Nielsen Survey Investigates Gamer Choices

Gamasutra reports on findings from a large Nielsen survey on gaming and consumer choices. From the article: "The survey also revealed that 57% of active gamers have played online, with free casual online games the most used, and a notable 21% having played MMO games. While online-enabled console, MMO and gambling gamers are disproportionately male -- 76% vs. 24% -- casual gamers who play free online games such as puzzles are just as likely to be women as men, 49% vs. 51% respectively."

Not horribly surprising.

[JorDan Clock]

I've noticed from personal experience that free games, especially ones that are easily played for 5-10 minutes during leisure time, are split down the middle for male to female.

MMO's, on the other hand, remain very male dominated. Well, on the surface at least. There might be more women playing than I noticed, but they definitely aren't as vocal as their pseudo-female (Guys with girl avatars) counter-parts.

Re:Not horribly surprising.

[NeuralClone]

OMG girlz don't exist on teh Intarweb!!!!1 [escapistmagazine.com]

Only 57% play online?

[bergeron76]

The survey also revealed that 57% of active gamers have played online

Wow, I remember when 80% of computers weren't on the internet. Now, an PC that isn't connected to the internet isn't really useful. I think the same trend will happen with games - it's just going to take time for grandma to discover Yahoo! solitaire instead of her Windows one. I think that's where the numbers are getting skewed.

Re:Only 57% play online?

[Propagandhi]

[... ] discover Yahoo! solitaire instead of her Windows one.

Wooo yeah, online solitaire! Finally I can play with my friends!

Is this the survey?

[kherr]

This might be the survey [reelresearch.com]. It sure says Nielsen and asks all about gaming habits.

If it is, there are some serious issues with the questioning. It essentially excludes non-console gaming and the questions seem to push the results towards "more of the same, please". Stuff like this might help make more games just like WoW for profitability, but is that what we want in games? Endless variations of the least-common denominator?

Re:Is this the survey?

[EMeta]

Well sure. I mean, how can you argue with the results that television got doing the same thing?

Re:Is this the survey?

[bri2000]

That's how market research usually works as I understand it. It's normally pretty obvious to the research company what their client would like the results to be and phrase the questions accordingly (there was a wonderful example of this, in the context of political polling, in the old British satire Yes Prime Minister where Sir Humphrey lists the two different sets of polling questions you would ask to get the public to appear to support or be against the reintroduction of conscription). Remember: market "

Nielson

[superpulpsicle]

People need to really read up on how Nielson conduct surveys, where and when. Their tactics is often very low tech against a small demographics. They are finding it hard to change with the times.

How not to run a survey

[Targon]

Considering that these things can often be done by computer, a 2000 person survey means NOTHING and opening the survey to a LARGE audience wouldn't make for more work yet would increase the accuracy of any survey.

So, games....

There are many good reasons why women don't play certain types of games in the first place.

MMO: Besides the hordes of teenage boys who are trying to get into cyber-sex encounters with anything even remotely female, there is the focus on super-thin women with large breasts as the female "avatars". There isn't anything like an average looking female in the MMO world, though there are always the "super ugly" types like trolls and ogres that are deliberately supposed to be that way. But there's nothing in the middle.

There is also the idea of needing to grind you way to the top without making the game good enough where the game has enough variety to make every dungeon or set encounter be a single pass only. What I mean by this is that an MMO could be done using instancing where each encounter is only done by a given character ONCE. You go in with your party, and if you manage to get through it, that encounter is completed by all the players and if they return, the encounter isn't reset, but MAY evolve. If a given room in a dungeon isn't touched though, these adventurers can go back later. Or the situation can change in time. In this way, a normally "static" dungeon can appear to evolve over time for those players. Consider it to be a multi-player game that feels more like a single-player game.

Next up, the World War 2 games. Women generally arn't into "playing war", so most of these games won't appeal to women in the first place. With so many World War 2 games out there right now, it's no surprise that women are turned off of gaming by the focus on war games. Tactical or strategy games may be a little better for women, but the subject of war doesn't appeal to most women, so won't attract and may even be a reason for women to think they just don't like games at all as a result. It doesn't matter how good or bad a game is if the subject matter doesn't draw a particular audience.

Which leads to this: If you don't think most heterosexual males would be interested in a game where the main character is a homosexual, no matter how good the game may be, then don't be surprised why women arn't into most of the computer games out there. Games based on certain topics will draw one type of player and turn off others. Right now, the focus seems to be on boys and men age 13 to 25. The game industry has seen what a good gender-neutral game like "The Sims" can do in terms of sales. The problem is that most game developers don't seem to understand WHY a given game does well or doesn't do well, so it's no wonder all we see are new game titles that try to emulate the popularity of the good innovative game titles.

Re:How not to run a survey

[raygundan]

Since we're just going ignore the "ugly" races like trolls and so forth, I don't think that the unrealistic female avatars are dramatically different than the unrealistic male avatars. I mean, seriously-- I'm a triathlete and I don't have a snowball's chance in hell of ending up like the 6'5" bodybuilder tanks most games drop in as male avatars. There isn't anything like your average-looking male in the games either, but that hasn't slowed the guys down.

The original Super Mario Brothers, a game which star

Re:How not to run a survey

[Red Flayer]

"Considering that these things can often be done by computer, a 2000 person survey means NOTHING and opening the survey to a LARGE audience wouldn't make for more work yet would increase the accuracy of any survey."

Not necessarily. If you have a random sample, then 2000 people is just fine, as long as you pay attention to the margin of error. You'll be more precise with a larger sample, yes.

But, if you get a larger sample by, say, posting the survey online, then you've just gotten yourself a severely

Man, you are so wrong

[CrazyJim1]

I don't get the ultra feminist types that say busty women in games turns off women gamers. Women gamers weren't around when the games were as simple as pong and pac-man. Women gamers weren't aroud through berzerk and Rally-X. Women gamers didn't show up at the nintendo 8 bit era. In short, its not a new development that women gamers aren't interested in video games, they've always not been interested in video games. Now there are many women gamers out there, but nothing to contribute a significant perc

Re:How not to run a survey

[hal2814]

"If you don't think most heterosexual males would be interested in a game where the main character is a homosexual, no matter how good the game may be, then don't be surprised why women arn't into most of the computer games out there."

Hey, if they made a video game based on the upcoming BBC series Torchwood, I'd be all for it. Gay or not, Captain Jack rules!

"gamers are disproportionately male"

[voice_of_all_reason]

Still no cure for cancer, eh?

Wonder about their sample...

[porcupine8]

I've been trying to sign up on the Nielsen site for a while (to get points for another site... mmm, gift cards), but I can't because I'm not using Windows. They keep saying, of course, that they are "working on" something for other OSes.

So I have to wonder - was their sample all Windows-users? I didn't see anything about that in the article, unless I just missed it.

If Macs really have a 16% install base, plus say another 5% for *nix etc users, that's like a fifth of the population - the most geek-heavy