Survey Proud to be a Gamer: The Results

A couple of weeks ago we put out a survey to see who our current audience is. We’ve done it before over the past years, the first one was published in 2016 with the specific aim to see if more women were flocking to playing video games. The second one focused on whether people play games on dedicated consoles while still playing on their mobile phones too.

Now, two years on, it’s time to see if we are still on the right course! Because it’s over two years ago that we started reviewing games in earnest. Our team has grown considerably since, the kind of games we cover have diversified. Where in the past and the early days of the site being my blog I covered the kind of games I loved, now more genres pass through the doors of LadiesGamers.

Many of you answered, so it’s time to look at the results!

Gender, age and continent

As far as gender goes, we have been pretty consistent. Back in 2014, 70% of our readers were female, and this time it’s 74%. For the first time the option to choose non-binary was added. Important as our writers team is very diverse too.

In the past people who wanted to join our team as writers asked whether it’s okay if they weren’t ladies. Of course it is! Like it’s showing in our audience, we don’t write just for women, but for men too. But I think most readers have time for a certain kind of gaming. Games of the more relaxed kind, the ones with not a lot of violence in them. That’s not saying that lady gamers can’t enjoy a good war game, but I’m just saying this isn’t what brings people through our doors.

As for the age of our audience: the majority of readers is in the age group between 25 and 44 years old. I do see a trend that the the gamers that took the survey are older then in 2014: a shift with more respondents in the groups 25-54 and less respondents that are younger then 25. 28% were younger then 25 in 2014, and now, in 2020, only 9%. Of course, we have all gotten 4 years older since the first survey causing many to change categories, but that can’t explain the entire shift.

The majority of people live in North America  (55%) with Europe in second place (37%). That’s quite a steady picture I’m seeing over the years.

Devices. Enter: the Nintendo Switch

Before we go into this: LadiesGamers focuses on handheld gaming, so it’s no surprise that the majority of games played by our readers is on handheld devices. Still, it’s interesting to see how this evolved over the years. 95% of our respondents plays games on a Switch (well, duh!) with mobile being second with 57%. In third place the PC/laptop is gaining ground with 43%.

The 2/3 DS family of devices has quickly lost ground, which is to be expected with hardly any new games being released.

You can see above how quickly the Switch has won our hearts. And how constant playing games on tablet or mobile is. As we see in the amount of time played on tablet or smartphone it isn’t much. But it is a device we have at the ready all time, so it stands to reason it plays a big part in gaming on the go.

66% of our respondents play less then 10% of their gaming time on a phone or tablet, which is consistent with the results in 2018. If anything, the amount of time played on these devices has decreased. 24% played between 10-25% of their gaming time on their phone or tablet, with only 10% playing on it more often.

Did Animal Crossing give a boost to Switch sales?

Of course, I do realize this is just a mini survey in the larger scheme of all things Nintendo. But as I have been droning on about how Animal Crossing New Horizons will see a new demographic flock to the Switch. So I couldn’t resist having this question in the survey:

I know, a lot of our respondents already had a Switch (65,6%) but that also means a third of AC gamers (34,4%) bought the Switch to spend their time on a getaway island, or they had to have their own Switch, even if there already was one in the household. Not bad I think!

As a handheld gamer only I’m always curious to see if more people use their Switch like that.As you can see more people are using it as handheld only, and less people use it connected to the TV or in combination.

The Games we play

Now let’s take a look at the stars of our gaming life: the Games! We’ve asked you to choose five of your favourite genres, and the top three is clear. Just like in 2016 and 2018, RPG games are our favourites. In second place this year we chose Simulation games, closely followed by Adventure games. Just like in 2016 and 2018 too. Seems our reader audience is pretty consistent!

Casual games and puzzlers are scoring high too, with visual novels quickly gaining a following.

Lastly, a topic that has been interesting to look into for the past year: do our readers prefer buying their games physical or digital?

It’s quite clear to see how quickly Digital sales are gaining. Of course, because of the moment of the survey, the results might have been influence by lockdowns all throughout the world. But I think with so many games coming to Switch and Steam that aren’t even released physical anymore, digital was bound to win.

So, those are the results of the survey. Thank you all for participating!

4 comments

  1. Those results on the PS Vita are interesting. For a system that was released in 2011 and seemed to be abandoned by Playstation very quickly, I’m surprised to see that the 2016-2018 numbers held steady and only recently dropped off. I wonder if it’s because Switch numbers went up so drastically from 2018-2020. It has been my observation that in PS Vita communities there’s an either/or argument going on between Switch and Vita.

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