LOL. Talk about collective self-derailing...

+1

"It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad." - C. S. Lewis

You're being purposefully ignorant here to push an agenda, which you usually do, which is why I dislike debating with you. For one thing of COURSE record and radio companies care which genders tend to listen to which music. Of COURSE they have that data, because it is useful to them. Secondly with all music (and movies) the interaction is the same, listen or watch and listen. With games the entire experience is different.

I'm really, REALLY, not sure what you think you're gaining by insisting companies shouldn't pay any attention to vast genre differences when examining gender gaming statistics. "I love ignorance!" is how it sounds to me.

Bingo. Nail on head. I wasn't around for the 70s, as I was an 80s baby, but even back then, when we'd hit up the arcade, we'd play skeeball and air hockey with the girls, along with other coin-ops. My sisters and I always had a running competition for the Nintendo, and my little sister still owns and plays practically every generation of console since the NES. She'll play anything from Animal Crossing to Mortal Kombat, doesn't matter. I'm not sure what happened to make this major shift in the 90s per se, but I remember gaming being one of the most inclusive mediums of all, in its infancy.

Of course it's cultural and socially instilled to a large extent, but that doesn't change the existence of gender differences in media consumption.


These are good points. My mother and aunt played games from Pong to Nintendo but stopped soon after. I think the SNES killed a lot of female interest and then the PS1 buried it. On PC games the shift from King's Quest to Doom probably did it.

I don't think that's entirely because of the male "style" of stories and visuals, I think it is also rooted in how involved the games got. The deeper down the rabbit hole you have to go to appreciate them the more weird it seems to most women, I think.

Oh, come on... That's basically saying that women are lazy, dumb, or both :|.

Oddly enough, my mom used to play Road Rash on the PS1 with us. It took her awhile to get used to the controls, but it was like one of her favorite games, along with Destruction Derby.

Not necessarily, up until a couple of years ago gaming as a whole was considered childish and the thought that you'd actually have to be dedicated to some game at all was a joke to the mainstream society. Now playing games is part of the mainstream society, so there we go.

I'm sure because people want to make as much money as possible so it would be more profitable to make a game that the 1 million male gamers can enjoy and the 2 million female gamers can enjoy. Why make a game that only caters the 1/3? So males will be missing out on games that cater to them which means they will be missing on games that they can really enjoy. My fear is not groundless. This kind of shit already happened to movies and TV shows.

How is it saying that? Do you think I am calling my wife stupid?

How involved you want to get with a video game depends on a lot more than intelligence or how lazy you are. If anything one might say those who devote a ton of time and thought to games are being lazy and stupid. That's what my wife would say anyway. It's a cultural thing.

I don't play most strategy games, not because I am not smart enough to do so but because I don't get anything out of it. It takes a lot of involvement to learn the mechanics and plan a strategy and I don't feel a reward from it, it doesn't make me happy or feel accomplished. Expand this out to pretty much all video games and this is how women are socially pushed to think of games.

How involved you want to get with a video game also depends on how a person see's video games and that depends on many things like culture.

Exactly. I just edited for clarity.

Basically women are taught games are silly diversions, so why would they devote themselves to getting deeply involved with a more "hardcore" game? They wouldn't, usually, so they tend to play casual games. There are outliers of course, there are outliers in everything.

A lot of women also see games, as something nerdy losers do so...they don't want to get too involved.

And I'm not making this shit up. I'm not full of shit. Most of what I say about women, come from women or experience with women. My ex girlfriend passed this information to me. She told me, all the women she knows, not just her, thinks a GAMER = a LOSER who doesn't know how to be a part of society. Maybe one of the reasons she dumped my ass the worst possible way is that she couldn't tolerate being with a gamer anymore. :(

The survey is crap. In addition to everything said (e.g. the doubtful inclusion of smart phone and browser mini-games)
- it's only about U.S. households
- 45% female and 55% male gamers aren't 50/50, there's a 10% gap
- number of people purchasing games isn't the same as number of gamers
- games are bought as presents or for children (which both is more often done by mothers and wifes/girlfriends)
- a lot of gamers don't buy them (more of those are definitely male)
- gaming varies tremendously in terms of intensity and used time