Women Now Make Up Almost Half of Gamers

[Morreion]

Women Now Make Up Almost Half of Gamers (WSJ)
Adult Women Gamers Now More Numerous Than Under-18 Boys

Female gamers made up about 48% of the game-playing public in the U.S. this year, according to a report recently published by the Entertainment Software Association, a U.S. gaming industry trade group.

That is up sharply from 40% in 2010. What is more, women over 18-years-old now represent a significantly larger portion of the U.S. game-playing population than boys under 18, a demographic that has traditionally been seen as a core target group for game companies. The ESA based its findings on a study of 2,200 U.S. households.

[dortmunder]

Doesn't seem likely

Take mobile "gaming" off this list and I'm sure the numbers would be nothing close to this. But I guess this is just in the US, still doesn't seem close to right to me.

[Morreion]

I get the impression there are more women gamers across the board. However, my non-scientific observations of watching what people were doing for years on public library computers told me that teenage boys liked Runescape and HALO 2, whereas older women liked to play solitaire and various Yahoo Games (as did older men, but I noticed more women on these particular gaming sites). Like I said, not scientific!

I think mobile gaming has a big effect on surveys too- sort of like what 'social gaming' did for a while (remember Farmville?- you never hear about social gaming anymore). It would be neat to see breakdowns of demographics on Steam gaming, MMOs, etc. The fact that I don't do mobile gaming I guess makes me see it as 'gaming lite'.

[Oatik]

Research firm Gartner (IT) projects that by 2015 revenue from mobile games will surpass that of PC games, and researcher InMobi says women make up 61 percent of mobile gamers in the U.S.

www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-08-07/video-games-cant-afford-to-ignore-women

I tried to find a stat on League of Legends since there are so many players, it's free and I look at it as pretty gender neutral. Sadly I didn't find any recent statistics...but from 2012 it was over 90% male.

majorleagueoflegends.s3.amazonaws.com/lol_infographic.png

[Regolyth]

I believe we've had this discussion before, and my stance is still the same. "Time-waster" games that you play standing in line somewhere, or because you're bored at the family reunion, do not equal a legitimate game. Thus the types of people who play such games, be they man or woman, are not gamers. Period.

I don't know why people would think otherwise. I guess they're trying to skew the scales in their favor, saying they're more women to fit their agenda; whatever that may be. I don't mind women gamers. In fact, I truly wish there were more. That would be terrific. But the truth is, there's still not a lot of them. There's more than there used to be, but not 48% of the gamer population. Don't lie to yourselves, and us.

Let me share some person's comment that sums it up really well. I added my corrections in brackets.

Counting women [people] who play games on their phones as 'gamers' is like calling a man [person] who can make cereal a cook.

[Jaema]

Adult Women Gamers Now More Numerous Than Under-18 Boys

This is a reporter who never saw General Chat in an mmo, clearly

[Morreion]

*laughs* good point!