Men: Now a Minority in PC Gaming.

[kasperbbs]

Who cares? And it's most likely not true, unless you count facebook games and the like. In that case my mom spends at least 30 times more time gaming then i do and she mostly plays some mahjong game online.

 

[SonofSpermcube]

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?

1. RPGs offer more freedom to be what you want and play how you want, particularly western RPGs. This means if a woman doesn't want to play a steroidal dudebro in rapeland, she doesn't have to. JRPGs, while they don't usually offer the same level of freedom, last I checked they were still less overtly sexist than AAA action games.

2. Steroidal dudebros in rapeland. (Okay, most FPSes aren't set in rapeland, but they're like 99% steroidal dudebros.)

3. I think they should be counted separately, both for MAH VIDYA GAYMES Gamergaters and for the industry, because casual games and mobile games generally have different hardware requirements, different levels of investment, probably other practical differences I'm not thinking of. Basically how you've got it is fine; overall then by category.

 

[Vigormortis]

while surely true for farmville, i dare anyone to boot up red orchestra or wargame:RD for example and come up with more than two females players after a day of looking.

I can't speak on those two games, but I can tell you that nearly half the players on my friends lists, of whom I play games with (games like Dota 2, Left 4 Dead 2, CS:GO, Titanfall) are female. All of them met through the games and not some outside source.

So I guess, in a roundabout way, you can consider your challenge accepted and defeated. At least in my particular case.

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I think the better question is: Why do so many seek to discount social and mobile games? It's like saying anyone who doesn't play professional poker isn't a real poker player; no matter how often they actually play.

Or, as Verlander put it -

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

 

[sageoftruth]

So when "SJWs" posts studies like this they are false, cherry picking and serving an agenda, but when GGers post the same studies they are proof that men are actually getting shafted in gaming? Yeah, seems legit.

You seem to be the first person on this thread to suggest that, even sarcastically.

 

[TheArcaneThinker]

while surely true for farmville, i dare anyone to boot up red orchestra or wargame:RD for example and come up with more than two females players after a day of looking.

I can't speak on those two games, but I can tell you that nearly half the players on my friends lists, of whom I play games with (games like Dota 2, Left 4 Dead 2, CS:GO, Titanfall) are female. All of them met through the games and not some outside source.

So I guess, in a roundabout way, you can consider your challenge accepted and defeated. At least in my particular case.

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I think the better question is: Why do so many seek to discount social and mobile games? It's like saying anyone who doesn't play professional poker isn't a real poker player; no matter how often they actually play.

Or, as Verlander put it -

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

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 . 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 .

 

[deth2munkies]

while surely true for farmville, i dare anyone to boot up red orchestra or wargame:RD for example and come up with more than two females players after a day of looking.

I can't speak on those two games, but I can tell you that nearly half the players on my friends lists, of whom I play games with (games like Dota 2, Left 4 Dead 2, CS:GO, Titanfall) are female. All of them met through the games and not some outside source.

So I guess, in a roundabout way, you can consider your challenge accepted and defeated. At least in my particular case.

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I think the better question is: Why do so many seek to discount social and mobile games? It's like saying anyone who doesn't play professional poker isn't a real poker player; no matter how often they actually play.

Or, as Verlander put it -

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

It's rather simple. There is a culture that surrounds gaming that involves mostly "core" or "hardcore" (to use the analyst site's definitions) gamers that not only play games, but discuss games and game design and basically make it their passionate hobby. Those kinds of people typically do not play social/casual games or at least do not primarily play those kinds of games. It comes down to the "one of us" feeling that you get from someone you talk to and they get all your references and feel kinship with them. Those people are not the people that spend 2 hours a week on Farmville and don't care about anything else gaming-related.

So yes, there is absolutely a valid reason to discount them when you're talking about female "gamers" or women in gaming culture. As far as "people that play video games" are concerned, the rise of casual, indie, and mobile games (not all of these classifications are mutually exclusive) make there a sharp divide between casual and "gamer" demographics.

BEGIN SLIGHTLY OFF TOPIC RANT:

The problem is that gaming and gamer culture started out as a boys club and largely started out (and continues to be if you watch Colbert) being ridiculed by women in general and non-gaming men. Gamers were seen as unattractive, outcast nerds that couldn't get a date and weren't liked by women. That brand still has some historical sting to it despite the fact it is no longer true. That's one of the reasons why you see so much resistance to the increased attention of feminists in gaming culture. There's still this stigma that's present in gaming culture, and folks like Anita Sarkeesian are really helping to reinforce it and alienate gamers further, which causes reactionary narratives and (in the internet day and age) harassment.

I think that barriers need to be broken down through discussion rather than heavily political language and, to be perfectly frank, women seeking to criticize gaming culture need to come with an olive branch and watch what you say. It's a touchy subject, much like race in America, where saying something that's a totally valid observation can lead to widespread ridicule and disdain because of how you say it. It's inverted in this case because gaming is dominated by white males who are typically seen as the "privileged" ones and women are typically seen as repressed in some form or another by white males. In this situation, the roles are reversed and nobody is willing to admit it.

None of this is an excuse for how prevalent harassment is in gaming and online culture in general, though. It comes as a side-effect of anonymity and the decrease in individual responsibility in the internet age. It's definitely a topic that needs to be discussed, however, the only people that think that this behavior is acceptable are those perpetrating it, which is a very small but very vocal minority. In order to actually have frank discussion on the topic, the overly broad buzzword labels need to stop flying (gamer as harasser, feminist as radical Sarkeesianist, etc.) and people need to talk to each other like human beings. Those who are not familiar with the totality of gamer culture should seek understanding, and gamers should support those that do, especially women and other underrepresented demographics.

End slightly off-topic rant.

 

[Therumancer]

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/]

Well, a lot of this comes down to the broadening definition of game, and the way how certain terms like "RPG" have been mutated beyond their original meaning to the point of losing almost all relevancy. To be honest when you consider things like Farmville and various apps and such a legitimate form of gaming, and increasingly this is the push, then the data isn't all that surprising since the player base of a lot of the most popular "clicker" games ever has been largely female, with a lot of them even designed to attract a female audience. What's more the hidden object and adventure games which a lot of people overlook are also very popular with women and continue to move decent amounts of volume, which is why the Jewel case PC gaming section has largely remained even as stores have phased out a lot of the rest of their software. Basically by acknowledging "casuals" as gamers it changes the results greatly. Basically when you can consider people in an old folks home playing Solitaire on an old PC (and nothing else) as "gamers" your diluting such studies to the point of meaninglessness.

For something like this to matter you need to pretty much be up front about who you are considering, and how your defining different catagories. Basically if your considering a game that is simply story or lore heavy an RPG, as opposed to one that is based around statistics determining the outcome (the role your character has matters not your ability per se, being an intellectual exercise as much as anything) that pretty much means your going to see the number of RPG gamers inflated, as a tag it gets glued onto pretty much everything nowadays.

Now, of course this will seem to be a very elitist rant, but in reality the point I'm making is that not much has changed. The thing about statistics is that you can manipulate them to say just about anything and right now with gender issues having been turned into a thing in the geekdom community, it's not surprising some people are cooking the books to make this claim (so to speak). Not that it matters at the end of the day. When you get down to it I don't think the break down among what we'd consider serious gamers has changed much in the last few years, girls are better represented than years ago, but a majority? Not even close. I'd also have to wonder how exactly they tell who is what when it comes to an MMO, if they use billing information in a lot of cases that comes down to a household credit card, which still tend to be in men's names, and so on. If your going by what characters are played, well... then you would have to argue between 50-80% female due to all the guys with female characters. Contrary to some portrayals most gamers don't try and play characters that look like themselves, and guys oftentimes like the female models and playing dress up with them more than the male models, something which I blame on the artists not putting as much time into the male models and costumes and such... which is an entirely different discussion, but my go-to example are games like World Of Warcraft, where right after they opened AQ one of the first big upgrades for a mage was "Vestments Of The Shifting Sands" which looked cool on a female model (a sort of harem/desert dancer outfit) but was pretty much a flat pink mumu on a male model that looked ridiculous (I know, my mage wore one for a while, and I actually found myself regretting playing a male character for a while due to looking ridiculous). Everquest when it launched probably ensured the population of female dark elves would be high due to the way a lot of the starting helmets defaulted to beanies or turtle-shell looking things on the male models.

 

[Lightknight]

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

Ambiguity. They should be distinguished. It's like someone saying X number of people like playing board games without specifying if they mean chess/checkers or the huge industry of board games like dungeons and dragons. Yes, they are both technically games played on boards, but they are wildly different in scope and depth.

Casual games and Core games (as NDP defines them) are pretty different. For example, the Core gamers that spend more than 5 hours per week gaming spend more than twice the other groups (casual gamers and core gamers that spend less than 5 hours per week gaming) and are far more male.

Including casual gaming is broadening the definition enough to be almost pointless. What does it matter if my grandmother played solitaire? There is a difference between FarmVille and RPGs like Mass Effect.

So these kind of numbers are misleading because the people making the surveys know what people really think when they think of gaming.

What is the RPG ratio not including social?

 

[Vigormortis]

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.

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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.

 

[Artaneius]

This entire survey is idiotic. Most of those who play mobile gamers or FB games wouldn't even label themselves as gamers. They really need to make a survey based on actual gaming communities that represent the actual cultural society of gaming.

Make a survey that contains how much of each gender play MMO's, FPS, RTS, JRPGs, WRPGS, Fighting, Racing, Action/Adventure, MOBAS, and Sports. All these genres are represented by the actual gaming communities and culture. I guarantee you that the numbers will look much different if we don't include basic flash games that are mostly just farm sims or bejeweled rip offs that gaming communities sees as cancer.

If we include all genres and sub-genres from any entertainment field, the slight majority would of course be woman. Studies have constantly proven that in terms of "averages" woman spend more time on entertainment then men do in general. That would include gaming. However; the culture that formed around gaming is a much different story and thus it's unfair to say that those men/woman that only play mobile games represent part of the gaming community at all.

 

[deth2munkies]

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.

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.

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.

 

[Callate]

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

That seems like an unfortunate way to lay down the numbers. It implies people who play "mobile games" are being tallied as "PC gamers".

I think I'd like more information, anyway. Is anyone who's ever been suckered into Farmville or mis-clicked someone's invite to one of Facebook's legion of time-suckers considered a gamer for this purpose? Anyone who's ever played solitaire? How did they identify people to be considered for the purpose of the survey?

...The original Joystiq report (dig dig dig) says "50.2 percent of the PC market (including social games)". I have to wonder how those numbers change when anything that can be played for free, or is solely ad-supported, is removed from consideration.

I will say that my skepticism is not geared towards undermining the female presence in games; I think there should be a greater presence there. But I feel a slight unease at such data being pitched towards pursuing an audience whose market share is exaggerated, and a greater one at furthering the prominence of games designed from the outset to drain micropayments from their playerbase.

 

[shrekfan246]

ITT: Lots of bad math and people who will say "sample size too small" no matter how big the sample size is. After all, if there's anything to be learned from Young Earth Creationists, its that bad science will be accepted as long as you're telling people what they want to hear.

I'd say it's more gatekeepers who have a very specific definition for what makes someone a "gamer" and get mad when other people don't use the same arbitrary criteria.

 

[Phasmal]

Took less than a page to get to `Bla bla women are casuals`. Sighhhhhhhhh.

Spoiler: How irritatingly predictable.

Suffice it to say her and I really do like each other a lot because spending 3 years with someone literally a two feet behind you at all times is a huge test of the potential viability of a relationship..but the whole "dating a gamer/having a gamer girlfriend"...yeah, not the golden apple everyone thinks it is.

Really? How odd, this hasn't been my experience at all. Being with another gamer has always been pretty freaking sweet for me and Boyfriend. We game side-by-side and I don't think I've had any problems with immersion, or that he has. I guess it depends on the person, really. Besides, it's always nice to be able to explain to someone that you're going to zone out for a while because you're getting really into something and have them know what that's like.

As for the OT:

1) I would guess that more women enjoy RPGs because it often gives you chances to customise your own story experience and that's fun. Or maybe the ladies just love dragons. I know I do. I don't think it's because they're less competitive, personally. I get pretty competitive on things like WoW.

2) Multiplayer shooters tend to be kind of a crap social environment and it sucks getting abuse for using microphone, and that can turn some ladies off, so there's that. This is all just speculating.

3) No. Casual gaming is a gateway, we should be embracing casuals, not acting stupidly about them.

 

[Savagezion]

1. RPGs offer more freedom to be what you want and play how you want, particularly western RPGs. This means if a woman doesn't want to play a steroidal dudebro in rapeland, she doesn't have to. JRPGs, while they don't usually offer the same level of freedom, last I checked they were still less overtly sexist than AAA action games.

Steroidal dudbros in rapeland? What the hell kind of games are you playing?

2. Steroidal dudebros in rapeland. (Okay, most FPSes aren't set in rapeland, but they're like 99% steroidal dudebros.)

3. I think they should be counted separately, both for MAH VIDYA GAYMES Gamergaters and for the industry, because casual games and mobile games generally have different hardware requirements, different levels of investment, probably other practical differences I'm not thinking of. Basically how you've got it is fine; overall then by category.

I agree with that. I just had to post because "rapeland" cracked me up. OH yeah, and JRPGs are supposedly not as sexist as WRPGs. Japan... they actually make games in rapeland.

LOL, Captcha: That escalated quickly

 

[Colour Scientist]

Took less than a page to get to `Bla bla women are casuals`. Sighhhhhhhhh.

Spoiler: How irritatingly predictable.

Suffice it to say her and I really do like each other a lot because spending 3 years with someone literally a two feet behind you at all times is a huge test of the potential viability of a relationship..but the whole "dating a gamer/having a gamer girlfriend"...yeah, not the golden apple everyone thinks it is.

Really? How odd, this hasn't been my experience at all. Being with another gamer has always been pretty freaking sweet for me and Boyfriend. We game side-by-side and I don't think I've had any problems with immersion, or that he has. I guess it depends on the person, really. Besides, it's always nice to be able to explain to someone that you're going to zone out for a while because you're getting really into something and have them know what that's like.

As for the OT:

1) I would guess that more women enjoy RPGs because it often gives you chances to customise your own story experience and that's fun. Or maybe the ladies just love dragons. I know I do. I don't think it's because they're less competitive, personally. I get pretty competitive on things like WoW.

2) Multiplayer shooters tend to be kind of a crap social environment and it sucks getting abuse for using microphone, and that can turn some ladies off, so there's that. This is all just speculating.

3) No. Casual gaming is a gateway, we should be embracing casuals, not acting stupidly about them.

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

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

 

[JennAnge]

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?

I'm going to assume that was a straight question on your part and not meant in an inflamatory way. Equally non-inflamatory answer to said question is as follows, along with elaboration on what it's been like being a girl gamer in the past two decades, if anybody's curious. Not curious? Stop here and skip to next post. Don't bother poking me, I'll just ignore you.


Where are they? Right here, in the forums, among other places. They've been very vocal lately. A few guys have been asking them to STFU, but quite a large number of other guys have been either neutral, reasonable or downright supportive, and that's been nice.


Why do they hide the fact and don't socialize? Meaning, I presume, why doesn't a girl come up to you more often and introduce herself as a gamer?

Fifteen years ago or more (I started playing games with Ultima back in the early '80s, just to situate) the answer to that would be: because we were embarrassed. GUY gamers were also embarrassed back then and usually did not broadcast their hobby at a first meeting for fear of being pegged as an 'unsocial manchild' by non-gamers - you may be too young to remember this period of Geek History, but that is how it was. GIRL gamers were even more embarrassed because if a guy playing games for a hobby was an unsocial manchild, that made us either unsocial tomboys or completely abnormal and definitely unfeminine. And that was not just from non-gamers; a few bona fide nerds and male gamers made me feel rather unwelcome. One insisted to my face during a con that I could not possibly be there on my own steam and I was only there to make my husband happy and was just not being honest about it. Not being argumentative, the spouse and I just walked away. I have not attended many cons. This was a decade and a half before the Fake Geek Girl hoopla, incidently. I for one was not all that surprised when that bizarre meme surfaced...

My first MMO was Everquest right before the milennia ticked over (then Dark Age of Camelot, Asheron's Call, some others now forgotten, the first Guild Wars briefly, eventualy ending up sinking Way Too Many Hours into WoW, followed by others in the recent years). The first five years or so that I played MMOs, I was frequently asked in EQ and WoW if I was a REAL girl. A few didn't believe me when I said Yes. One then repeatedly offered me gold if I gave him a lap dance (this would be in WoW, because I don't seem to recall even having /dance emotes back in EQ, or at least they didn't do anything. I told the guy I was going to report him and he called me - is there some kind of swear ratings on these forums? I don't know for sure, so let's just say he called me a lady dog of less than optimal temperature, and then he desisted).

In that time period, I read an article from one of the very rare female PC gaming journalists back then, in the UK version of PC gamer, recounting her experience playing an online shooter (don't remember which one, probably not CoD back then, it was 2000 or some year like that, predates most of the current ones). She'd made an article waaaay back then on a slow but growing presence of female gamers, and how they stayed incognito because of harrassement. To demonstrate, the journalist went online with an obviously female name and then recounted in the article the kind of stimulating conversation she got out of it...(Amusingly, it would be considered a pat on the head compared to modern day shooter forums) Made me personally determined never to play online shooters, even if I liked that kind of game - the closest I get to shooters is the half breeds like the Bioshocks, Mass Effects, Hitmans and Deus Ex.

BUT!!! But aside from the above, I also have to say this. For every bad experience I've had when I admitted I was female online, I've had three positive ones. For the idiots who didn't believe me, I had people who thought it was 'massively cool', or who also pointed out they were 'real girls' and invited me to gender friendly mature guilds. For every lapdance degenerate, I had dozens who openly admitted to envying my husband that he had someone who could join him on digital MMO adventures. And for the few unwelcoming guys in cons, I had others who took the time to tell me how cool it was that I was there, and that they hoped more girls would come and that their hobby might come out of its closet and be shared by more people. That's what I choose to remember from my earlier experiences as a gamer girl.

Nowadays, I don't hesitate to tell people I'm a gamer. They'll say 'Candy Crush?' and I'll answer 'No, but I recently broke 1000 hours of Skyrim on Steam!'. I still get odd looks, but usually I'll find guys AND GIRLS (yes, they exist) who say 'wow! I play that too!'. And that can only be a good thing. Especially since games have diversified, have matured in the past twenty years, and we've already come a long way, I'm glad to say.

No, I do not think females represent 50% or more of hardcore gamers (aka puts more than 10 hours a week into the hobby - my personal average is 15, which is virtually ALL my leisure, since I also have a job, kids, dogs etc). But to your remark that you know many, many guys who play and no girls...do you know as many girls as you know guys? And do you know those girls well enough that you actually know what their hobbies are? And are you sure they're telling the truth when they say 'reading' or 'TV'? Because a guy nowadays has no problem saying he plays games, especially to other guys. From my conversations with younger female gamers, however, there is still a stigma to saying that you sink 10+ hours a week into playing WoW. It is still considered unfeminine in some way. Probably because remarks like yours, doubting our very existence, does not make us feel as welcome as we could be...And that's not to mention the other crap going on lately. Still, it's hella improved, I know that much. I'm glad to be around to see it and am looking forward to how gaming will continue to mature and evolve and include more and more people. GAMES WILL RULE THE WORLD!

 

[Little Gray]

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.