471

Women Continue To Represent More Of The Gaming Audience, Especially On Switch (www.gamespot.com)

submitted 1 year ago by HollowNotion@lemmy.world to c/games@lemmy.world

115 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] phario@lemmy.ca 45 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Women also make up 50% of PC video game players and 54 percent of mobile game players.

I find a lot of these figures really hard to believe, to be honest.

Looking at the link, there is little I can find about their methodology.

[-] Helldiver_M@kbin.social 39 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It looks like the data comes from Statista. After a quick google, they look to be credible. Though, they require a business solutions license to see the source, which is a cool $490.

In other words, looks legit imho.

[-] Andy@lemmy.blahaj.zone 19 points 1 year ago

I understand being skeptical, but there's no reason it should be hard to believe...

[-] Greenskye@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago

Sims is pretty popular and the main version everyone plays is PC only, but can be run on laptops and other low end PCs. There are a lot of 'I only play Sims' people out there. Could account for some of the numbers

[-] nachom97@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

50% of video game players makes sense to me, depending on what you count as a video game player. If, say, it was anyone who’s played any video game in the last year, I believe be about right. Sims, among us, the dinosaur game in chrome, wordle, etc. it adds up

Men probably dedicate more time to gaming and make it a bigger part of our lives, hence why it would seem more common.

[-] Blamemeta@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

Well if they're including mobile gaming, I can see it.

[-] papalonian@kbin.social 8 points 1 year ago

But 50% of PC gaming? I know a lot of women hide the fact that they're women to avoid sexists, but I just don't see that figure being accurate, especially if there's no reporting on how they came to that number

[-] Action_Bastid@lemmy.world 46 points 1 year ago

Brother, pretty much every single woman I know under the age of 40 plays, at the very minimum, Stardew Valley, Minecraft, and Terraria. Most of them also play other big games, like Dark Souls, Elden Ring, etc.

The genre that the mostly don't play though are modern "arena" style shooters like Call of Duty, Halo, CSGO, Rainbow Six, etc. They're far more likely to play something like Fortnite or Hunt or something where you can have a small squad to roll with. Typically because it means they don't have to deal with anywhere near the same number of toxic random assholes.

[-] Elevator7009@kbin.cafe 33 points 1 year ago

Hi, woman under 40 here. I'm AFKing at a mob farm I built in Minecraft right now as I browse Kbin. I create mods for Stardew Valley. I have a lot of management games and RPGs. I also avoid multiplayer unless I know I'll only interact with a small closed circle of my real-life friends because I hear about how awful and bigoted people will act online. These people are also why I am not going to try those arena style shooters on the off chance I fall in love with the genre. People being awful is a near-certainty in those games, while me turning out to love the gameplay is just a chance. I've got other things I can play that won't expose me to this and that I already know I enjoy.

TL;DR: local woman says you're right

[-] AverageCakeSlice@sh.itjust.works 17 points 1 year ago

I know a lot of women who have played sim/management games like The Sims, Zoo Tycoon, Stardew Valley, etc.

A lot of this comes down to the actual survey questions that were used. If the wording of the survey questions was “Have you ever played…” as opposed to “Do you regularly play…” for example, then the numbers could be quite skewed.

[-] Grangle1@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago

Yep, plenty of girls/women out there who don't really consider themselves "gamers" who will put multiple-digit hours into those management types of games. I personally know several like that. I would imagine a lot of women don't really get into direct PVP online gaming due to the online environment and lack of attempts to appeal to female gamers with the designs of such games, but would probably play a lot of single-player in a bunch of different genres and series. As the article implies, Nintendo IPs in particular would be appealing due to lack of pandering to either the common "gamer" demographic or to what many other publishers think women want in games (overly stereotypical "girl stuff").

[-] Nepenthe@kbin.social 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I think this especially stems from how those games are seen by some more asshole-ish people. Few would disagree that strategy RPGs are not gaming, but I've had a clerk at gamestop lecture me about how my then-favorite title wasn't a "real" part of the series. So it's still my favorite, but I don't bring it up anymore.

For much the same reason, there's an internalized mental block concerning whether or not something like The Sims, Stardew, Animal Crossing, etc. are "real" games because they don't really have a goal or require the same level of skill. If someone asks me what I play, I'm going to mention Hades before I ever breathe a word about Slime Rancher because one of those is going to get me stereotyped and insulted.

If all I played were really chill, micromanaging "girl games," I just wouldn't say anything and would have doubts about describing myself as being on the level "gamer" normally entails.

[-] NOT_RICK@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

My wife has solo four stars in every single overcooked map. She still doesn’t think she’s a “gamer”

[-] Turkey_Titty_city@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

they are including majong and card games. my 75 year old mother plays those on her ipad/pc all day.

she also thinks video games are evil and rot your brain because they are all sex and violence

[-] Whirlybird@aussie.zone 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It’s a survey of 10k households, US only (since that’s what NPD/Circana is).

I don’t believe these figures are even remotely close to reality.

https://twitter.com/matpiscatella/status/1667172957066600448?s=46&t=Cbb3biYQblpmbWC3J0KfQg

[-] phario@lemmy.ca 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

As a scientist I briefly read the Twitter chain by the company with some description of their methodology.

Honestly I didn’t really follow it and it’s hard to critique based on buzzwords and Tweets. The person who was posting it sounds like a businessman, throwing jargon and words rather than something coherent.

Ultimately I think that people are surprised by figures like “50% of gamers are female”. It might be 30%, or it might be something else. Maybe asking the questions a certain way biases the responses a certain way.

It’s hard to glean anything based on what I’ve seen. I don’t have any skin in this game, and I don’t care either way, but all I’ll say is that it’s hard to figure out the truth based on the information available.

[-] Whirlybird@aussie.zone 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Matt Piscatella is an NPD employee who regularly shares/comments on their monthly video game sales charts. He’s basically just talking about the survey his employer does.

These things are “biased” in all sorts of ways, even in the way the data is collected. What if women are 80% more likely to answer phone surveys? 70% more likely to answer email surveys? That’s going to hugely change the results.

While mathematically sure you might be able to use a sample size of 10k to extrapolate out, I don’t think you can in this instance.