More women now play video games than men...

unholyangel

Candycrush has a lot to answer for.

All joking aside, I'm not really surprised. While in some games women do seem to be in the minority.....we're certainly not a rarity (although you'd think we are judging by some guys reactions - especially if you're good at the game).

I grew up first playing on an amstrad (tape deck, not the disc version) and spectrum.

I like a wide range but mostly shooters and adventure (especially ones that make you put your mind to work). What game I play largely depends on what mood i'm in and how much time I have. Alas theres only so many hours in the day and work and housework need to take priority!

FLA27

I am female, aged 42, and I like playing games on my PC, tablet and phone.

I do not consider myself a gamer. I don't own a console. I really dislike any game that involves shooting, killing, war, building armies, conquering etc. This is mainly because I am exceptionally bad at these and i just don't find the time to concentrate and get any better.

I do like 'myst style' games and over the past few years I have played some excellent free indie games. I only play single player games because you cannot pause live games. What do people do when the phone rings, someone comes to the door, the washing needs bringing in, dinner's cooked, etc?!

I want to add this though. Recently I received a survey through a survey company about gaming. I was asked the usual questions and answered honestly. I was asked in the survey whether i considered myself a 'Gamer', I said NO! All of the following questions in the survey started with 'As a gamer'! The survey referred to me as a gamer throughout.

Josky

I would personally define someone as a gamer if they themselves list playing video games as a preferred hobby or pastime. I don't think many people that solely play mobile games and the like would actually refer to that as a hobby - probably just a way to pass time, or jokingly as "an obsession!".

I have personally played games since I was very young (one of the benefits of having a dad that worked in IT meant that I always had a PC to play on); I also had a spectrum at age 5 or so, an Amiga 500 at about 7, then was solely a PC/Amiga gamer (bar the Sega Gamegear) until we got a playstation in my teens. From there...well, I was working by then, so I bought pretty much every console going, or begged for them as birthday/Christmas presents. In fact, I have been lucky enough to have had every major console except the Wii U (which doesn't interest me right now) since then. I have also worked briefly within the industry for about 8 years, and went through a stint of reviewing games when I was spending the most time gaming.

The tradeoff has been that I haven't been able to keep up with PC gaming; my PC's horribly out of date and I can't really play anything from the last couple of years.

I know a lot of other women who play games, but I met most of them through my time working with games. They are not scarce at all. In fact, over the last few years there has been a real surge in what I would consider "real" female gamers (I didn't know many when I was young. I was the only girl that played games at primary school, and one of about 3 in secondary school and college). I guess this is because gaming is a big part of life now; people can start with mobile gaming and advance to home gaming; more guys then ever are gaming, and this exposes their partners to games. There's a few reasons really. I definitely don't feel significantly like I'm in the minority anymore, but I would still say that men accrue more hours playing games on consoles based on my own experience.

mttylad

Utter codswallop!

I agree that there are more female players now, but there are not more female than male players, certainly not on the Xbox anyway.

duchy

All goes back to how they define "gamer"

If it is a person who plays games on any digital format-it's probably true.

That's not my definition of a gamer though - I used to be a gamer - now I just play games - to me there is a massive difference .

A better question might be "Do you define yourself as a gamer" rather than "Do you play games"

Mercenary

SmallL wrote: »

I usually find myself in a very small minority. ..........<snipped>............ I haven't really met another lady as 'into' gaming myself, it's really one of my only hobbies and I tend to play PC games for about 2 hours a day on 'work' days and 6-8 on 'off' days.

You sound similar to me. I mostly play games like any Battlefield multiplayer (used to play Call of Duty online too), Dishonored, Thief, Skyrim, DX:HR, Far Cry games and so on. It's my main pleasure too & takes up many, many hours

In any real life conversation with other women, when the question of hobbies arises, I will sometimes talk about my gaming simply to see the glazed look of bemusement on their faces as so many of them have no clue what I'm talking about .

I would never count people playing casual games on a phone or tablet (or Facebook) as 'gamers'.

Goldiegirl

I used to play games a lot throughout the 1980's and 1990's.


I was in my 20's and 30's at that time.


The sort of games I preferred were Monkey Island, or Sim City, The Sims, Theme Park and Rollercoaster Tycoon.


I'd think nothing of staying up to the early hours to build my Sim City.


I probably was in the minority, bring a female spending a lot of time playing computer games, but it was never a big issue for me


I only really stopped, when we got the internet, as I found I spent more time online, browsing websites, than gaming.


Now, I sometimes play Bejewelled on my iPad, but that's not gaming, in my opinion, that's just passing the time for a few minutes

tekkendp

As a male gamer, I hope so. It seems like most hobbies men do are demonised in one way or another. So, if there are more females gamers, maybe male gamers will be able to game in peace, and not viewed as sexist, misogynistic, not having a girlfriend, etc....

I would like for there to be more women game developers too. Women have created so of the most iconic characters in gaming, like sonic the hedgehog. So I see this as a good thing. Apart from technical ability and imagination, becoming an indie game developer is the easiest thing in the world.

Plus, if gaming is no longer demonised, then people as a whole will be more understanding of men who game.

PenguinJim

tekkendp wrote: »

I would like for there to be more women game developers too. Women have created so of the most iconic characters in gaming, like sonic the hedgehog. So I see this as a good thing.

Errr... Naoto Ohshima is male! At least, he was at the time he created Sonic. I haven't been keeping up with his (her?) personal developments recently...

tekkendp

PenguinJim wrote: »

Errr... Naoto Ohshima is male! At least, he was at the time he created Sonic. I haven't been keeping up with his (her?) personal developments recently...

My bad. Reiko Kodama designed the graphics in Sonic 1, but under a pseudonym. For some reason, I remembered it as her designing the character itself. I'm getting old is my excuse.