A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the report that ESA published, stating that not only 44% of gamers are women, but that there are more women gaming over 18 year old then teenage boys under 18 nowadays. As a big fan of gaming myself I was pleased of course with these results, and it made me want to test my own audience here on Ladiesgamers.com. Not entirely fair perhaps as the name of the website already suggests that it’s aimed at women, but I was eager to make my own audience report!
It’s time for the results, after 64 people answered the questions. 72% of them where women, so there’s no doubt about the name of the site being appropriate ( or is the audience a result of the name…I guess I’ll never know!). I had expected the majority to be older in age, but in fact most readers, 36%, are in the age category of 25 to 34 years old and 28% is younger then 24 years old. There are 7 people in my own age category, and 5 older then me. 1 reader is over 65 years old. It does prove to me that gaming is for all ages! Half of my readers come from North America, and the other half from Europe. There are only a few people that hail from South America and Australia/ New Zealand. 
Now for the interesting part, our gaming habits. Most of us, 58%, play games every day of the week and another 23% play games 5 or 6 days in the week. Only 12 people gamed less, but still, 3 or 4 days a week is a lot when you lead a busy life with other hobbies and a family life. And it seems to fit into family life just fine, as most gamers are surrounded by others gaming too in their family: 69% of respondents life in a household where 2 or more people play video games. Still, the vast majority plays their games alone: 84%! That surprised me, I had thought there was much more online play going on. But, once we do play together with others we tend to play with our family. (43%). I fondly remember the days when I played games with my little girl through download play on the DS, and I’m guessing Nintendo gaming especially is very much a family thing. 
Affirming again that my audience fits my website or vice versa, a whopping 95% of you play on their 2 or 3DS, or any other DS type and another 33% plays on the PS Vita. Surprisingly though the majority of people also played games on their Desktop or Laptop computer. Other popular choices where the Smartphone, the Nintendo Wii and WiiU and the Sony Playstation. All of you gave an average of 4 devices that you play games on, so it’s not like we stick to one device of choice.
The fact that almost 75% of you buy your games physical shouldn’t come as a surprise to me, as we’ve discussed this on here before. Though I hardly ever buy physical anymore, I can see I’m seriously outnumbered. The last question was a very interesting one: you got to choose three gaming categories, what kind of games do my readers usually play? Almost everyone, 58 out of 64 voters, 93%, named RPG games as one of their three. In second place simulation games and adventure games are tied with 50%. Of course I answered my own survey too (do you love surveys as much as I do?), and that trio is exactly my choice.
To wrap it all up I filtered the results to see if the ladies voted differently from the male audience. Well, they didn’t. I hardly see any changes in ages, devices of choice, the only place where the results vary a bit is in the games they usually play. Again, RPG are the undisputed number one, but in a clear second place are simulation games (61%) and in third adventure games (52%). The ladies choose no sports games, hardly any shooters and a lot less platformer and action games.
Do you think there might be a difference after all?
I think there might be hardly any difference at all. Even with the sports, platformer and shooter games, it can be explained because your site is mainly about RPGs and Simulation games, so that’s the audience you attract the most. Or it can just not be their top 3. I still buy a lot of platformers, but I suck at them nowadays so I have other genres I’d rather play. Platformers and a lot of other genres are sort of “filler” games I like to play in between massive 80 hours RPGs and Simulation games, so I won’t suffer from burn out. And with the advent of cute shooters recently popping up (plants vs zombies garden warfare 2, splatoon, blast’em bunnies, gal gun, etc) even I am playing some shooters now and then. Turns out I don’t dislike them at all, I just disliked how most of them looked the same and wanted to force me to play multiplayer. Make them look different and give me just a good little solo campaign and I’m happy. But it’s still not in my top 3 genres. Overall, the only genre I don’t play is sports games.
But if there is a small difference between men and women’s tastes in gaming, then I hope the gaming industry takes notice and starts making a few more cute RPGs for us ladies. Those never hurt the soul. Most simulation and adventure games are already plenty evenly split with the genders they primarily target, most of the times appealing equally to both. But RPGs are still mainly skewed towards men, at least if the fan service is anything to go by. I’m one of those that don’t truly mind (unless it doesn’t belong in a previously tasteful series or the art sucks), but at least making the service equal to both genders would go a long way. There’s a reason otome games sell so well, and I’d like to see that mentality spread to the rest of the industry.
Even I, who doesn’t like shooters one bit, have played Plant vs Zombies in small bursts. Those kind of mobile games are so easy to pick up and play at breakfast, right?
I had fun with this survey, although I do realize, like I wrote, that the audience is because of the kind of content on the site. And I didn’t promote the survey outside my usual media because I didn’t want people that aren’t usually readers filling it out. Just wanted my own reader base.
Interesting results from the survey and thank you for sharing. Plants vs Zombies – I don’t like shooters games either.
I would buy more games digitally if they weren’t so expensive. On the PSN store Megadimension Neptuina costs £59 whilst the physical version only set me back £39.
That’s a huge price difference. But you know, I’m having a hard time even finding physical Vita games. They aren’t offered very widely here. It helps to wait for sales on the PSN store though.
I’m female, and I love a good shooter. However, there are very few shooters out there that do not have blood and gore all over the place, so they don’t rank high in what I play for that reason alone. I do have a copy of Link’s Crossbow training that I love! In fact my children love challenging me to see if they can beat me, because they find it very challenging to do so. My daughter just bought herself and her husband a copy of the game just so they could practice to beat me! 😛
Lol, that depicts so well how families can game together! Of course they want to try and beat you, I bet it’s fun when you all have family gatherings!