Gamer Demographics and Mary’s E3 To-Watch List
By maryvarn on June 9th, 2011Posted In: NPC Blog,Random Geekiness,Video Games
Gamer Demographics
If you read NPC, you probably already know that more adults and females play video games than is generally thought by mainstream society. But it’s always nice to have the facts to back that up. The Entertainment Software Association recently published a beautifully designed pdf of a demographic study of gamers and the games we play. This little tidbit surprised even me:
Women age 18 or older represent a significantly greater portion of the game-playing population (37%) than boys age 17 or younger (13%)
I was a little bummed to see this:
Some of the top reasons why gamers purchase a computer or video game: quality of game graphics, an interesting storyline, a sequel to a favorite game, word of mouth.
I get that that’s true, but I’m disappointed there’s no mention of game mechanics or unique gameplay. Are most gamers really just interested in nice graphics and existing properties? At least game sequels have a better track record of being high quality than many movie sequels.
What do you think about the study? Anything surprise you?
E3 2011
Have you been keeping up with E3? I haven’t kept on top of all the news from the demo floor, but I watched the big three keynotes from Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony. Here’s a list of a few things that I’m especially interested in:
Minecraft for Xbox. I’m skeptical that I’ll like playing my latest addiction on the big screen/console. Especially because I usually like to have the tv on in the background while I play. Can’t do that if I’m actually playing on the tv! But I’m super interested to see how it works and if it expands the market of Minecraft players.
Dance Central 2. I really like Dance Central, but the two big things that are lacking are a campaign mode like in Rock Band, and simultaneous multiplayer dancing. Sounds like the sequel will have both.
Nintendo Wii U. I know the U is supposed to be “You” or “Utopia” etc. But I keep thinking of it as Wii University. I’ve had a Wii since launch, but I’m still not a fan of their naming conventions. Oh well. I think the new touch screen controller looks pretty interesting. If the price is right, I may buy this one at launch too.
PlayStation Vita. I didn’t expect to be interested in the new PlayStation portable, but I have to admit I kind of want this. I don’t have a PSP. I love playing games on the iPad and iPhone, but I miss the lack of different kinds of controls. The sticks, buttons, back trackpad, and touchscreen on the Vita seem like there could be a lot of different gameplay possibilities. The big downside? Gaming on iOS has me trained that $10 is expensive for a handheld game. So shelling out $40 (I’m assuming) for Vita games may be tough for me to swallow.
Dust514. I haven’t played EVE Online. I’m interested, but haven’t scraped the time together to try it out. This could be my entry to that universe I’ve been curious about. It’s a scifi shooter that will somehow hook into EVE from the PS3. Plus it’s from Iceland, a country I recently visited and have a special place in my heart for. 
There are a slew of other games that piqued my interest. Star Trek: Infinite Space, Ruin, Mass Effect 3, Torchlight 2 to name a few.
I’m anxious to hear what you guys think about the recent announcements from E3! Favorites? Duds? Too busy playing everything from last year’s announcements?
It seems it’s the same generation that keeps on playing games. I remember back 8 or so years ago a study found the average age of gamers to be about 27 or so. Glad that I’m still bellow the bell curve.
I don’t think it’s so much a “lack of interest” in those things as it is a “lack of marketing” of them. No one really pushes the new mechanics, unless they’re individual, not-entirely-game-changing or separate from the graphics like God of War’s whatsy, with the killing. Games like Portal do push the Mechanic bit, but Portal wasn’t really /advertised/. It came with other games, and blew things out of the water. Games with unique mechanics tend to be more experimental; not something you’re going to advertise the hell out of. Games like Minecraft and Dwarf Fortress, developed independently, or again Portal, developed as “Can we do this?” not “Can we sell this?” Since they’re not really advertised for their unique mechanics, they’re discovered through word of mouth.
The Indie/Experimental Game Crowd is a relatively small portion of the gaming community. Games with truly innovative mechanics or applications of those mechanics tend to be available without buying, anyway — like Dwarf Fortress.
but that’s all just speculation.
I was surprised that WoW was number two. Until I noticed that vanilla, BC, WotLK, Cat, cat collectors AND battle chest were all on the list. The only thing I can’t figure out is why WoW seems to still cater to 10 year olds?
Game mechanics are important to me. If a game is too clunky and hard to use.. or just plain boring I won’t play it. I can’t get into the final fantasy games mainly because I hate turn based systems, so their emo stories don’t draw me in as much as they possibly could. Of course, Lost Odessy I forgave for being turned based because the cut scenes were so hilarious or touching and I fell in love with all but the main character. But final fantasy? It’s so.. meh to me.
My favoritest game in the whole wide world has no graphics, no story line that any writer came up with, and no premade social structure. It’s all their unique game mechanics and skill structure that appeal most to me. “Oblivion” appealed to me because it was the closest thing I had ever seen to my favorite game’s way of doing things. Granted, I found it word of mouth, but MUDs work that way if you weren’t playing them before. I could forswear most games (with the exception of some Mass Effect and Dragon Age), just to play dartmud. I’ve even given up my time with wow to return to my MUD. Graphics and predetermined story lines are nothing compared to true immersion to me, and most games are just an interesting story line mixed in with some awesome fight scenes you get to have some control over. But, to each their own.
They are right though, most people just want something pretty to look at and a story to watch, or something stupidly gory and dark. No two gamers are exactly alike, but the gaming industry has to do what the gaming industry has to do to survive, and they’ll cater to the main stream before they will go out on a limb and make something for a smaller demographic. I’m just glad that they realize that girl gamers are out there, and I wish they had acknowledged girls under the age of 17, because I started playing games when I was 12 (though earlier if you count my sucky years at nintendo and atari). However, I never would have labeled myself as a gamer then. I was just a kid that played video games when my friends were grounded. I also noticed that I liked many of the same games my little brother did.
It makes me kind of sad and sick that they make some really stupid “girly” games for girls, ignoring the fact that they might like something a little bit more in depth than ponies and barbies. Sad, sad world.
It appears they forgot one key piece of information. Women are slowly but steadily taking over the gaming industry as well. A lot of female gamers that I know currently work in video games (Including myself) and are often left out of these studies because of “bias”. Yes, a game is much more fun if the graphics are smooth and easy on the eyes, but give me an old clunky nintendo game over something with smooth graphics and controls that don’t make sense.
As a Communication major who had a professor obsessed with surveys and studies, I have to point out that they may not have been given a properly designed survey, nor may have the inferences been tabulated properly. So don’t despair that the things you wanted to see aren’t on there. They might not have been given that as an option because the people who designed the survey didn’t consider it, or if they selected “other” they were not given the chance to write in what their reasoning was. It is very difficult to conduct any kind of unbiased and thorough study – all forms of study have their downfalls. Surveys can have *many* downfalls but they are the easiest and cheapest method of studying large groups.
Speaking personally, I buy a game because of a unique or bizarre gameplay twist. Katamari, for instance, I bought because it was strange. The sequels I bought because they were sequels of the most awesome game ever. But Final Fantasy, Suikoden, and a few others I tried because my brother said they’d be good. Those are the two reasons I buy a game.
As a stat major, I’ll second Tygrezz that this may not be a really valid statistical source. I can quickly point to at least two manipulations of the underlying statistical data to present interesting but invalid information, which indicates that the way data was taken and presented may not be unbiased.
First, in the male vs female chart, notice how the numbers show 52% male and 48% female gamers, but note that the graphical presentation shows a much greater difference than the numbers support. You could argue that this is done for clarity, but it distorts the data regardless.
Second the observation “Women age 18 or older represent a significantly greater portion of the game-playing population (37%) than boys age 17 or younger (13%)” is an interesting tidbit and seems to imply something interesting, but it doesn’t really tell us anything without the rest of the data. Since we know what percent of gamers are male and female (from elsewhere in the data) we can actually derive that missing data. Turns out females 17 and under represent 11% of gamers and males 18 and older represent 39% of gamers, so the fact that female gamers 18 and over represent almost three times the proportion of gamers as males 17 and under is irrelevant. It’s only because 76% of gamers are 18 or older and only 24% are 17 or under.
Also it’s obvious because of the lack of margins of error or confidence levels, etc… that no actual statistical analysis has been done, so this is all raw sample data. Thus, it’s not really appropriate to draw conclusion from it. For example, for a 48%-52% split along gender lines to be considered a significant difference, the sample size taken (which we don’t know from this report) would have to be around 2500 people. With a smaller sample size, the appropriate conclusion should be “We find no evidence to support that there is gender difference in video game playing demographics.” or something similar.
Related to what Matt said (and this is something that crossed my mind when this story was first posted, but I didn’t get around to commenting until now), was that the reason over-18 women gamers outnumber under-17 boy gamers is the simple fact that in the whole world, there are considerably more over-18 women than there are 17-or-younger boys. I mean, you’re only “17 or younger” for 18 years. You’re “over 18″ for … decades.
A more useful and telling statistic would be “X% of over-18 women play video games, compared to Y% of 17-or-younger boys”. Worded and calculated that way, I suspect the difference would be reversed.
Good points on the statistics, all!
I remember meeting statistics majors in college, and saying I thought their major was really interesting, because I did, and they never believed me. :O
I agree with your point as to why people buy games. I mean I will take a great third-person action RPG from ye olden times (e.g. Secret of Mana) over some souped-up, run-of-the-mill, basic first person shooter with overused plotline any day. Honestly, I DO look a lot into story line, but I also do not play MMO’s because I like a concrete end to games. Also, I hate dealing with the immature 10 year old boys that make up over 10% of the gaming population. I mean, that means if I am in a guild of 26 people, 2-3 of those people will be whiny little 10 year old boys. . . How is that fun?
But I do believe game mechanics come into play a lot when I decide on a game, and I am almost always disappointed. Most important mechanics being: Challenging A.I., Proper Character Development (in essence, your character HAS to level up some on her or his own to advance in the game and you are never left wanting in boss battles), Intricate leveling system with varied abilities, of which you must actually choose wisely in order for your character build to work out late game, and a huuuge array of weapons, armor, accessories, etc. Also, items should NOT be overpowered. I would rather have 40 swords in game with an attack power between 10 and 15 than 40 swords with attack power from 10 to 100.
Now as for the statistics, though I do see Matt’s point, he misread the data. It says 58% male, 42% female, not 52%/48% and thus is represented correctly. Also, It states:
“The 2011 Essential Facts About the Computer and Video Game Industry was released by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA)
at E3 2011. The annual research was conducted by Ipsos MediaCT for the ESA. The study is the most in-depth and targeted survey of its kind, gathering data from almost 1,200 nationally representative households that have been identified as owning either or both a video game console or a personal computer used to run entertainment software.”
It never claims to be a solid “statistical stance”, merely a survey, and states that it took sample data of around 1,200 households. Granted, this does not state how many “people” but it does give a general idea.
As for the comparison of 17 and younger boys to 18 and older girls, most people think of people who play a lot of video games as being male kids, and think of adult women as NOT being big gamers. This comparison was simply to show that the common opinions of “little boys play video games” and “grown women do not” to be highly inaccurate. I believe it to be a very well-proposed survey. Thanks.
P.S. I was speaking in general terms when I said “10 year old annoying boys.” Thought I should through that out before the statistic police (whom make up 72.5% of all people reading this post) attack me (a 33% chance it will happen anyways.)
Also, interesting sidenote: 78% of all statistics are made up on the spot to try and prove a point.