Study: Most PC gamers women; one in six FPS players are female

[golden_boy]

Gathering PC gaming data from the �Nielsen MegaPanel�, more than 185,000 PCs were tracked by their system in the US. The findings include that �PC gaming is alive and well,� showing growth, and that females aged 25 and older make up the largest block of PC gamers, responsible for 54.6% of all game play minutes in December 2008.

�If I look at a genre like �shooter� as a more hardcore classification (...) males are just above 360,000 players and females are just over 75,000 players.

In the chosen sample, it shows that roughly one in six FPS players are female.

Nielsen Study: Majority PC Gamers Female, Solitary | Rock, Paper, Shotgun

[JDSTONE]

seems like you had the right idea in making scout a girl.

[foq]

Does that include Farmville and all the other facebook games? I bet the 1/6 female FPS gamers are all playing cawadooty on their brother's xbawks.

[golden_boy]

Pc Games != Xbawxs bro

no, Farmville not included.

[talisa]

farmville is lame.
the original harvest moon games which the farmville games are obviously a total rip-off from are way more fun

the original harvest moon


farmville



.


anyways.... back to the subject of the thread:
i know more then enough other female gamers like me who also love games like quake and doom and such.

my current gf does too. sadly she's been uber-busy lately cuz she got a promotion at work and has been very busy with her new position, and her work-times increased to full 8am-5pm work-days, so sadly when she gets home she's broken and i havent been able to get her to come and play some quake or doom or such with me

[Mindf!3ldzX]

Once the BF4 beta drops I'll report back about women in BF4 !
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEqfeanWAZk]Battlefield 4 Female Soldier - YouTube[/ame]

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34E3oQu941w[/ame]

[Shambler234]

Well i hope to god that they're playing good games.

[RL Clown]

Nielsen Study: Majority PC Gamers Female, Solitary | Rock, Paper, Shotgun

This is a man's world, but it would be nothing, NOTHING without a woman! (Good old song).

Seriously, I think that men and women are equally capable (in everything). Women can even play tackle football, if they wanted too. [Screw stereotypes.]

[Spirit]

When ever you judge a study, looking at the selection of people is very important. In this case they are people who installed a software that monitored their computer usage.

And to me PC gaming or even gaming is implying non-casual games, at least I was surprised with disbelief when I read the title but went "oh, oh, ok" when I saw what the people in the sample actually played:


That is not "the PC gaming market" some people are worried about. This is the casual diversion and addiction market that really should include browser games as well.

The quote at the bottom of the RPS post goes from "shooter" to "FPS". I am very wary about that.

Sadly the PDF is not available anymore, I would be interested in reading it.

[Mindf!3ldzX]

Most likely the study was fueled with "Surveys for Cash" people. That study doesn't even reflect todays gamng, its actually quite dated lol.

It's a poorly executed pile of garbage. It's admirable that they wanted to know the info they tried getting at, but really. The claims are laughable at best when you dig into the nitty gritty of it.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news...mer-Population

Same song and dance as mentioned by user The thing is the terminology they use is very broad. I assume many will use this study as some kind of point in the near constant sexism debates in the video game community. The problem with that is that the Video Games that are the subject of the debate (let's say Call of Duty) and the games that said females may be playing (lets say Farmville or Angry Birds) don't overlap. So this study may not be as much of a revelation as people may think at first glance.

These study's should take a note from Facebook and just drum up some good legal paperwork saying they can use your info "for whatever reasons they see fit" (Steam,Origin,and other PC gaming outlet places where), don't take polls, just look at your users profiles and build up some real-world numbers.

Taking 25 guys and 25 girls of the same age and dropping them in a scenario of : gaming is availible, but so are non-gaming other activities, and seeing how many of each play a game seems more valid data than estimaing girls playing solitaire , minesweep,and farmville.

Those games are everywhere and not considered PC platform IMO.

[golden_boy]

I'm fascinated with so many male gamer's apparent urge to disqualify this study. Why can't you just accept it and go on living?

So what if women tend to play less "hardcore games"? A game is a game.

Why this urge from men to discredit that study (usually by saying roughly "those games do not count")? You know, you wouldn't lose anything by just accepting it.

It's amazing.

[Spirit]

Oh you. Do you consider "random people online" to be "male" by default or did you look at percentages where gender was known? Maybe women are more likely to blindly accept studies when they like what they say? Just kidding...

I doubt people have anything against more female players. I personally cannot stand white knights and the whole '"sexism" in gaming' debate though so this topic is quite hot to be scrutinised.

Studies are not easy to do! If one is not very careful one's study ends up heavily biased. Maybe the study analyses its biases and shortcomings, I have not found it online so I could not check. If it does not (the comments at RPS suggest that) then it is unscientific biased rubbish. The conclusions seem cherry-picked.

Studies should not be "just accepted", you better analyse them before taking their word. Check who wrote them, how they worked, how they analysed, etc, standard procedure.

I definitely think that one should distinguish between games like Solitaire and games like Dishonored (random choice). You probably would not put cinema movies and TV soap operas into the same bucket either. Smartphones and tablets and Facebook have probably leveled the gender gap quite successfully in the recent past when considering all sorts of games. I would be highly sceptical anything has changed in the non-casual field though.

Mindthings: Thanks for noting the age of this, I overread that. :\

[Mindf!3ldzX]

I'm fascinated with so many male gamer's apparent urge to disqualify this study. Why can't you just accept it and go on living?

So what if women tend to play less "hardcore games"? A game is a game.

Why this urge from men to discredit that study (usually by saying roughly "those games do not count")? You know, you wouldn't lose anything by just accepting it.

It's amazing.

PC gaming implies gaming thats exlusive to the PC.

Tablets,Iphones,Androids,Netbooks,and Laptops don't constitute Personal Computer in my opinion a game that's aimed @ 200% of the platforms out their does not constitute PC gaming.

PC Gaming on the Windows platform, the most common games being listed are Solitaire and fn FreeCell as the TOP games being played. You truely accept this study's findings legit based on the top results?

Seriously, chicks DO like shooting games. They like driving games, they like tons of other game's. This study IS a fucking joke, it honestly is.

World of Warcraft was the only AAA title I seen on that list, and its absurd of the fact that they basically TESTED THE HABITS OF MALE AND FEMALE PC USERS (or did they,anyone who could run the App could participate obviously). Tablets incapable of running AAA PC game titles don't do jack shit for running any Call of Duty's or Crysis's or Battlefields
Study IS a sham, fact's.

Their approach for gathering data would be better suited to "what do most people do to waste their time" because honestly, Solitaire and FreeCell. Ding ding ding !