PC Gaming Dominated by Women, Nielsen Finds
PC Gaming Dominated by Women, Nielsen Finds
Posted 04/10/2009 at 12:50am
| by Nathan Grayson
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Ever since we nearly died from our childhood playground’s cootie epidemic -- only to be saved when we decided to play doctor -- we’ve known that girls and boys are very, very different. And now, according to the Nielsen Company, there’s yet another reason to slap that “No Girls Allowed” sign on your tree fort: the fairer sex digs PC gaming way more than you.
Wait, what?!
So, what’s the catch? Well, 55% of all PC gameplay minutes can be attributed to females above the age of 25; that much is true. But guess what many of them are playing? That’s right: Solitaire. Barebones, no frills Solitaire. So much so, in fact, that Solitaire is the single most-played PC game, with 17 million players in December 2008.
The majority of female players – and therefore, most PC gamers – are casual gamers. Granted, Nielsen’s subjects allow their every online move to be monitored by some monolithic company, but other than that, we presume that they’re normal people.
So, what do we take away from this? For one, if you give people a game and the hardware to run it – whether manly man or girly girl – they’ll play it. Bundle Windows with a few games that prominently feature knights, kings, and queens sans the cards and we might be onto something. And second, that curvy Night Elf that keeps interrupting your grinding session with another, far more sinister variety of grinding? Probably a dude.
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mps725
April 13, 2009 at 8:36am
If we are defining computer gaming as "playing a game on a computer" then a solitaire player is included in this category (computer gamer).
But I think for most people, you become a computer gamer when you go out (or online), buy a game that involves a little more than lining up cards, and play it more than once. Can we really define someone stumbling upon the games section in their standard windows folders as a true blue computer gamer? In my opinion, no so much.
I suppose you could argue that someone spending hours upon hours killing pixies and the other someone spends hours upon hours lining up cards in an orderly fashion, are both in fact wasting time computer gaming.
In general though if someone came up to me and said they were a PC Gamer and I asked what they played and the only response was solitaire, I would throw my grape soda in their face.
-mps
HellTempest
April 10, 2009 at 6:24am
Of course they play Solitare a lot, but that doesn't make them gamers.
DrBeat
April 10, 2009 at 7:28am
I'm not suprised, but there are plenty of female PC games that are "gamers." Heck, we're the minority but it kinda hard to forget us. ;)
JonnyNYK
April 10, 2009 at 5:50am
I can imagine the researchers were surprised by the results as well.
If I were asked what the results would probably be before being released, I'd guess teenage boys and attribute it to CounterStrike and WoW. But the findings make sense, pretty much everyone working at a desk or cubicule has access to Solitaire let alone at home.
neo1piv14
April 10, 2009 at 5:10am
I was going to call BS on this one, but then I realized: both the secretaries we have here at our office spend their entire 8 hours a day playing Solitare while they do their work. So between the two of them, they probably get in more "gaming" time than the rest of the office combined. Even if I spend 3 hours playing TF2 (a rarity these days), I've still not even come close to what these female "gamers" are doing.
KNFrH2O
April 10, 2009 at 5:13am
Yeah, ok, sure. There's that...but I have friends that put more time into WoW than they do actual work. Too bad they can't get paid for it.
neo1piv14
April 10, 2009 at 5:28am
Very true. Though I'd be interested to see what software they used to track playing time. Like if they used something like XFire that tallys up game time regardless of you ACTUALLY playing it (eg. it's open in the background), I could see how the statistics would look like this. I don't often have COD4 or TF2 minimized while I'm working, whereas I'll leave Solitare, Minesweeper, Peggle, or other casual games open while I'm working at home.
sasquatch42
April 10, 2009 at 3:31am
lolz
@Nielson, when we talk about gaming we normally mean more or less hardcore gaming, you know, shooting aliens, stealing cars, and that sorta stuff
KNFrH2O
April 10, 2009 at 3:16am
I have no doubt that a lot of research was done before these results were released, but it just doesn't seem right to me. I can't see how they'd come to these results after accounting for WoW and all of the other adventure games as well as all of the FPS's out there. That's not even counting the strategy games or any of the other many categories.
I think I'm going to call Bravo Sierra on this one!
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