRPGs which made them more female friendly in terms of narrative, the traditional knowledge that was carried through helped.

In Japan, much the same thing happened with visual novels and dating sims. A lot of those are porn, but there are also a lot of games that target a female audience - and you see this reflected in how the individual developers approach stories because they pick up things that work in games specifically designed for women, and carry them over to their RPGs, which target a more general audience.

This is why I actually think the solution to gaming's current issues is actually to encourage more niche titles approaching more niche audiences - using smaller budgets to attract smaller potential markets, so as to allow developers more of a chance to experiment and learn now tricks, expanding the overall market and improving the quality of the AAA titles they then go on to develop later.

2: FPS didn't take a lot of developers from the fall of adventure gaming, because while there are some games in it with stunning narratives (EG Heretic 2) it was never the main focus of the genre. So it didn't quite get the same habits passing over.

3: No. Okay I have a bit of a problem with the idea of casual games - in that they are basically stripped down core titles.

Half of them wouldn't be out of place in an arcade, which was the original core gaming demographic. Pretty much the entire catalog of King games fits into that type of gaming.

Then you've got the hidden object game genre - which when you look at it, is really just point and click adventure gaming which for a long time was a highly respected and even dominant feature of narrative driven gaming.

You have what Total Biscuit calls the cow clicker - which is basically stripped down city sims.

And you have a long list of what amounts to very basic management games.

So the trouble is, as these games develop and become more complex, the line between them and "core gaming" is going to get blurred and the distinction is going to become lost because it isn't of substance, but rather degree.

 

[Doom972]

real[/i] poker player; no matter how often they actually play.

Or, as Verlander put it -

Games are games, regardless of how "casual" they are.

That's because that's not what any of us mean when we use the term PC gamer. When people identify themselves or others as PC gamers, the last thing on their mind is a person who plays social games.

 

[TheArcaneThinker]

Because it is not the core of the industry . It is like the outskirts of the town . It lacks the identity that the center of the town has . It does not bear the cultural identity of the core of the industry . The people who play them , do not contribute to the industry . They are not a valuable part of the gaming community which helps to mold the coming titles .

Given that the social/mobile gaming portion of the gaming market is, itself, a multi-billion dollar enterprise, I'm not sure how you can make that claim.

Companies go where the money is. Even companies like EA and Activision have created whole sub-divisions whose sole intent are to make and market social and mobile games.

Social and mobile gaming is a massive, and still growing, portion of the video gaming industry. To so blithely discount it is a bit short-sighted.

In fact:

While hardcore gamers are in the minority of gamers they provide an invaluable resource to developers on both the hardware and software end. Without the hardcore gamers passion and dedication to the art, we would not have the quality games that are available today.You are calling a child an artist just because he drew a stick figure with a crayon .

It seems to me that you are discounting it simply because you don't like the games it produces. You're even discounting the influence mobile and social gamers have on developers and the gaming market as a whole.

You may think I'm making an unfair comparison, but from where I'm sitting, I only see you doing so.

snip

There's nothing inherently wrong with a good rant from time to time, and I don't necessarily disagree on all of your points, but much of it doesn't have to do with my original point.

However, on the parts that do, I'll say this:
It feels, as I pointed out with the poster above, that this tendency to discount social and mobile games (and their subsequent players) as "not real games/gamers" stems less from a question of their cultural and market legitimacy and more from a sense of "I don't like those games, so they're not real games."

To me, if it's a video game, and someone plays it with some level of regularity; or more specifically someone who makes a point of finding time in their day to play it; then I consider that person a gamer.

A person can be a casual car lover without being a die-hard gear-head. A person can love, say, all things Prius and other eco-friendly vehicles, but gives nary a thought on what makes a Porsche so appealing. That person is still a car lover, even if the target of their affection isn't what a gear-head might like. The same can be said of someone who plays social or mobile video games. They may not necessarily keep up-to-date on all of the comings and goings of the industry as a whole, but that doesn't discount their involvement and contribution to the portion of the market they are a part of.

You could argue that they're not game hobbyists, but they're still gamers.

I think what it boils down to is a difference in definition.

To me a gamer is anyone who plays video games, whereas people like you (I assume) and I are what I'd call video gaming hobbyists. Both groups are gamers. One plays casually, the other as a hobby.

For some, a gamer is someone only from the latter group.

I said what i said because the interaction between the people who play and people who make games is negligible . Most of the games are made not for the sake for a experience but to pass the time . I may sound a bit biased or may i am (i dont know) as i believe these casual games are to the industry what cancer is to the body . I believe that the term Gamer means a hard core gamer , for whom gaming is a hobby or like what you said , a die-hard gear-head . This was the reasons , a new term was made to differentiate the other category , Casual gamers . Our points are similar , its just the perspective that is a bit different. I believe rather than saying that 50% of the gamers are female , it should be said that most of the casual gamers are female and most core gamers are male . This accurately differentiates the two categories and tells us about what type of communities they interact with and what part of the industry are they link to , etc . This leads to not making threads like 'Men: Now a Minority in PC Gaming' and also adds more meaning when people say , turning 'Women should get into gaming' into 'Women should get into core gaming'.