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Decline Women play shitty games.

Kane

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You know, I wish I could make a less terrible topic. And I wish I could post this in GD, where you think this belongs. But nope. Women are more terrible than previously thought.

Beyond 50/50: Breaking Down The Percentage of Female Gamers by Genre
By Nick Yee| January 19th, 2017|Analytics, Video Games|106 Comments
You’ve probably heard the often-quoted statistic that about half of video gamers are women, illustrating how gaming is now a mainstream activity enjoyed by both men and women. This finding comes from the yearly ESA report, and has fluctuated between 38% and 48% in the past decade—currently estimated at 41% in the 2016 report.

Oddly, this statistic can have the exact opposite intended effect. Some gamers argue that the study bundles gamers across platforms and genres, and is thus unrepresentative of the “real” PC/console gamers. Or that the apparent gender parity means there are no longer gender biases in game design. A game dev we recently chatted with mentioned that some designers she works with still assume that only 5% of core gamers are women, and that the quoted 41% of women are primarily casual gamers.

This statistic can have the exact opposite intended effect.

By bundling across platforms and genres, this 41% statistic doesn’t surface how the percentage of female gamers does or does not vary across genres, or how large that variance is. Using survey data from over 270,000 gamers on the specific game titles they enjoy playing, we’ve put together some findings on the percentage of gamers in different genres that are female.

Data from the Gamer Motivation Profile
The Gamer Motivation Profile allows gamers to take a 5-minute survey to get a personalized report of their gaming motivations, and see how they compare with other gamers. Over 270,000 gamers worldwide have taken this survey. The 12 motivations that are measured in our model were identified via statistical analysis of how gaming motivations cluster together.

See how you compare with other gamers. Take a 5-minute survey and get your Gamer Motivation Profile.

Alongside gaming motivations, we also collect data on demographic variables. In our full sample, 18.5% are female gamers. We also ask gamers to list specific game titles/franchises that they enjoy playing (up to 9). By sampling gamers who mention a specific game title/franchise, we can generate a profile of that game’s engaged audience. Note that the data we have is limited to the favorite games listed by a gamer–they are likely playing more games than they are able to list, but this constraint holds true for all respondents in our data, whether male or female.

Notes on Disparity Between 41% Female Gamers in ESA Report vs. 18.5% in Our Sample
Limitations of Self-Selected Sample

The Genres We Analyzed
Game genres are incredibly messy things. They evolve and overlap and hybridize over time. In many well-established genres, subgenres are common. This means that asking gamers to respond to genre labels yields messy data.

We decided to take an approach based on specific game titles. In our analysis, we manually picked popular game exemplars to create genre groupings. For each game, we calculated the proportion of its gamers that are female. And then we calculated the genre group average. So for example, when we say High Fantasy MMOs, we specifically mean the group average of gamers who enjoy playing World of Warcraft, Rift, Lord of the Rings Online, EverQuest II, and The Elder Scrolls Online.

In our analysis, we manually picked popular game exemplars to create genre groupings.

Each genre we analyzed contained between 3-5 game titles. The median sample size for each game title was 1,184. And the median sample size for each genre was 4,657.

The Game Genres We Analyzed and Their Exemplars
Genre Averages of Female Gamers Range From 2% to Almost 70%
Here’s a chart of all the genre group averages in descending order. The percentages listed refer to the proportion of gamers within each genre that are female. So for example, the 69% for Match 3 games means that of the gamers who mentioned a Match 3 game in the data, 69% of them were female. The 69% does NOT mean that 69% of female gamers play Match 3 games.

The percentages listed refer to the proportion of gamers within each genre that are female.

It bears pointing out that most gamers play a variety of games across genres, and a high participation rate in the chart doesn’t mean that gamers (whether male or female) only play that genre.



1) Match 3 and Family/Farm Sim Gamers Are Most Likely To Be Female.
In fact, these two genres are head and shoulders above any other genre in terms of percentage of female gamers. The next highest genre is a full 27 percentage points lower in its proportion of female gamers.

2) Tactical Shooter and Sports Game Players Are Least Likely To Be Female.
Sports Games (with an average 2% of female gamers) have the smallest proportion of female gamers of all the genres we analyzed. Although the percentage of women in both Shooter categories is low, there is a noticeably lower proportion of women in Tactical Shooters compared with First-Person Shooters (4.3% vs. 7.2%).

3) The Variance in Female Gamer Percentage Across Genres is Large.
The genre averages range from 2% to almost 70%. This is a 35-fold difference, and illustrates why an overall statistic for all gamers (ignoring genre) can be misleading and confusing.

This is a 35-fold difference, and illustrates why an overall statistic for all gamers (ignoring genre) can be misleading and confusing.

4) World of Warcraft is an Outlier Among High Fantasy MMOs.
23% of World of Warcraft gamers are women. This is substantially lower than the group average (36%). A lot of game researchers (Nic and I included) focused on studying WoW as an exemplar of online gaming, but it looks like WoW was not only an outlier in terms of market success, but also in terms of its demographics relative to other games in the genre.

5) High Fantasy MMO > Sci-Fi MMO
As we assembled the original MMO genre, we noticed a difference between High Fantasy and Sci-Fi MMOs, and decided to split the genre. This highlights the gender disparity in appeal based purely on thematic elements. High Fantasy MMOs have more than twice the percentage of female gamers compared with Sci-Fi gamers (36% vs. 16%).

This highlights the gender disparity in appeal based purely on thematic elements.

6) Star Wars: The Old Republic is Skewing the Genre High.
SWTOR has almost double the Sci-Fi MMO genre average of female gamers (29% vs. 16%). Without SWTOR, the genre average would be 11.3%, at which point the group average for High Fantasy MMOs would be more than 3 times higher than Sci-Fi MMOs.

7) Assassin’s Creed and Dragon Age are Also Notable Outliers.
Among Open World games, Assassin’s Creed Syndicate is noticeably higher than the genre average (27% vs. 14%). And among Western RPGs, Dragon Age: Inquisition is also much higher than the group average (48% vs. 26%).

8) Genre Findings Align with Primary Motivation Differences.
In a previous blog post, we compared the primary motivations of male vs. female gamers. Much of those differences seem to underlie the current genre findings. For example, genres with more women emphasize Completion and Fantasy (the top 2 motivations for women). And genres for men emphasize Competition and Destruction (the top 2 motivations for men).

The differences in primary motivations between male vs. female gamers seem to underlie the current genre findings.

9) Highest Percentage of Non-Binary Gender Gamers in Exploration and Family/Farm Sims.
The baseline of non-binary gender gamers in our full sample is 1.1%. In the current analysis, the genres that had the most non-binary gender gamers were Atmospheric Exploration (3.8%), Family/Farm Sim (3.2%), Casual Puzzle (2.7%), and Sandbox games (2.3%).

The Opportunity Space is Larger Than It Appears
The data hints at how none of these numbers are set in stone or represent some kind of hard ceiling. Note that variations within the same genre can be much larger than variations between genres. For example, Dragon Age: Inquisition has double the genre average (48% vs. 26%). In fact, this 48% is higher than the next 5 genre averages. This means that the opportunity to attract female gamers may be a lot larger than what the chart is showing, especially if you’re the first ones to figure it out in your genre.

Variations within the same genre can be much larger than variations between genres.

It’s also easy to read the genres in the chart and pin the cause solely on gender differences in gaming motivations–e.g., women simply don’t like X or Y game mechanic, but there may be a lot more going on. For example, games on the bottom of the chart tend to not have female protagonists, tend to involve playing with strangers online, and tend to have a lot of rapid 3D movement which can lead to motion sickness (which women are more susceptible to). Low female gamer participation in certain genres may be a historical artifact of how motivations and presentation have been bundled together and marketed.

As we saw in our analysis of Idle Clicker games, established genres are ripe for deconstruction in potentially fruitful ways. The most important takeaway is not to conflate what the numbers currently show with what the numbers could be.

Spot Other Interesting Differences?
If you spot any other interesting differences in the chart or data, tell us about it in the comments.

http://quanticfoundry.com/2017/01/19/female-gamers-by-genre/

What this shows us is that women are quite literally the decline of gaming. You know me, I have been saying this. But it bears reiteration: The ongoing casualization of computer games is a direct result of women becoming an increasingly large target group for the gaming industry. And noone is willing to make games just for boys, because that would be less profitable. There is only one logical solution to this.

WOMEN OUT OF GAMING NOW! SHOOTERS NOT HOOTERS!
 

A horse of course

Guest
I read that back in JANUARY 2017 and their methodology doesn't strike me as any more reliable than previous "studies". The only people who likely put sufficient money and time into detailed market research of the GAYMIN demo are publishers, and they don't reveal specific data (which is probably outsourced anyway).
 

Bruma Hobo

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Men and women are not equal and enjoy different things, this somehow deserves a thread!

Also, women tend not to be passionate about frivolous hobbies like vidya, they just use them as vehicles to find husbands socialize. Which is fine.
 

pippin

Guest
I quit halfway through the survey because it was too inclined to consider "gaming" and "gamers" as people who care about esports and achievements. Also, gotta love how they consider "hardcore gaming" to be something related to tech and time invested instead of the actual games you're playing. The survey is almost entirely american related.

In the end, this was made with a result in mind. They knew what they were going to get and applied a "study" to make it seem "serious".

Nobody cares about games anymore (read this in Treebeard's voice)
 

Severian Silk

Guest
I quit halfway through the survey because it was too inclined to consider "gaming" and "gamers" as people who care about esports and achievements. Also, gotta love how they consider "hardcore gaming" to be something related to tech and time invested instead of the actual games you're playing. The survey is almost entirely american related.

In the end, this was made with a result in mind. They knew what they were going to get and applied a "study" to make it seem "serious".

Nobody cares about games anymore (read this in Treebeard's voice)
Maybe you've just been posing on this forum this whole time?
 

octavius

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Also, gotta love how they consider "hardcore gaming" to be something related to tech and time invested instead of the actual games you're playing.

Agree completely on this one.
It's like you're a hard core music connoisseur if you have a very expensive Hi fi set, even if you only use it to listen to "whatever is on the Top Ten list".
 

Kane

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Men and women are not equal and enjoy different things, this somehow deserves a thread!

Also, women tend not to be passionate about frivolous hobbies like vidya, they just use them as vehicles to find husbands socialize. Which is fine.
All of your nonsense theories would be fine if and only if the inreasing presence of women in gaming would have no consequences on the quality of games being made. Which is the whole point:

The quality of games is inversely proportional to the amount of women playing games (any games!). This is what the data is saying.
 

almondblight

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Messages
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Wait, no adventure game genre but they have "atmospheric exploration" and "interactive drama" genres?
 

mondblut

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Ingrija
Your Gaming Style :Calm, Analytical, Ambitious, Independent, and Grounded

Excitement (1%)Destruction (59%)Competition (8%)Community (3%)Challenge (18%)Strategy (93%)Completion (28%)Power (92%)Discovery (53%)Design (28%)Fantasy (5%)Story (3%)

P.matching.
 

Luckmann

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Interesting results, and I wanted to contribute for future statistics, so I signed up and got the following:
https://apps.quanticfoundry.com/gamerprofile/d97f15655f8f4671a19b493cc73dfe88/

"Calm, Proficient, Relaxed, Independent, and Creative"

It's not a perfect test, and some of the questions are a bit off (lumping missions in with achievements, wtf? I'm a completionist, but I don't give a fuck about achievements), but overall, it seems almost surprisingly accurate, and most of the recommendations were pretty spot-on with what I'd actually enjoy in general.
 
Unwanted

Wonderdog

Neckbeard Shitlord's alt
Joined
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Messages
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Film at 11. Women should be banned from RPG, and everyone with IQ under 130 stamped to death with steel-toe boots. That is the only real way to save RPG.
 

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