The new data also reveals that 45% of Xbox owners and 41% of PS5 owners are female, too
This really shouldn’t be news and it certainly shouldn’t be surprising to anyone, but yes, new data from Circana shows that—as we told you in 2017—women play video games. In fact, more than half of all Switch owners are women. And a very vocal bunch of idiots are reacting about as well as you’d expect to this “revelation.”
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Two Words: Animal Crossing
Not just that but the Switch has a lot of lovely indie games that are popular among women (Gris, Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion, Spiritfarer, Cult of the Lamb). Also Hades, but everyone likes Hades.
I am glad this trend is becoming better understood. A more diverse audience means more diverse stories being told, and while another MCU or Street Fighter is a perfectly good game to release a game targeting that more diverse audience will give more options for me. I typically play games like Risk of Rain, Skyrim, Creeper World, and so on, but I have also lost many hours to Viva Piñata, so I would love to see some more diversity in the games on offer.
You do realize women like fighting games and the MCU, right?
That’s the whole point of this statistic: the current gaming market is already palatable to everybody, unlike what your statement seem to misunderstand.
Eh, just because lots of women are playing games doesn’t mean they’re catered to women.
Don’t get me wrong, the industry’s come a long way from every female character having 28DD’s and videogame trailers being all about stoic badasses and explosions. I think the rise of indie games has been great for that. But there’s an undeniable male-coded streak that still exists in marketing and in the industry, especially at the AAA level, and there’s progress we can still make there.
@rustyspoon @dwindling7373 The games appeal to women enough to play them. Nobody is forcing women to play games they don’t like.
Yes indeed, I more mean that the marketing of video games gas been male coded for my entire life and as such the options have been narrowed to stereotypically male options. This means fewer options and less diversity. My partner loves guitar hero and Final Fantasy both of which were marketed more to men than women. That said, if there were companies trying to capture the female market segment their stereotypes would lead to other games, different from what they currently make. I disagree with the stereotypes but of they are going to use them then at least hit all of them, I want more games to play dammit!
I read some digital market reports a few years back, which showed that something like 98% of all people between 13-18 were gaming. Obviously mostly casual games, but nevertheless paying consumers of games. More female than male by a close margin.
When I discussed it on another gaming forum they were really quick to dismiss casual games altogether, despite it being the very largest group. There’s probably still a male majority in desktop first person shooters, which seemed to be the only “correct” gamers according to he kind of people following that kind of forum. Anyway, if I were to program a game I surely wouldn’t aim at the “stereotypical” gamer. They’re a minority with very high demands and very expensive gear. The whole stereotype is gatekept to the point where I don’t want to participate neither as a gamer or as developer.
I have to wonder if some of it comes from the idea that casual games are generally a different audience than “core” games. Like someone playing candy crush on their phone is counted as someone who plays games, but I wouldn’t lump them in with the kinda person that at least casually follows the industry and picks up a few new games for their PS5 every year or the person that is super active in the indie scene.
Don’t quote me on this bc I do not remember the source but I remember reading somewhere that if you included the whole gaming market, women were a clear majority because of mobile but many many mobile gamers did not self-identify as gamers which I think probably skews other surveys/studies targeted at “gamers”
I’ve been trying to find the original study from Circana but all I can find are mentions of it, does anyone have the link to it?
“I don’t know ANY women
who play games!” Is probably half their comments.They do, of course. They’re just the reason no one on the team has a mic
🤣
Of course gamer bros are salty about this!
My girlfriend has been literally using my PS5 more than me since I got it, gamer girls do exist and we should cherish them, not alienate them
Toxic incel minority that makes a lot of noise. People have known it for years and nobody gives a damn. Videogames are made for every person to enjoy
Toxicity towards girls and women in gaming is a real problem, but this article doesn’t really show that as it’s just talking about random people from Twitter It’s definitely nice so many women feel free to own consoles nowadays
It isn’t surprising, at least with my anecdotal experience, but still higher than I expected. Two girl friends of mine started to play lan parties with us since covid, and I know another that is completely obsessed with Valorant, and another that is equally obsessed with Football Manager.
I tried to find the original study and can’t. The only source that everyone points to is this tweet by the executive director of Circana. Anyone knows where I can find it?
His company were the ones that did the survey, so I’d think it’s likely that he’s reporting it accurately. I wasn’t able to find the data set for any of his company’s surveys (I assume youd have to pay for it) but I did find this: https://www.statista.com/statistics/232383/gender-split-of-us-computer-and-video-gamers/ and this https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2017/09/11/younger-men-play-video-games-but-so-do-a-diverse-group-of-other-americans/. Those two articles show that while men are more likely to play games, women are still playing them a lot, particularly young women. So Circana’s player pulse survey, assuming it is being represented correctly isn’t out of line with other research done on this topic. The gamers upset about this seem to just be out of touch.
so I’d think it’s likely that he’s reporting it accurately
That’s not really a safe assumption to make. Even though they shared their methodology they don’t seem to have shared the questions or the data. Misleading survey questions aren’t uncommon.
I am saying he is reporting the data his company gives him correctly not that there aren’t problems with the methodology. But even if there are issues with the methods here, Nintendo and Sony are reporting similar data as have previously done polls on the matter. And let’s be completely honest here. They’re most likely questioning the data because it doesn’t agree with their anecdotal experiences talking to women. And this is likely because women are playing much different games than they are.
He’s sharing data, that his company collected, but there remains the question of what the data exactly is. I mean, I don’t think any of us were born yesterday, and we’ve seen ‘science’ and ‘studies’ in journalism and how they’ll massage statistics and use vague terms to make specific claims. My favourite of this was years ago a study about cosmetics, which includes things like sun cream, was used to paint the narrative that all Korean men were walking around with make-up. While make-up was a subset of cosmetics, when you actually looked at it, it didn’t really support the claims they were making in the articles about it. For the most part I rarely trust anything like this being shared unless I can have a look at the whole package.
There are real studies and real science behind all these stories, but the journalists and middle men can rarely be trusted to present them in an unbiased manner that can be verified.
Thanks for the links, will read the second in a bit 👍
Yeah, it’s better to learn not to care about what the Gamers™ say. They love to be angry
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Really? People are still acting like this? I remember back in the early 2000s when people were giving me crap for being a female gamer. The sad part is that I have been gaming probably before a lot of these new people complaining about female gamers have been born. I started back in the day with the Super NES. I also have a gaming PC, a Switch, and a Steam Deck. I also have various other consoles.
That anyone ever acted like that is so insane to me, it doesn’t even feel like it happened on the same planet. Among my middle/high school circle of friends through the 00’s, not a single one of us would have ever given shit to anyone, male or female, for playing video games. To us, every new gamer we met was a potential new friend who spoke our favorite language. Then we graduate, go out into the world, look around on the internet, and hear stories that there exist complete fuckwads on this green earth trying to keep girls out of gaming?? Like… what??
No Kotaku is acting like this. There was a distinct lack of evidence in their article
Some suggested the data is wrong or that the owner stats are skewed by moms buying consoles for boys
This isn’t acting poorly, this is just questioning the methodology, which is a good idea, because a lot of these surveys are very poorly done or have obvious holes in them like that one. .
They later shared the methodology, but it still isn’t clear what the exact questions were.
The rest of the article is the Kotaku writer speaking very vaguely about people. Was it 2? 200? 2000? who responded like this? You certainly wouldn’t know from that article, but Kotaku isn’t shy about painting all gamers with the same brush in the headline.
They’re “questioning the methodology” because they didn’t like the answer. While, yes, being skeptical is good, this skepticism wouldn’t even be happening if the result was what gAmErS wanted it to be
yeah we don’t have to pretend most of the unskewing here is being done with good intentions because it’s not, lol. there is a real, unambiguous swath of capital-G Gamers who hate the idea of gaming being something women also participate in, and they do everything in their social power to raise a fuss about it.
I dont know if its actually still happening or its just an easy headline that appeals to peoples stereotypes.
Gamers is such a broad label that encompasses so many different demographics. Im sure there is a tiny, vocal, weird subset that is convinced that gaming is for men, but its certainly not representative of the gamer label as a whole.
A headline having a go at “gamers” is easy, because its not really representative of anyone in particular. I have no doubt that some angsty teenage boys have these opinions, but thats a small group within the gamer label.
Unfortunately, most of the gaming communities I looked (4chan, gamefaqs, reddit, twitter) at had a significant portion of the comments refusing to believe it. Some were able to believe the switch data thanks to games like Animal Crossing and Zelda but significant amount thought these stats were from moms buying stuff for kids. But I will say there were plenty of comments pushing back against that.
Not familiar with the gamefaqs community, but the others probably have a fairly circular Venn diagram between those angsty teen boys and gamers. Especially 4Chan. Twitter lately has been embracing the alt-right that fosters those angsty teen boys as well.
Maybe in wrong, I dont know. From my personal experience at least, which is being a male thats played video games since before the turn of the century, I dont see any of the people I play games with or have played games with over the last few decades holding these types of views. That may just be down to who I chose to play games with though.
My wife doesnt play much anymore, but she used to get the whole “woah a grill in my game?” Thing, but it was usually harmless and didnt go much further than those initial comments.
It’s bizarre, isn’t it. I’m a woman and I remember growing up with Pokémon, and Zelda and those 2 game series are extremely popular with women. A lot of women I know love puzzle games and were huge fans of Professor Layton on the ds when that was out. I even know a woman at my job who’s into Elden Ring.
I used to play a lot of PUBG on mobile. one of the most active players in our group was a girl and she was an absolute beast. doubly so if she got her hands on an M762.
basically just elaborating on this twitter thread.
And because Kotaku decided to play a >1min video ad while i was trying to read:
tl;dr:
According to Circana’s PlayerPulse:
47% of console video game players are female (+1% vs YA)
50% of PC video game players are female (+1% vs YA)
54% of mobile video game players are female (+1% vs YA)41% of PS5s in the US are female owned
45% of Xbox Series consoles are female owned
52% of Swich consoles are female owned
50% of gaming PCs are female ownedThat doesn’t really seem right to me, at least in the US. Most female gamers I know are either married (so any consoles would be joint owned) or play mobile games almost exclusively. Some play on PC, and very few play on any kind of console without being married. Or maybe they just don’t talk about it like men do.
If that’s accurate, I think it’s awesome! I’m more interested in methodology though. I’d love for this to be true since it means we’ve finally destroyed the stigma against women playing video games.
Most gamers you know are married, but most gamers I know are not. Less people are getting married overall, so it statistically could make sense. Also, I’ve found that among my married friends, those who game tend to prerer different kinds of games. For instance I have a friend who PC games but her husband only plays the xbox. So the data probably has variations of that.
The methodology is discussed in the article.
Here is a tweet embedded in the article that explains how the data was collected.
While reflecting on our personal experience is useful it is important to acknowledge that our experiences are anecdotal and do not necessarily demonstrate truth.
That is the most Onion headline I ever seen for real news. Kotaku? Yeah, the clickbait makes sense.
I… have to admit, other than Switch I’d have estimated somewhere around 20% to be honest.
But I like to be wrong here, cool that it’s not that divided!
And I’m not sure it’s a good sign that I didn’t expect this.Maybe Men are more vocal (possibly because women are less so, because of bad treatment), or maybe I’m just not as attentive…
Maybe Men are more vocal (possibly because women are less so, because of bad treatment), or maybe I’m just not as attentive…
it’s almost certain some of this disconnect is women just not participating in traditional gaming communities because they have to deal with dipshits constantly, yeah. i don’t know if i’d characterize all of gaming as unusually misogynistic, but it’s still probably really easy to find casual misogyny even in the best moderated gaming spaces–and a lot of gaming spaces aren’t that well moderated either
There’s also the fact that most people assume everyone else is a guy online, even if the users says otherwise. Given the misogyny you were mentioning I think a lot of the women who do stock around in gamer communities tend to not correct that assumption.
Right. I’m a woman who as been gaming since I was about 7 years old. I have learned several strategies to make sure that I don’t draw attention to that fact. It’s always better if whoever I’m playing with assumes that I’m a dude.
Yeah, I’m a woman in my thirties and I’ve played (on PC and console!) since I was five years old… learned a very, very long time ago that most people online would assume I was male and that it is often prudent not to correct them. So I don’t. Twenty years of conditioning telling me to keep my head down. Now that I think about it, that’s pretty sad.
I hope young girls nowadays feel more comfortable being open about their interests. Maybe I should be more open myself; I can take the hits if it makes things even a little bit easier for them.
