Girls in Games: setting the record straight

The constant media reports that women are just as likely to be gamers is bewildering to any genuine gamer. Where are they all? The truth is that it is nothing more than the usual media spinning the facts into a seriously distorted fiction. Consider this summary of last year's NPD survey:

PC gamers are just as likely to be men as they are women, with 51 percent and 49 percent, respectively. They tend to be older, with an average age of 38 years, and affluent, with an average household income of $69k. Gender differences become apparent by type of gamer: Heavy Core and Light Core are comprised mainly of men while Casual PC gamers are overwhelmingly female.

Talk about burying the lead! Casual PC gamers are not, and have never been, considered "gamers". Yes, they play games. So does Grandma and her bridge club. They're not gamers either.

The summary by The Escapist was more precise:

Core Gamers Mostly Male, Casual Gamers Mostly Female, Says NPD

Market research firm the NPD Group (who you may know as the guys who provide sales numbers for games every month) has conducted a large-scale survey of American PC gamers, and come up with some interesting observations. The 6,225 members survey were split into three groups - Heavy Core, Light Core, and Casual. Heavy Core gamers play "core" games for five or more hours per week, while Light Core gamers still enjoy core games, but do so for less than five hours a week, and Casual gamers only play non-core games. The survey found that the majority of gamers in the two "core" groups were male, while the casual group was "overwhelmingly female."

Just FYI, In order to qualify as a core gamer for the survey, respondents had to currently play Action/Adventure, Fighting, Flight, Massively Multi-Player (MMO), Racing, Real Time Strategy, Role-Playing, Shooter, or Sport games on a PC/Mac.

The largest segment is Casual at 56 percent, with Light Core at 24 percent, and Heavy Core at 20 percent. Though Heavy Core is the smallest segment, they spend a significantly higher number of hours gaming in an average week, and have spent roughly twice as much money in the past 3 months on physical or digital games for the computer than Casual PC gamers. Of all the participants surveyed, 51% were male and 49% were female.

Unfortunately, no actual breakdown by sex was provided, but we can work it out, depending upon what percentage you reasonably consider to be "overwhelming". I'll try 90 percent, although I suspect it might actually be higher.

0.56 x 0.9 = .504. Hmm, that won't work, because 50.4 percent is higher than the 49 percent female respondents reported. Perhaps Literally Wu was surveyed? Let's back "overwhelming" down to 85 percent. 0.56 x 0.85 is 0.476, which is at least statistically possible.

That means that if only 15 percent of casual gamers are male, the MAXIMUM number of Heavy Core female gamers are 0.62 percent of the population. .014 x .44 = 0.00616.

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