Teenage Male Gamers No Longer Biggest Demographic

[Savagezion]

Xbox thing was not a red herring, it was a joke tied together with a relevant reference to a device which people may or may not have bought to be a media center rather than a game machine. It's all about perspective man. Just like the PS3 sold to a whole lot of people simply because it was the cheapest blue-ray player available on the market.

I've never disagreed that phones are more useful for other things. No, I quite clearly stated, in my quote which you yourself just used, that your point, the actual point you are trying to make right now, doesn't matter in the slightest. For the reasons I presented. And I still hold that position.

Hold on, you still aren't actually taking the point head on.

The point behind that if you are still incapable of seeing it is that even if you don't want a phone for gaming, you probably still want/need one.

Remembering your phone is often as important as remembering your keys and wallet. Your fucking keys and wallet! That goes well beyond someone who bought a PS3 as a cheap Blu Ray player. (Which is no longer true in the market and was only true for a couple years.) A phone is primarily a 'tool' for everyday life (1-6 on the list), not just an alternate source of entertainment mediums as consoles are. (7-9)

Instead, the primary argument should be that phones are currently incapable of playing most hardcore AAA gaming and even without that being considered, females typically go for the more casual game. The size of the games are incredibly limited as well as the modes of input. There may be a day where a computer's ability to process a video game is not unlike our ability to run MS Word (whereas there was a time that this process would tucker out a desktop computer pretty quickly, hence word processor).

Yeah, I added that point in when he initially did the whole Xbox red herring thing.

A phone can't run FarCry 3. It has less power and so forth because... it's a phone, not a device built FOR gaming. It's a device that can run small software applications. Even if you run emulators the best you can do is 3 generations behind consoles in terms of power.

Which is completely irrelevant. Games are not, and have never been, more or less of a game because of how hard they are to run.
Also, there are plenty of games that exist both on consoles, on PC, on tablets and on phones. And there are emulators for classic SNES and Sega titles for phones. But I guess those aren't core enough for you either?

I know where you are coming from Lightknight, and agree, but he refuses to accept the argument that console gamers are the core audience for major publishers. So to him, this actually is irrelevant. Until he can see the clear difference in these markets, this will remain irrelevant from his perspective. Which my guess is he will never admit to seeing anything no matter how well we paint the picture so this will remain irrelevant forever. In his eyes you are acting elitist to people who play games with less horsepower saying "their games don't count".

 

[Asita]

-snip-

Mostly correct, though a minor correction: y = x^2 is not exponential (though it resembles the behavior), it's quadratic.

An exponential function utilizes the form y = b^x (with b = base).

Oh right, x is the exponent, not the base. I knew I had something wrong there :/

 

[rbstewart7263]

Well the argument against the whole casual scene as I see it is the fact that as more people play the games the less the games are worked on. Most of the games I've played in this so called "future" have been feeling like they are incomplete not full games and the trend is going towards locking more content behind pay walls which the hardcore gamers tend to be against while the casuals couldn't give two shits what the companies do. Once they become the majority games won't be a complete package anymore you will buy the software for $60 then buy the game for an extra $40 then you get to have fun with the game for a monthly fee of $10. Companies love money and fuck the consumer and when the consumer base is a bunch of people on mobile phones and the like then guess what good full games will be dead. I'm not against sharing the medium I'm happy that people are playing games but still no one has to like where the gaming industry is headed regardless of who plays them.

captcha: save the day

how captcha how do we save the day so we keep getting good games that don't cost an arm and a leg.

Except "hardcore" games do that anyway. They DO lock content behind walls, which is what most people call DLC. And they HAVE fucked the consumer over before due to rushing things to market, putting their games together sloppily, or doing the whole DRM thing. I really don't get how "real" games are somehow less of trash than "casual" games as crappy "hardcore" games are as old as the industry itself.

Simulation games like ?Kim Kardashian: Hollywood? and ?Candy Crush Saga? make headlines for the massive amounts of revenue that they manage to rake in, but the kinds of games that women are playing were found to vary widely, including endless runner games such as ?Temple Run,? brain teasers such as ?QuizUp? and traditional card games.

end quote.

This wont mean dick to ubisoft or ea or even the devs who make games like shovel knight. Devs include women in there games because they want to. because its what they care about.(and sometimes for the easy press) There is noone out there going (gee all these weomen are playing temple run how do we get em to buy a ps4 and play destiny

lol I mean lets throw the equality party when we achieve it on console nad pc. Because THEN you know you did something worthwhile.

 

[Doom972]

If you consider Farmville a video game, then sure. But not really, so it doesn't really mean much. Just go to a convention (or see photos from one if one isn't accessible to you) to see what the main demographic is (hint - it's not adult women).

Who do you think buys all of those copies of every CoD or GTA game when they come out?

 

[Karadalis]

Who gives a flying crap about what is considered a "gamer" or not?

Whats far more interesting is who plays what games. The "games" industry isnt one giant blob... you have your social games, the tripple A industry, the "not" so tripple A but still high quality (like the witcher series as one example) you have a gigantic industry consisting of search picture games that makes millions each year but hardly anyone talks about.

The biggest mistake people make is to automatically assume that this or that group that is playing games automatically play ALL types of games... wich couldnt be farther from the truth.


Lets take Mass effect 3 for example, it was bioware if i remember correctly that stated that around 20% of Shepards where female...

20%... and no one knows how many of those % where actually guys playing a female main.

Futhermore alot of female gamers are not interested in the tripple A industry simply because of the genre this particular part of the games industry focuses on. AAA is like holywood blockbuster, only that it happens in your living room and your boyfriend wont drag you into the next transplosioners movie from michael bay so you can choose to ignore it.

Call of duty isnt exactly a past time a mother of 3 is likely going to play (but if she does, hey more power to her) Peggle on the other hand is like an epidemic amongst that group.

So it is unrealistic to expect that the tripple A industry is going to focus on female gamers now nor does it make sense to try and force them to focus on a market that right now simply doesnt exist.

Im all for options in game but if your own statistics show that barely anyone is using said option then its wasted money.

The females in the games industry ARE allready catered to... in the markets that they dominate... wich incidentially are NOT big budget projects.

Peggle for example is DOMINATED by female players like Soccer games are dominated by male players. You will get a large number of female gamers just by including them. But these players have no interest in big budget gaming.

So what these statistics fail to deliver is where are all those female players? What do they play and in what numbers?

Its all fine and dandy to claim that almost half of gamerdom is made up of women... but its stupid to demand that AAA changes their focus more onto females if said females have no interest in the kind of games the AAA industry produces... Mass effect 3 being the prime example here.

So bottom line is: Female gamers are allready catered to in the markets they dominate in, and if there is a market for big budget titles with a more female centric orientation the industry will jump on that because right now AAA doesnt see any income from all those women.

 

[wulf3n]

Interesting.

It's not surprising in the least that when you compare 3/4 (woman over 18) of one gender demographic against 1/4 (men under 18) of another gender the larger fraction will have more people in it, but what is surprising is that the numbers don't match up the way one would expect.

Given that 52% are male and 48% are female you would expect that the % of female gamers over 18 would be roughly 3 times that of male gamers under 18 but it's barely 2 times. I don't know what that means, but I'm sure it means something.

These "statistics" are always so disappointing though. They're always the same, this craps been known for years, how about diving deeper. Why can't they break it up by Gender & Age by Platform or Gender & Age by Genre? That would provide more insight than telling us what we already know.

 

[Lightknight]

Instead, the primary argument should be that phones are currently incapable of playing most hardcore AAA gaming and even without that being considered, females typically go for the more casual game. The size of the games are incredibly limited as well as the modes of input. There may be a day where a computer's ability to process a video game is not unlike our ability to run MS Word (whereas there was a time that this process would tucker out a desktop computer pretty quickly, hence word processor).

Yeah, I added that point in when he initially did the whole Xbox red herring thing.

A phone can't run FarCry 3. It has less power and so forth because... it's a phone, not a device built FOR gaming. It's a device that can run small software applications. Even if you run emulators the best you can do is 3 generations behind consoles in terms of power.

Which is completely irrelevant. Games are not, and have never been, more or less of a game because of how hard they are to run.
Also, there are plenty of games that exist both on consoles, on PC, on tablets and on phones. And there are emulators for classic SNES and Sega titles for phones. But I guess those aren't core enough for you either?

I know where you are coming from Lightknight, and agree, but he refuses to accept the argument that console gamers are the core audience for major publishers. So to him, this actually is irrelevant. Until he can see the clear difference in these markets, this will remain irrelevant from his perspective. Which my guess is he will never admit to seeing anything no matter how well we paint the picture so this will remain irrelevant forever. In his eyes you are acting elitist to people who play games with less horsepower saying "their games don't count".

Well, you did the best you could. If someone doesn't understand the difference between today's iOS games and the AAA console games then they probably aren't game enthusiasts anyways. So no use wasting time there.

 

[Savagezion]

Well, you did the best you could. If someone doesn't understand the difference between today's iOS games and the AAA console games then they probably aren't game enthusiasts anyways. So no use wasting time there.

Ah, I have no doubt that he understands it. However, if someone walks into a thread and calls people who disagree with them basically "fools blinded by ignorance" and I disagree, I like to see if they will suddenly act blind and ignorant in an actual discussion on the subject. I don't count my time wasted here.

 

[PunkRex]

I feel like I should paste this here so people get a better idea how the male/female demographic is split up.

Some Notes:

Football is soccer
Voitures is Racing
Cartes is Cards
Autres is Others

People say that females are only large because of social games but it actually is fairly evenly split. Sure, there is more groups that favor males over females but it isn't as big as people might think.

I'm surprised that there's that many girls playing FPSs to be honest, what's the source on this, I can't read French?

 

[Ghaleon640]

Let me remove gender from this completely.
1
Do that many people that play mobile games or have a Wii likely to buy Call of Duty, or Dark Souls, or a Suda 51 game? Because if there's not that much crossover, this data says nothing to the rest of the industry.

I personally know plenty of people that will play the fuck out of Candy Crush but I can't for the life of me get them to be invested in anything with a cutscene.

yepp, while I more than welcome anyone to play games, it's really interesting when you account financial power (as in, who buys what and how much they spend total, annually or whatever time period you wish to use)

slightly off topic....


why for the love of god can I never find all these girls that love/like video games? Seriously it's like mentioning Voldemort around my parts, you say you enjoy playing video games and every girl empties the room like I just said I have cooties or something.

If you ever figure out where the gamer girls are, let me know, I'm still looking, but its like looking for the fountain of youth in the middle of el dorado.

 

[Gorrath]

Let me remove gender from this completely.
1
Do that many people that play mobile games or have a Wii likely to buy Call of Duty, or Dark Souls, or a Suda 51 game? Because if there's not that much crossover, this data says nothing to the rest of the industry.

I personally know plenty of people that will play the fuck out of Candy Crush but I can't for the life of me get them to be invested in anything with a cutscene.

yepp, while I more than welcome anyone to play games, it's really interesting when you account financial power (as in, who buys what and how much they spend total, annually or whatever time period you wish to use)

slightly off topic....


why for the love of god can I never find all these girls that love/like video games? Seriously it's like mentioning Voldemort around my parts, you say you enjoy playing video games and every girl empties the room like I just said I have cooties or something.

If you ever figure out where the gamer girls are, let me know, I'm still looking, but its like looking for the fountain of youth in the middle of el dorado.

Found mine on the internets. My wife and I have been together for eight years, happily playing all sorts of games together. She just whooped me in Super Mario Kart on our SNES this past weekend. She told me I was a dirty casual and that I needed to get on her level. She's amazing and I love her dearly.

My dating advice is always, "Look for a life partner where you play," and "the best way to attract another human being is to treat them like a human being." Gamer girls are at the cons, in the Universities, at work and at play. They are in your MOBAs, in your Call of Duty, posting on your message boards. They are everywhere.

 

[Undomesticated Equine]

Well maybe someone can convince Valve to release their data and we will have a final decisions. Well on the only platform that really matters at least. Although i am not sure if valve collects gender data.

 

[Lightknight]

Ermm.. yes. I was under the impresion that the gaming audience was getting older on the whole. Wasn't there a story a few years ago about gamers aged 21-30 making up the most actual spending power in the industry?

Until the ESA started including iOS games any anyone who ever watched someone play solitaire the average gaming age (Computer, Arcade and console gamers) had reached 30 years old.

Them including any type of digital game ever robbed us of their studies ever being meaningful in any way again.

 

[NinjazInside]

So... this matters how? Does this matter to gamers specifically mind you, developers this does matter to. But this won't shut the SJWs up, people always invent their own hardships and turmoils. If you are an average person, or at least I hope a good one, you won't care about this, if there are females in my game great good for them now wait patiently as we both try to put bullets into each others faces. I personally play strategy games solo though wouldn't mind a male or female partner in that regard (Though to be honest I've only met Male Strategy gamers yet the chart shows it's pretty even, I must attract men then, that's kinda disconcerting being straight lol). In the end we can all label ourselves as Human, and move on with it, we are the Human Players and we will keep killing, and fighting and challenging each other till the end of gaming.

Let's make a concerted effort to just treat each other as humans, equally fallible, equally brilliant humans. I'm tired of the crap that this industry is pulling, I'm tired of the crap people say about each other, I'm tired of gender politics, I'm tired of petty arguments which includes pathetic arguments with no evidence. But all I keep seeing is men and women fighting each other with defectors on both sides to the other. And the majority and least vocal in the center made up of both men and women just getting on with their equal lives.

It doesn't matter which gender has a 1% lead on the other, just be damn human and argue about something that actually matters ethically.

 

[psijac]

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/female-adults-oust-teenage-boys-largest-gaming-demographic/

The schadenfreude here is so sweet. And I am glad there are going to be whiny male gamers crying into their soup over this.

The 21st century is here. Get on board or get out of the way.

Except nothing in gaming has changed. The big guns, big tits market hasn't been defeated by women, women have joined into that market. When this https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/kim-kardashian-hollywood/id860822992?mt=8 is proof of your victory over patriarchy, you haven won a damn thing

 

[Fox12]

hoo-boy, I can already see people trying to find ways to discredit this. Of course I very much doubt game makers are going to start diversifying as they've shown they're comfortable jerking off the "hardcore" for all eternity despite it being a shrinking demographic.

How is it a shrinking demographic? I was under the impression that games were selling more across the board, and there seem to be more male and female gamers than ever.

 

[vIRL Nightmare]

Least now we don't need to hear about how girls aren't a major force in the game industry. The majority I would say has a pretty big voice.

The whole "we are the biggest demographic so there shouldn't be more female representation in games" etc. argument was getting old.

That was a thing? I don't seem to recall that ever being a thing. I've been into the whole videogames thing for more than 20 years and don't ever recall that argument. I pull a yellow flag and charge this statement with false accusations under personal opinions. I mean shit, thinking back to the original metroid even surprised would be the best way to describe that. Then with games like tomb raider and Blood Rayne (I liked it at least) I don't ever recall people saying things like, "Eww, icky girls in our game". I will say it is sad that it was a surprising thing but that ship has long sailed now that we get games like mass effect and dragon age, and any game that lets you make a character really. I mean to be perfectly honest female representation is not the current "surprise" factor anymore, it would be games like Dragon age that let you have a same sex relation and that too is quickly on the way out of the surprise department. As to the no female representation in games I don't think it has ever been a real powerful movement if it was one.

It's actually really funny since one of the reasons that I can imagine up that seems very logical to me as to why there have been so many male protagonists is because they're safe. Dude is an action hero, cool. Gal, you have at least 2 groups claiming she's been sexualized regardless of appearance. A bloke is a character of questionable morals (such as trevor from GTA V or some of the even more disturbing games like manhunt) It's a shocking title you must see. Put a lady there and you'll get groups of people screaming they're demonizing women. Now this is purely thought up on my part, but let's be honest with are selves. That is a very real possibility considering how people approach social justice as warriors on a crusade rather than addressing it as the serious issue it is.

Frankly myself and many other people from all walks of life would love to see new stories about characters the devs are probably too scared to work on because of how rabid some of us seems. I mean my god the new farcry box art had people screaming racist white supremacist as loud as they could, just to have the devs come out and say both of the guys on the box were the same ethnicity.

TlDr; there has never been an outcry for less female representation from what I could see from gamers. We'd all really like to see the potential of new characters that aren't just women, but people that are homosexual and transexual as well and if we ever want to see this happen we need to stop being terrifying and rabid and let the devs know we want to see these characters and it is safe for them to make said characters.

Edit: also to the discussion on hand I personally believe the best way to determine gamer demographics would be to look at the steam users. It has the largest variety of games at the easiest access, and with the prices you can get a lot of things on steam you have a much broader audience. I love my pc and console gaming but at this point I don't believe most gamers comprise of solely console players. Not by a long shot. Especially so when considering than many if not most of them at least have a steam account. Also granting it was an engineering university I found that most of the women I talked to all played games, not just IOS games. Games like league of legends and Skyrim so I'm of the pretty firm opinion that the whole "male overlords of evil dominance" thing is a fairy tale at best now-a-days to keep us all bickering with each other.