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"Gaming Habits of Teenage Girls (and Boys)" - SHOCKING STATS [video]

QaaQer

Member
UGH







it doesn't matter though. it'll just be yet another study to show people the obvious (girls love games), but it's still TOO RISKY TO MAKE GAMES FER EM GUYS.

whatever, industry. the market is there, it's your loss. someone's gonna come in and make a killing by doing it right by women.

Isn't part of the point that girls like the same games as teen boys?
 

Mesoian

Member
They are much better in MKX imo

They're learning. Having options is always better.

Also: Geeze, these 11th grade kids are saying that Modern Warfare 2 was their favorite game? So they played that...nigh on 6 years ago when they were 10 or 11?

Numbers like that make me realize the futility of my lifespan.
 
Call of Duty is the gateway drug to girls and FPSs, next introduce them to Wolfenstein The New Order where they got 4 awesome female characters to work with :D

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Trace

Banned
Thanks for posting this and laying it all out with slides OP! I definitely agree with the message, the more relateable female protags the better IMO.
 

Wulfram

Member
I'm not sure self-reported stuff like this really works for some bits. Like the "sex object" stuff - people are going to give the answers that make them look better, but a bunch of them probably go and play that Kate Upton game anyway.

Also, it seems like it's a pretty consistent finding that RPGs are popular with women and girls, but I've never been able to pin down which RPGs they like. I know that Bioware games don't seem to get that many female players, for example - Dragon Age is apparently at 30%, which is low compared to console users as a whole.
 

Mesoian

Member
Call of Duty is the gateway drug to girls and FPSs, next introduce them to Wolfenstein The New Order where they got 4 awesome female characters to work with :D

iLKnI8OClQitK.gif

jdkJIgZ4Py63S.jpg

jcRJH8mPDFDzS.jpg

ib2Gy33uIdE5Ci.gif

Well...3, Frau Engel is fucking cartoonish.

It's a shame about the ending of that game, what a trainwreck.

I'm not sure self-reported stuff like this really works for some bits. Like the "sex object" stuff - people are going to give the answers that make them look better, but a bunch of them probably go and play that Kate Upton game anyway.

Also, it seems like it's a pretty consistent finding that RPGs are popular with women and girls, but I've never been able to pin down which RPGs they like. I know that Bioware games don't seem to get that many female players, for example - Dragon Age is apparently at 30%, which is low compared to console users as a whole.

It's anecdotal, but in my experience, the vocal minority for Bioware RPG's, especially Dragon Age, has been predominantly female. The women in my circle always bring it up, and unfortunately I have no frame of reference as I haven't played any of those games.
 
Not surprised at all that girls play everything, but somebody ask the "like to blow shit up"-girls if they have brothers or dads who play and buy these games and how many "blow shit up"-games over 30$ they buy from their own money per year. My personal observation is that those numbers are nothing to write home about yet.

As soon as those girls are over 20 and have a decent job, many start buying consoles and games on their own (unless their live-together-boyfriend does it anyway, then they let him buy it).

Again, just my observation. My reference is that I'm studying to be a teacher. By far the most of my fellow students are female and during a trainee week in school I like to talk about video games with the kids.
 

Tohsaka

Member
Also, it seems like it's a pretty consistent finding that RPGs are popular with women and girls, but I've never been able to pin down which RPGs they like. I know that Bioware games don't seem to get that many female players, for example - Dragon Age is apparently at 30%, which is low compared to console users as a whole.

Not sure about the west, but the Tales series is really popular with girls in Japan.
 

AlucardGV

Banned
I'm not sure self-reported stuff like this really works for some bits. Like the "sex object" stuff - people are going to give the answers that make them look better, but a bunch of them probably go and play that Kate Upton game anyway

don't worry Theo, your hormones will eventually kick in and you're gonna love them
 

Adam Prime

hates soccer, is Mexican
Not surprised at all that girls play everything, but somebody ask the "like to blow shit up"-girls if they have brothers or dads who play and buy these games and how many "blow shit up"-games over 30$ they buy from their own money per year. My personal observation is that those numbers are nothing to write home about yet.

As soon as those girls are over 20 and have a decent job, many start buying consoles and games on their own (unless their live-together-boyfriend does it anyway, then they let him buy it).

Again, just my observation. My reference is that I'm studying to be a teacher. By far the most of my fellow students are female and during a trainee week in school I like to talk about video games with the kids.

This is correct. Girls play whatever games their dads/brothers are playing. I'm also a teacher, I chat with kids about games. This is also my observation.
 

Mesoian

Member
Not sure about the west, but the Tales series is really popular with girls in Japan.

And interestingly, the girls I know who play Tales here have the same or similar complaints about female objectification in the later games. Most of my friends who jumped on at Symphonia got off at Xilia because of the complete lack of options for the female track.

And that being said, none of my female gaming friends have played P3:FES. I wonder what they'd think of the female track in that game.
 

foxdvd

Member
My 13 year old daughter had some of her female friends, ranging in age from 13-15, over for the weekend, and they spent the whole time in my 15 year old son's room taking turns playing Resident Evil Revelations 2 and Bloodborne. (door was left open before any jokes)

Most of the time they are over they take turns playing games..and not just casually. My oldest daughter who is 17 does not care for games that much, nor does her friends. It seems that there has been a massive increase in the desire to play games among young girls from the small sample group around me.
 
And thus the younger generation proves themselves to be underestimated once again. I don't know why everyone is always surprised by stuff like this.
 

Wavebossa

Member
pretty much. I enjoy Bayonetta as she's a character who is all about enjoying her sexuality and having fun. It's part of who she is. It's the dumb out-of-place shit that bothers me. The girl in Lost Planet who, while everyone is bundled up and freezing, she has her jacket zipped down to expose her cleavage. Sonya in MK 2011, ironically became my favorite character to play as along with Ermac, wearing that stupidly revealing jacket for no reason. Don't even get me started in shit like DoA, or Kojima's bullshit reasoning for Quiet's design.

Exactly, things like that take me out of the moment of the game. My suspension of disbelief allows me to acknowledge talking green dinosaurs and time-traveling-fairy-guided-elven heroes.

But when you're in a blizzard, and your female character is dressed like this,


... I just cant help but ask "Why?"
 

barit

Member
This was kind of amazing. Theo had an excellent comment. Thankfully the MK team took notice of how disgustingly they were objectifying their female warriors.

Funny how Theo shouldn´t play MK in the first place because he is obviously not 17+

I know this has nothing to do with portraying womens in video games but still why on earth had it to be MK the most brutal and violent fighting game to date ? It´s like parents and teachers don´t give a crap about parental control anymore
 
pretty much. I enjoy Bayonetta as she's a character who is all about enjoying her sexuality and having fun. It's part of who she is. It's the dumb out-of-place shit that bothers me. The girl in Lost Planet who, while everyone is bundled up and freezing, she has her jacket zipped down to expose her cleavage. Sonya in MK 2011, ironically became my favorite character to play as along with Ermac, wearing that stupidly revealing jacket for no reason. Don't even get me started in shit like DoA, or Kojima's bullshit reasoning for Quiet's design.

I think the rule with sexualized female characters is that if your gonna have it at least be upfront and blunt about it.
 

Wavebossa

Member
I think the rule with sexualized female characters is that if your gonna have it at least be upfront and blunt about it.

I don't think its about being upfront and blunt. DOA is very upfront and blunt about it (its even a feature), not sure if that changes anything.

I think it depends on the character. Bayonetta's character makes me say to myself "This is the kind of person I would expect to dress this way" If Yuna from ffx walked around in a bikini while you were climbing mount gagazet, I would be like.. "i dont get it"
 
Also, it seems like it's a pretty consistent finding that RPGs are popular with women and girls, but I've never been able to pin down which RPGs they like. I know that Bioware games don't seem to get that many female players, for example - Dragon Age is apparently at 30%, which is low compared to console users as a whole.

I'd actually be pretty surprised if this was the case, because it seems like most of the women I know who are really into games absolutely love Bioware games. Lots of female cosplayers at PAX for Bioware characters, too, or women just wearing N7 hoodies and the like. That's just anecdotal evidence, and hard numbers would obviously be better, so I'd be curious to know if Dragon Age really is an outlier or not.
 

Yarbskoo

Member
Theo: "This game, it's called Mortal Kombat. I really like it, but I notice a lot of the female characters are wearing very scantily clad clothing which doesn't make any sense because if you're playing a videogame like that, you expect everybody to be armored because it's a fighting game!

Kid doesn't play many fighting games, does he?


Perfect.
 
Well...3, Frau Engel is fucking cartoonish.

Frau Engel is great. She's in full control of expressing her sexuality, which you don't often see in older female characters. Even if she can be taken for an evil madam trope, she isn't sexualised like the evil demon seductress female villains often become as detailed in Anita's tropes video. Being cartoonish doesn't diminish that she's interesting for a villain in the context of most Nazis portrayed being men. Especially when you find out about her past from overhearing the conversation in the courtyard of the camp about the League of German Girls and her conversation with Bubi as you're near her office of having served for the country and given six children as a mother but "now it's time for me to have some fun". She doesn't take shit from anyone and is a strong second-in-command villain which is a position in fiction usually reserved for weakass righthand men when faced up close. She doesn't go down so easily.
 
I'd actually be pretty surprised if this was the case, because it seems like most of the women I know who are really into games absolutely love Bioware games. Lots of female cosplayers at PAX for Bioware characters, too, or women just wearing N7 hoodies and the like. That's just anecdotal evidence, and hard numbers would obviously be better, so I'd be curious to know if Dragon Age really is an outlier or not.

For RPG's female gamers who play on consoles usually like Bioware and, at one point, FF games. I'm not sure if FF still holds strong for them given that JRPG's have gone down to being niche over the years.
 
I'd actually be pretty surprised if this was the case, because it seems like most of the women I know who are really into games absolutely love Bioware games. Lots of female cosplayers at PAX for Bioware characters, too, or women just wearing N7 hoodies and the like. That's just anecdotal evidence, and hard numbers would obviously be better, so I'd be curious to know if Dragon Age really is an outlier or not.

I know a ton of girls who like FF, Kingdom Hearts, one who played DA 1+2 (she's into fantasy novels) and not a single one who played ME.
[maybe it's different in countries where the Xbox 360 was the dominating system that gen. My country is Playstation territory.]

Edit:
I also don't really like the way this question was worded, how about asking them if they wanted more attractive girls in games? Who is going to publicly say yes they want women to be sex objects in games?

I thought the same thing. Ask them if they want more average-looking female side-characters in their power-fantasy games, make the survey anonymous and the results will be different.
 
Too bad a lot of the major companies in the industry are just going to ignore this and other studies like it. They love their self fulfilling prophecies too much.

It's always irritated me how people put so much stock in things as childish as having a girl on the front cover of a game, I mean who the hell is not buying games because of the front cover?? Is so fucking hard to not treat people like dumb sheep especially when it's already been proven that this kind of thinking is nonsense by other games? I will stand by this statement that most players don't give a shit.

As for the designs for MK, I would actually like to hear an 18 year old talk about them as the game is very aimed towards that age. Also if the whole thing could be done more anonymously.

"The majority of boys surveyed said that women in games were too often treated as sex objects. In fact, only 19% of the boys said they'd be happy if more women-as-sex-objects made their way into games."
I also don't really like the way this question was worded, how about asking them if they wanted more attractive girls in games? Who is going to publicly say yes they want women to be sex objects in games?
 
I'd actually be pretty surprised if this was the case, because it seems like most of the women I know who are really into games absolutely love Bioware games. Lots of female cosplayers at PAX for Bioware characters, too, or women just wearing N7 hoodies and the like. That's just anecdotal evidence, and hard numbers would obviously be better, so I'd be curious to know if Dragon Age really is an outlier or not.

I don't think there is an actual gender breakdown of who is playing Bioware games. Wulfram was using the player statistics that Bioware released for DAI that showed that 32% of players used a female character. It's 20% for Mass Effect.
 
I know a ton of girls who like FF, Kingdom Hearts, one who played DA 1+2 (she's into fantasy novels) and not a single one who played ME.
[maybe it's different in countries where the Xbox 360 was the dominating system that gen. My country is Playstation territory.]

Oh, maybe, I'm in Canada. I definitely wouldn't expect Asian countries to be similar, as RPGs in general seem to recognize their female audiences more (plus the existence and popularity of otome games), but I wonder if Europe is similarly lacking in Bioware support.
 
Too bad a lot of the major companies in the industry are just going to ignore this and other studies like it. They love their self fulfilling prophecies too much.

It's always irritated me how people put so much stock in things as childish as having a girl on the front cover of a game, I mean who the hell is not buying games because of the front cover?? Is so fucking hard to not treat people like dumb sheep especially when it's already been proven that this kind of thinking is nonsense by other games? I will stand by this statement that most players don't give a shit.

As for the designs for MK, I would actually like to hear an 18 year old talk about them as the game is very aimed towards that age. Also if the whole thing could be done more anonymously.


I also don't really like the way this question was worded, how about asking them if they wanted more attractive girls in games? Who is going to publicly say yes they want women to be sex objects in games?
That's another thing that I would like to know. It's easy to say the right answer but deep down it's hard to judge if that's how you really feel.
 
Oh, maybe, I'm in Canada. I definitely wouldn't expect Asian countries to be similar, as RPGs in general seem to recognize their female audiences more (plus the existence and popularity of otome games), but I wonder if Europe is similarly lacking in Bioware support.

I'm from germany ;)
 

Despera

Banned
Well there you have it. That's a good sample size as well.

The gender of the protag doesn't have as much effect on sales as publishers seem to think, if at all. Time to diversify that shit. A mainline GTA entry with a black female main character for example would be a good way to send a clear message to the industry as a whole and be a much needed breath of fresh air.
 

TheSeks

Blinded by the luminous glory that is David Bowie's physical manifestation.
I'm not really surprised by any of this. It would seem like a no brainer "no shit, really!?" thing to know. But apparently it is for Publishers because LOL WHO WANTS TO PLAY AS A FEMALE CHARACTER AMIRITE!? *Meanwhile fans of Mirror's Edge: ZOMG WHERE IS MIRROR'S EDGE 2 EA!?"*
 

thefil

Member
I like this work but I wish they'd gotten a social scientist or statistician involved. The big questions are:

1) Is there selection bias in the set of students exposed to/who would choose to take the survey?

2) Do these kids' self-reported preferences represent their actual preferences when given a choice? Obviously favourite characters and what they play are pretty solid, I'm more referring to whether kids really don't care what gender their avatar is.
 
Funny how Theo shouldn´t play MK in the first place because he is obviously not 17+

I know this has nothing to do with portraying womens in video games but still why on earth had it to be MK the most brutal and violent fighting game to date ? It´s like parents and teachers don´t give a crap about parental control anymore

Mortal Kombat 3, DOOM, and Prince of Persia were some of my first videogames I played as a kid. Parents didn't care back then, they probably don't even now. As long as they know their kid can distinguish reality from super cartoonish fantasy violence. Shit, my 8 year old cousin's dad has let him play Call of Duty, Hitman Absolution, and a few other pretty violent games. He always tells me that each time so I can let him play mature rated games lol like Shadow of Mordor or Bloodborne.
 

Saikyo

Member
Heh, maybe I like Chell a lot, so I am kinda biased. I respect that she
basicaly derailed the game itself and even made an alliance with Glados in the end of the second game.
.

Still a nice research, just saying again because I think someone can think I wrote with sarcasm in mind.
 
I like this work but I wish they'd gotten a social scientist or statistician involved. The big questions are:

1) Is there selection bias in the set of students exposed to/who would choose to take the survey?

2) Do these kids' self-reported preferences represent their actual preferences when given a choice? Obviously favourite characters and what they play are pretty solid, I'm more referring to whether kids really don't care what gender their avatar is.

What this survey really misses is a connection to buying decisions.
How many AAA-titles do these girls pre-order and how many do they play when they get them after their brothers or dads have finished them.
Without those numbers the survey will have zero impact on the industry.
 
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