If you think female gamers mainly like casual mobile games or non-violent social sandbox worlds like The Sims or Second Life, new data from QuanticFoundry, a market research company that focuses on gamer motivation, will surprise you. The firm has has been conducting a survey with a massive reach (over 350,000 people have taken it), and its findings contradict common stereotypes.
One in five who took the survey are female, and the vast majority do not consider themselves “casual” gamers -- in fact, 10% classified themselves as Hardcore ("you have high-end equipment and play seriously or competitively”), while 69% put themselves in the Core/Mid-core category (“you regularly play video games but are not super serious or competitive"). Only 21% of females declared themselves to be Casual.
The survey was mainly aimed at active Internet/social media users and, Quantic’s Nick Yee tells me, was overwhelmingly taken by Millenials/Gen Z girls and women: “25% of our female gamers are under 21. 75% are under 30.” This partly explains why the survey data is fairly different from ingrained assumptions about the female gamer.
"When we look just at our female gamers or within specific genres,” as Nick puts it, “we find consistent things (like 70% of match-3 gamers are female), but our overall sample is skewed more core... I think our sample is representative of active gamers who are regular Internet/social media users."
So among their favorite games are many titles that are decidedly not casual or non-violent:
“In our sample of female gamers, Overwatch, League of Legends, and Fallout 4 are in the top 10 mentioned," Nick tells me. "Alongside more stereotypical entries like Dragon Age.”
As QuanticFoundry reported last year, Overwatch is twice as popular an FPS among females than typical FPS titles.
“There's so much diversity in the characters in both gender and race, which is great for us cosplayers!” Annette (pictured), a top-ranked Overwatch player told me back then. “I've played some other games where one person can just dominate the entire game without needing their team, but it's a lot harder to do that in Overwatch. I often play competitively so I like being exposed to that kind of coordination.”
All this is consistent with my recent report that Fortnite, the new gamer hotness, has over 20 million female fans.
Older studies have suggested that women are more interested in casual mobile games; however, that genre is typically more popular with women in their 30s, 40s, and 50s. When we look at a data sample that’s skewed to women and girls who are Millenials and Gen Z, we see a very different story -- and a more eclectic, engaged, competitive generation that’s emerging, that game developers are still slow to recognize.
More on Quantic’s data here and this breakdown of female gamers by genre here.
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