Most Switch Owners Are Women, Gamers React Poorly
Interesting title. As if "Women" and "Gamers" were two distinct groups.
this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2023
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Indeed, I’m assuming it wasn’t the female gamers that reacted badly…
Capital G Gamers doesn't just mean people who play games, it means people who've built their whole identity around being weird little exclusionary creeps about gaming
Valid point, but even then, the two groups overlap.
The title seems to suggest that all Gamers were male. The article mostly talks about how that is not the case. It refers to these vocal gamers as 'some annoying dudes' within the text. Evidently, only some Gamers reacted poorly, but omitting the "some" makes for a more clickbaity=better headline.
The irony is, this headline strengthens the very stereotype the article aims to combat.
I'm a 38-year-old woman who has been playing games since she was five years old. The myth that women don't play and enjoy games is a long-running one.
I've been playing games on computers since 1977, at that time non-video games. Although I did play Pong on tabletop box (a TV screen embedded in a table, with knobs on the table top) in a hotel, sometime before that, probably around 1975 or so.
I read some digital market reports a few years back, which showed that something like 98% of all people between 13-18 were gaming. Obviously mostly casual games, but nevertheless paying consumers of games. More female than male by a close margin.
When I discussed it on another gaming forum they were really quick to dismiss casual games altogether, despite it being the very largest group. There's probably still a male majority in desktop first person shooters, which seemed to be the only "correct" gamers according to he kind of people following that kind of forum. Anyway, if I were to program a game I surely wouldn't aim at the "stereotypical" gamer. They're a minority with very high demands and very expensive gear. The whole stereotype is gatekept to the point where I don't want to participate neither as a gamer or as developer.
I have to wonder if some of it comes from the idea that casual games are generally a different audience than "core" games. Like someone playing candy crush on their phone is counted as someone who plays games, but I wouldn't lump them in with the kinda person that at least casually follows the industry and picks up a few new games for their PS5 every year or the person that is super active in the indie scene.
Don't quote me on this bc I do not remember the source but I remember reading somewhere that if you included the whole gaming market, women were a clear majority because of mobile but many many mobile gamers did not self-identify as gamers which I think probably skews other surveys/studies targeted at "gamers"
My girlfriend has been literally using my PS5 more than me since I got it, gamer girls do exist and we should cherish them, not alienate them
Toxicity towards girls and women in gaming is a real problem, but this article doesn't really show that as it's just talking about random people from Twitter It's definitely nice so many women feel free to own consoles nowadays
I... have to admit, other than Switch I'd have estimated somewhere around 20% to be honest.
But I like to be wrong here, cool that it's not that divided!
And I'm not sure it's a good sign that I didn't expect this.
Maybe Men are more vocal (possibly because women are less so, because of bad treatment), or maybe I'm just not as attentive...
Maybe Men are more vocal (possibly because women are less so, because of bad treatment), or maybe I’m just not as attentive…
it's almost certain some of this disconnect is women just not participating in traditional gaming communities because they have to deal with dipshits constantly, yeah. i don't know if i'd characterize all of gaming as unusually misogynistic, but it's still probably really easy to find casual misogyny even in the best moderated gaming spaces--and a lot of gaming spaces aren't that well moderated either
There's also the fact that most people assume everyone else is a guy online, even if the users says otherwise. Given the misogyny you were mentioning I think a lot of the women who do stock around in gamer communities tend to not correct that assumption.
Yeah, I'm a woman in my thirties and I've played (on PC and console!) since I was a little girl... learned a very, very long time ago that most people online would assume I was male and that it is often prudent not to correct them. So I don't. Twenty years of conditioning telling me to keep my head down. Now that I think about it, that's pretty sad.
I hope young girls nowadays feel more comfortable being open about their interests. Maybe I should be more open myself; I can take the hits if it makes things even a little bit easier for them.
Right. I'm a woman who as been gaming since I was about 7 years old. I have learned several strategies to make sure that I don't draw attention to that fact. It's always better if whoever I'm playing with assumes that I'm a dude.
basically just elaborating on this twitter thread.
And because Kotaku decided to play a >1min video ad while i was trying to read:
tl;dr:
According to Circana's PlayerPulse:
47% of console video game players are female (+1% vs YA)
50% of PC video game players are female (+1% vs YA)
54% of mobile video game players are female (+1% vs YA)
41% of PS5s in the US are female owned
45% of Xbox Series consoles are female owned
52% of Swich consoles are female owned
50% of gaming PCs are female owned
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I am a woman person and I have TWO switches. This is a source of consternation for some reason?
Noooo they made the switch Political !!
Nooooo only BOYS should ne GAMERS we are the most oppressed demographics!!
I remember when they took a group photo of all the people involved with the racing games at Codemasters. Around 600 of us... someone commented, "who are all these people?". Well, programmers (AI/Phyisic/Audio/etc), Artists, Sound Engineers, Producers, HR...
And there were women as well. Yes, that's right, women develop games as well. There's one of my team.
I am glad this trend is becoming better understood. A more diverse audience means more diverse stories being told, and while another MCU or Street Fighter is a perfectly good game to release a game targeting that more diverse audience will give more options for me. I typically play games like Risk of Rain, Skyrim, Creeper World, and so on, but I have also lost many hours to Viva Piñata, so I would love to see some more diversity in the games on offer.
You do realize women like fighting games and the MCU, right?
That's the whole point of this statistic: the current gaming market is already palatable to everybody, unlike what your statement seem to misunderstand.
Eh, just because lots of women are playing games doesn't mean they're catered to women.
Don't get me wrong, the industry's come a long way from every female character having 28DD's and videogame trailers being all about stoic badasses and explosions. I think the rise of indie games has been great for that. But there's an undeniable male-coded streak that still exists in marketing and in the industry, especially at the AAA level, and there's progress we can still make there.
@rustyspoon @dwindling7373 The games appeal to women enough to play them. Nobody is forcing women to play games they don't like.
Yes indeed, I more mean that the marketing of video games gas been male coded for my entire life and as such the options have been narrowed to stereotypically male options. This means fewer options and less diversity. My partner loves guitar hero and Final Fantasy both of which were marketed more to men than women. That said, if there were companies trying to capture the female market segment their stereotypes would lead to other games, different from what they currently make. I disagree with the stereotypes but of they are going to use them then at least hit all of them, I want more games to play dammit!
Why are people so stuck in the 1950s?
Glad to have woman playing. To paraphrase Iwata (Nintendo), gaming should be fun for everyone
Edit: "women" because I have butter fingers
The 1980's for computes, but yeah very much outdated and it's past time that we accept a good game is appealing to everyone and it doesn't need to be pink and simple for a women to want to play it
My girlfriend has ~800 hours in Lost Ark and ~500 hours in Guild Wars 2.
She always nags me about not finding her new games. I am glad we are compatible in more than one thing.
Try No Man's Sky, it brought countless fun hours to my SO and I. Same for Satisfactory.
That is the most Onion headline I ever seen for real news. Kotaku? Yeah, the clickbait makes sense.
Clearly the data is wrong. Switches Jane, who owns three hundred million switches, is an outlier and should not have been counted.
Among my personal friends, probably the same ratio of men and women are into Souls games. So like… yeah, women play games. And not just “lady-friendly” fare. As a non-woman, I freaking love Animal Crossing; meanwhile my wife has beaten most of the Souls games and I’ve given up on all of them. Anecdotal, but like… gamers like gaming, and I feel like these days trying to say anything about game preference and gender is just not really helpful.
I remember seeing this article https://www.pcgamer.com/former-sims-lead-says-men-would-lie-about-how-they-played-during-focus-groups-actually-what-you-did-is-you-redecorated-that-bathroom/ and thinking it was funny how both men and women lie/hide stuff about gaming because of gender norms
This just in, “gamers” react shitty to something.
But "gamers" is evidently the wrong word, it should be "men". The whole point is that there are a ton of female gamers, and then they equate gamers with men in the title 🤷
You are 100 percent correct on that.
Thanks for the correction.
Woman like Pokemon as much as dudes. Also Nintendo's awful online experience is a plus for woman that don't want to be exposed to weird online dudes.
If candy crush counts, my mom is more of a gamer than me
No way! Women play video games?!?! 🤯🤯🤯
More information from a closer source: https://twitter.com/MatPiscatella/status/1667172957066600448
47% of console video game players are female (+1% vs YA)
50% of PC video game players are female (+1% vs YA)
54% of mobile video game players are female (+1% vs YA)
For these numbers quoted: n = 10,184
For people interested in PlayerPulse:
Frequency: Monthly
First Data Captured: Jan 1 2017
Methodology: Circana conducts a monthly survey of US active gamers over the age of 13. Surveys are fielded online, via PC and mobile devices, drawing from a nationally representative pool. Respondents qualify on the basis of having played games in the past month (30 days). To ensure consistency across samples and correct for any biases/errors, Circana implements a weighting system for each monthly dataset based on representative distributions of platform use and platform investment. Circana’s models are based on aggregated, cross-product samples, and are updated quarterly to account for market shifts.
Mat Piscatella - Executive Director & Video Game Industry Analyst at Circana (NPD).
Of course gamer bros are salty about this!
I would not trust Kotaku.
It isn't surprising, at least with my anecdotal experience, but still higher than I expected. Two girl friends of mine started to play lan parties with us since covid, and I know another that is completely obsessed with Valorant, and another that is equally obsessed with Football Manager.
I tried to find the original study and can't. The only source that everyone points to is this tweet by the executive director of Circana. Anyone knows where I can find it?
“I don’t know ANY women ~~who play games~~!” Is probably half their comments.
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