Teenage Male Gamers No Longer Biggest Demographic

[Racecarlock]

Who cares if they don't take into account casual versus hardcore? Fuck hardcore. Hardcore people insult you when you ask for tips on dark souls. Hardcore people laugh in your face when you say you can't build your own PC. Hardcore people sling sexist remarks day in and day out with bullshit justification for it.

I play games all the time. That said, I also use cheats or make the games easier where possible. I consider myself casual even though I follow industry news and frequent forums like these. Mostly because I play games more for fun than gamerscore. But also because hardcore people (at least the people who identify as hardcore) seem to be as hateful and exclusionary as possible. And not just because you're not playing a game "correctly" (read: how they would play), but because if you're a woman you're apparently just gaming because you want attention and gaming is the popular thing now so you're doing it to be popular even though you once bullied this douche in school. At least he remembers how he was rejected in school and now he's just afraid of all women. Not all hardcores are like this, but I bet most who do this are.

Then there's the hate thrown at anyone who even espouses that there might be something sexist about some games. Look, I haven't seen anita sarkeesian's videos yet, so I don't know how crappy her claims are. But they could be the worst in the world and for me, it wouldn't matter. Not one bit. Because the sheer backlash and hate and anger that I saw from people, including kitchen jokes, death threats, rape threats, and a flash game where you beat the shit out of her, told me everything I need to know. No matter how bad someone's claims of sexism in gaming are, the audience on the side of gaming can be so much worse that it doesn't even matter. That is why I refuse to identify as "Hardcore".

 

[Something Amyss]

Console gaming dwarfs mobile gaming. Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto are two of the biggest properties across all media.
Bigger than any movie, bigger than the entire music industry.

And since most games are not them, that's kind of irrelevant.

And again, you compare budgets, even the numbers for CoD and GTA get sliced down quite a bit. Hence terms like ROI.

Mobile gaming doesn't come anywhere close to console gaming in terms of revenue.

Well, maybe if you lump PC in, but that would be kind of dishonest.

 

[cypher-raige]

And since most games are not them, that's kind of irrelevant.

And again, you compare budgets, even the numbers for CoD and GTA get sliced down quite a bit. Hence terms like ROI.

Most mobile games are not Clash of Clans or Candy Crush.
To make any decent money your game (out of the tens of thousands of others) has to go viral on the app store. Then you can ride the bubble for a couple of years, launch an IPO before you fall by the wayside like Zynga.

Unless your game goes viral the your ROI will be modest. There is a limit to what people are prepared to pay for a mobile game. People pay more for console games because they have much higher budgets.

Well, maybe if you lump PC in, but that would be kind of dishonest.

Mobile gaming is rustling some jimmies and generating clickbait articles but in terms of software revenue it has never come close to consoles.

You wanna talk PC? micro-transactions on F2P PC games like MOBAs humiliate games like Candy Crush.

 

[Something Amyss]

Most mobile games are not Clash of Clans or Candy Crush.

Which only matters if I'm holding them up as proof of the market. That was your argument. Don't try and pretend it was mine.

You wanna talk PC? micro-transactions on F2P PC games like MOBAs humiliate games like Candy Crush.

They also humiliate consoles. Not helping your argument any.

 

[Callate]

Soooooo... What does that mean?

More women in development? More female lead characters? More characters who aren't designed to pander to heterosexual male sex drives? Maybe more character development, period?

I'm better than fine with all of that. Absolutely. Groovy.

More "free-to-play" trickery to entice the cell-phone and tablet crowd? More shallow, disposable "games of the minute"? More slot machine games? A "lost generation" as yet another group of people slowly figure out that, yes, they would actually like more out of the medium?

...Less celebratory.

 

[Saetha]

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.

Hey, look at that. Twisted facts and needless hostility. And feminists wonder why some people don't like them.

Seriously, this is actually pretty cool. As others in this thread have pointed out, this actually only means that they're are more women of all categories than teenage boys - not that women are the top demographic - so it's not actually that impressive. But still cool. Nonetheless, the vitriol you displayed to an imagined legion of men "crying into their soup" is pretty telling. This "us vs. them" is pointless and will only create the conflict you're mocking.

In short - your comments were uncalled for. It's this sort of hostility that's chasing people away from your cause.

 

[one squirrel]

OK, then start complaining about underrepresentation and start voting with your wallet. That should really do the trick , since women are seemingly the majoity now.

Oh, and the "it does't count because they play casual games" argument was used by feminists themselves to dismiss the argument: "Look at game X, it has a female protagonist" saying "Yes, but it is not an AAA title so it doesn't count!". I have seen this multiple times since I've startet reading the Escapist's forums.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Let them come. I'll happily welcome a fellow gamer. Whether you are a RPG gamer, a Platformer gamer, a Action-Adventure gamer, an FPS gamer or all the above,you are still a gamer.

Or whether you own a Smartphone, going by the article.

 

[clippen05]

Yeah great. I'm sure that they will be a force that sets the trends for the gaming industry. Oh wait, they won't be. Yeah, they only play mobile games. Does that make them any less of a 'gAmEr'? No, but this data is entirely irrelevant to the big gaming companies. I can't see Call of Duty or Dead or Alive switching their focuses any time soon just because there are more mobile gamers now.

 

[white_wolf]

According to the article it says in 2010 women console and mobile players where at least 40%. The chart I located for 2011 says console gamers weren't far off then women console players held at 40% vs 60%M and mobile wasn't as large as men like to believe it should've been 53%F vs 47%M http://www.statista.com/statistics/272327/mobile-social-and-traditional-gaming-users-by-gender/ what it shows is women are picking the machine that has the games that want to cater to them. Games bought by both genders http://www.statista.com/statistics/232383/gender-split-of-us-computer-and-video-gamers/ as of 2014's ESA report its stating 48%F vs 52%M gamers general.

The Pew found in 2008 that teen 76%F and 96%M played consoles breaking down genres they found within just the top ten the #1 racing at #10 shooters. http://www.pewinternet.org/2008/09/16/part-1-2-basic-gaming-hardware-and-games-played/

Speaking of genres its not a huge difference in any one of those as far as who plays what http://thehightechsociety.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/games-by-gender.jpg

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

This result only matters if you actually care about or acknowledge cow-clickers and Kim Kardashian's game as what gaming truly means to you over games like Bioshock, Final Fantasy, Super Mario, Skyrim and so on.

 

[Jadak]

But it clearly doesn't count, because they're filthy casuals playing mobile games, and are not true for-realsies hardcore gamers.

As a side note, what does "casual" even mean any more? I saw a thread a while back calling Assassin's Creed "casual." I guess people just want to feel even more elitist about liking Dark Souls?

Regardless of how you feel like drawing a line on what is 'casual' and what that means, when you get into a demographic that includes 'games your mom plays', it's hard to consider 'gaming' as a single category that includes both you and your mom.

 

[generals3]

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.

This article is as irrelevant as it can get for most discussions about this. It doesn't say how long they play, how much they spend and which game they play. Really what information did it gave us except "many woman touch games"? Nothing. Meanwhile i could go dig up studies which actually look into things more in details and the image will be quite different.

 

[chikusho]

Another year, another study, and the amount of female gamers has yet again grown exponentially.

And yet again people tries to shit over the stats instead of 1. realizing the actual significance, and 2. being supportive, welcoming and inclusive into this great hobby of ours.

Stay classy, internet. Stay classy.

 

[KazeAizen]

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.

I have no idea; I think it mostly just means any game that isn't stuck up its ass. I don't get what the elitist attitude gets either. Any sort of opening of the "white, male, heterosexual club" is seen as some sort of attack on "traditional" gamine, unaware that stuff like Pong was catered to adults in bars and in fact was a hit with women due to females having better control over minute finger movements. I think gamers still don't GET that "casual" gaming is not some sort of danger to "hardcore" gaming. They don't get that all it means is we're going to have these games in ADDITION to those we've always had. I think that's ultimately the thing; it's not about TAKING space it's about them having to SHARE space and nerds have repeatedly shown to be greedy, selfish twits who refuse to share or tolerate newbies.

If anything the industry isn't casual and inclusive ENOUGH, way too complacent with just selling the same titles to the same customers despite that pool steadily shrinking. Not a good way to expand the industry. And it looks like the industry is going to have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the future

The only company that I would say hasn't shrunken its sphere of influence is Nintendo. At least out of the big ones. That E isn't put on there to indicate "kids only" it means "Everyone". At this point Nintendo is the master of level design and timeless visual aesthetics that age incredibly well. Also their games are simple enough for kids to pick up but deep enough and challenging enough that adults can get a kick out of them as well. Sure they use a lot of the same franchises over and over again but they consistently put out games that anyone can pick up and play and have a good time.