DarthMasta
Member
And once we have the stats for how many moms are going around buying games we'll need to ascertain the kids gender, you know, for science.
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ESA: 37% of the most frequent US game buyers are female, gaming age breakdown
- Thread starter Nirolak
- Start date
The survey tells us that under 18 gamers are 62% male
DarthMasta
Member
Sure, but how can you just assume these game buying moms only have 62% male children? Might be 100%, after all, girls don't game, it is known...
/s
Infinite_Daremo
Member
The content of the survey is great.
But this thread is toxic as fuck.
But this thread is toxic as fuck.
Alter_Fridge
Member
WOOHOO I'M EXACTLY AVERAGE
take that Mum and or Dad
take that Mum and or Dad
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
GOOD! I get tired of people constantly saying that we need to have digital only consoles next gen
Surprised? Question....how would you know how old people are that you game with?
There was a breakdown on this topic before actually. Don't feel like doing a deep google search but i bet you can find it if you look hard enough.
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
This is a very interesting point. Thanks for that. Never knew this.
let's count gamers:
PS4 - 57 mln
Xbox - 48 mln (according to MS)
WiiU - 14 mln
3DS - 65 mln
Vita - 15 mln? (not sure)
steam - 125 mln
retro gamers - let's say 10 mln
(I can't account for mobile, because by this point probably everybody played some mobile game at least once)
total: 334 mln
human population of the planet Earth.... 7.5 billion.
people 7 500 000 000 - 334 000 000 gamers
probability of meeting other gamer - 0.04
meaning close to zero, so how come we meet some? There are many factors: common social activities (as school, clubs, conventions, etc), buying games in stores (no longer viable for many of us who moved to digital only, what makes meeting other gamers much harder), online communities, meeting in games itself as most obvious one.
Now what happens if part of said gamers try not to be visible for good reasons? You easily don't see them ever, unless they disclose they are out there, pretty simple.
Now when they do disclose, you don't believe they are out there, funny isn't it?
Yoshi
Headmaster of Console Warrior Jugendstrafanstalt
The death of Wii might have something to do with that? A 2014 study may refer to 2013 data and using self-diagnosis of being a games buyer may lead to "yes" answers some years after the last game purchase. So assuming someone has a Wii and Wii Fit, Sports, Just Dance and Mario Kart, but does not buy a new console, the person may still answer "yes" in 2013, a year after the successor came out, but the answer of most who did not "upgrade" may change to a "no" in subsequent years. Many female players may have moved to phone games that are free to play, thus answering "no" now, as well.
Yoshi
Headmaster of Console Warrior Jugendstrafanstalt
Let's maybe assume most posters in this thread live in western countries for a more realistic guesstimate here (But of course, on the other hand, it's probably safe to just drop the numbers of Vita and Wii U, because the majority of Wii U and Vita owners will also at least have one out of PC, PS4, Bone and 3DS)? Also, I would add the additional assumption that one meets more than one person in their live. I, for instance, have already met and conversed with about ten persons just today.
EDIT: And for a different look at it, assuming the poster is living in a country with similar demographics among video game players: If the poster meets ten video game players in real life throughout his live, the chances are smaller than 1% none of them are female. This is not taking cohorting of sexes in social interaction into consideration and also assumes the likelihood of a video game player to reveal this behaviour is independent of its sex.
Dice//
Banned
Yep that's me.
I don't wear game stuff unless I'm at the gym or going to bed in it. Just not really 'chic' enough [for my tastes].
In a separate vein: Liking games and fashion wrecks my "for fun" spending real fast. T__T
Fachasaurus
Member
Wimmens be shoppin', amirite?!
My wife kicked me when I showed her this and said that to her.
Foreals though this is cool, but honestly, I will never understand the controversy over these statistics.
My wife kicked me when I showed her this and said that to her.
Foreals though this is cool, but honestly, I will never understand the controversy over these statistics.
I was just trying to show obvious point, that if you are born into non gamer family and are not into social stuff, also embraced digital only, you can never meet even one gamer randomly. Of course we meet much more than one other person in life what increases chances, but I can't do math on that, no real data.
Steve Youngblood
Member
I don't doubt that women might be more averse to wearing gaming clothing than men, but I want to note that I don't think it's exclusively women that don't want to outwardly identify as "gamers." I mean, I'm a giant dork who has been gaming since I developed even a modicum of hand eye coordination and now currently help moderate a message board focused on video games. I am absolutely not too cool to fess up to being a fan of video games and have no problem admitting such in a conversation. I still wouldn't be caught dead wearing gaming-related clothing out in public.
themaskedndi
Member
To a certain extent, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Women are always being told that they're not "gamers," so they don't identify as gamers. I used to live in a house with five other women. All of us played games on a regular basis, but if you asked my roommates if they gamed, they'd probably say no. People also assume that women don't play games even when there's plenty evidence to the contrary. When I went to pick up my copy of Fallout 4, the guy at Gamestop ignored me as I stood in line and started ringing up someone else. (To his credit, the other guy saw what happened and spoke up about it). We have to be pretty loud to get any recognition at all.
And yes, a lot of the time, we don't want to be found. I don't want to have to deal with gamekeepers that want to prove I'm lying about playing games or get harassed over voice chat or fend off the advances of guys that are obsessed with having a "gamer girlfriend." I want to be treated as a person, and hiding my gender is the easiest way to get that treatment.
I don't even have gaming related clothing, none, no figurines, or toys or anything, only exception is my ringtone, probably half of gamers would recognize it.
What even furthers my initial point, that meeting other gamers is not easy, unless you are part of online gaming communities. Meeting randomly in real life? you have to be lucky.
ScatheZombie
Member
Because that's not the number of people who play games, that's the number of people who either have purchased hardware or have active personal accounts. Your numbers don't consider overlap (people with multiple consoles) or sharing (people who play games but haven't personally purchased hardware or have their own account). It's been a couple of years, but the last time I saw industry estimates for potential market share, dedicated consoles/handhelds had something around 300m users and PC had over 800m.
But that was more than a year ago and the market was still growing.
It'd probably be a relatively safe bet to say the number of 'gamers' is probably 1.25b at this point - with the vast majority (+70%) of them being on PC.
no numbers show this being a case, multiple accounts and multiple platforms (what we know is a case) by the same person only lower gamer numbers not make them higher.
I'd like to see a source of this info, because I was being very generous with total number of gamers estimate there.
Jest Chillin
Member
"I was being very generous" while not taking into account a myriad of other gaming systems (including knockoff systems), people who game on PC that don't use Steam, and as you acknowledged, it's impossible to guess mobile/tablet gaming numbers.
I'm not arguing against your conclusion. I'm just saying trying to estimate anywhere near an accurate total of "gamers" is a fools errand.
My mom is a 50 year old gamer. Plays lots of puzzle things on her iPad.
However, due to severe carpal tunnel syndrome and oncoming arthritis, that's all she can play comfortably anymore. Before that, she was beasting on Contra, Mario and other old school platformers, played Halo with me and my brother, and would dabble in fighting games. Those are some of my most treasured memories with her.
I guess she's just not a gamer anymore. Arbitrary distinctions meant to denigrate and belittle women can unkindly fuck off.
However, due to severe carpal tunnel syndrome and oncoming arthritis, that's all she can play comfortably anymore. Before that, she was beasting on Contra, Mario and other old school platformers, played Halo with me and my brother, and would dabble in fighting games. Those are some of my most treasured memories with her.
I guess she's just not a gamer anymore. Arbitrary distinctions meant to denigrate and belittle women can unkindly fuck off.
ScatheZombie
Member
NewZoo does the estimates that most of the industry uses. We use them, along with internal data, to estimate potential market size and share.
Their latest article actually puts the total at 2.2 billion gamers worldwide.
And to show how much the industry values NewZoo's estimates, here's Intel citing the NewZoo report from 2015.
Actually, from what I've seen on history of video game kinda stories, the idea that videogames were a boy thing wasn't until Nintendo started marketing it that way simply cause it made better marketing sense.
I know when I grew up it seemed that video games were seen as a kid thing, but not necessarily just for boys. I grew up around the Atari generation of video games (and Nintendo later on when I was an older kid but by then kids my age weren't really focused on video games. it was something you did at home but you didn't really do with friends so much as you were focused on going to concerts and clubs).
Really this "girl gamer" is rare thing didn't seem to be a big thing until much later tbh. Even in college it didn't seem to be some weird thing to anyone that I was female and played games (no one made a big deal about it). Seems like it is a post year 2000 thing. Granted to be fair I was always a tomboy and I went to an engineering college where the guys would bitch about the fact they outnumbered us (mainly cause they felt it made females act more entitled cause they knew it was harder for a guy to find a female at our college) but no one seemed to think it was weird or special that I liked video games (it was just random topic to talk about or argue, Nintendo vs. Sega in my first year of which I was totally team sega or two of college and then later Playstation vs. Nintendo of which I was totally team playstation).
Not as bad a story but it does remind me when i was at Best Buy checking out a controller for the xbox 360 and I'm busy studying it while my BF (now husband) is standing around looking bored to tears (he's not a gamer at all) and the BB guy comes up to him and asks if he can help him with anything. I actually didn't think much of it but my BF noticed it (Why is he coming up to me asking when it's obvious I'm not the one looking for anything?).
Actually the story that infuriates me the most about some one thinking that cause I"m female I must not like/know anything about it was not gaming related and happened when I was younger (high school age). I was really into making model planes/cars (those plastic ones you put together and paint). I was buying a small container of the type of glue that works by melting the plastic pieces together (which in hindsight I think I was better learning how not to glob the regular type glue as I found the plastic melting type messed up the paint and never made a very solid bond). The guy asks me, "You know that is glue and not paint, right?" and I answered that I did. I mean it was a reasonable question as it came in the same jar as the paint did so I could easily see some one making the mistake. What pissed me off is that he then proceeded to keep asking me if I knew it was glue as if he refused to believe that I might actually know what I was doing or that I was some how incapable of comprehending what he was asking in the first place. He asked/warned me at least three times if not more each time me saying I know that it's glue.
Where as I totally love my gaming related clothing. Though I've always been one to like wearing clothing that shows what I'm into (whether that be music bands, anime, games). But I do prefer ones that are clever about it (don't stand out but to some one who knows they'd recognize it, for example my New California Republic hoodie that most people mistake for a California Republic hoodie). But I think that's more cause I like the cleverness (and love it when people actually "get it") rather than because I don't want to be too obvious.
themaskedndi
Member
This is what I remember too. In elementary school, pretty much everyone played games. No one thought of it as a boy thing. Even in high school, I remember playing things like Smash Bros and Mario Party in co-ed groups.No one thought it was weird. (born in the 80s, if that makes a difference.)
I also feel like gamer used to be a more neutral term, like reader; it wasn't the identity that people treat it as now.
1000 respondents is more than enough for a good poll. The number of participants is not nearly as important as getting a representative sample. I don't think your ideas about how polling should be conducted is backed up by statistics.
Every time my sister goes to Gamestop she comes back with a new story about how awkward people were with her there--usually the employees trying to hit on her. I'm sure it's not the same at all stores but I can certainly imagine a few bad experiences persuading women to buy video games at another store or online.
Some Nobody
Junior Member
lol. Ya'll try so hard to convince people you're not nerds. Chill, fam. No one's gonna give you a swirly.
And yeah, this information lines up with what I already know. Every single girl I was friends with in college (so 18+) played video games. "Real" games too, whatever that means. They may not have played whatever critical AAA darling was out that year, but they were always hype about some game or another--usually Japanese titles.
And now I'll take my leave of this thread before someone says something stupid to ruin my day.
Nostremitus
Member
Like anything, it depends on the shirt.
Melchiah
Member
I'm above the average age, and I couldn't agree more with the survey's value statistics. Games provide far more value to me than any other field of entertainment. For example, the last full price retail game gave me 85 hours of entertainment for over a month, and there's no movie, album or book that can compete with that, or make me feel equally engaged. That's why I don't tend buy those as much as I used to. I use a streaming service to rent movies, and if I want to see them again, they will often appear on Netflix at some point. There are very few movies these days, that I'd feel compelled to buy for further viewing, and I have absolutely no desire to rebuy the same movies in 4K, that I already have on DVD/BR. As for music, I mostly buy and listen to soundtracks, which are also related to gaming.
Lmao!!
My kids mother is part of the general public: hates smartphone OS upgrades, bought our kids Spiderman Wii instead of Wii U when shopping for Wii U games, has no idea what 4K is, probably doesnt really understand about 1080p.
But she kicks my ass in Mortal Kombat, kinda back n forth when I played Mario Kart. She plays retro Sega and Nintendo games.