Women Over 40 Biggest Online Gamers

Ooby writes "MSNBC and Reuters are reporting that women over 40 are the biggest online gamers, according to a study conducted by AOL. What's even more interesting than being outnumbered by middle aged and older women is this: 'More than a quarter of those women, the survey found, play their favorite games between midnight and 5 a.m. Women in the poll tended to favor word and puzzle games.' I thought that was prime time for FPS kids."

Percentage

[ParticleGirl]

What percentage of the overall survey participants were women over 40? Because these findings state that a higher percentage of women over 40 play games daily than the interviewed men or teens. So if in their survey of 3500 people there are only 100 women over 40, but most of them play games all the time, it doesn't mean that they outnumber the men or teens. It just means that, if women over 40 are online, or gamers, or computer literate (we don't know what the universe of the survey is-- did they interview everyone in a games forum somewhere? Call random households? Send email to people with AOL accounts?) they're very likely to play wordgames in the wee hours of the morning.

Be careful with statistics. Especially if you're trying to figure out if you're outnumbered [yet].

The common stereotype

[philthedrill]

My first thought was, "<neo>Woah</neo>" until I read the article. The first thought that comes to my mind when someone says "gamer" is someone who plays an FPS or RTS, but with "games" defined in the much broader sense, this is less shocking (although the late hours are somewhat of a surprise). Plus, most computers can play these games without the latest hardware or fastest connection.

who conducted the survey?

[fireduck]

AOL. I have no idea exactly how it was conducted, other than "online", but I'd be surprised if they surveyed people other than AOL users. Sure, AOL is the biggest ISP, and you'd expect a large number of gamers, but the truly hardcore would have moved off AOL a long time ago and gotten broadband. So what are you left with? The casual gamers for whom low latency performance is not an issue (i.e., people playing at yahoo games). So it's not surprising that it's mostly women in that sample group...

Wake up....

[AutumnLeaf]

and smell the coffee. There is a huge game community on the internet that has nothing to do with frags, and it's bigger than the frag-oriented community. Friendlier too. And literate. Th3y can sp311, and form complete sentences.

Big deal

[IshanCaspian]

Middle-aged women have always been playing card games, bored games, etc. Now they don't play scrabble with the neighbors, they do it with strangers on the internet.

Real gaming is interesting to me because it's something new, or at least a significant transformation. There's nothing surprising or interesting about learning that middle aged women are taking their solitaire games online. Yawn.

Re:Percentage

[Joe5678]

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics"
-Mark Twain (quoting Leonard Courtney)

Online bridge

[scot4875]

I play a lot of bridge on-line, and while you're right that players can mostly spell (when the occasion arises), I think they're just as bad when it comes to complete sentences.

Most conversations go about like:

hi all, need 1 more?
wlc
glp
wdo, gtp
sry p

Which is about as verbose as most other online games I've participated in over the last 8-9 years. (God, has it been that long?)

--Jeremy

FPS Kids?

[Inominate]

The late night going-to-bed-at-dawn players aren't the FPS kids. It's the people who go that far out of thier way to avoid them.