Update: Now with new Nielsen figures on hardcore PC gaming below.
Nielsen’s latest gaming data has been published in the form of The State of the Video Gamer (pdf). Gathering PC gaming data from the “Nielsen MegaPanel”, more than 185,000 PCs were tracked by their system in the US. The findings include that “PC gaming is alive and well,” showing growth, and that females aged 25 and older make up the largest block of PC gamers, responsible for 54.6% of all game play minutes in December 2008.
Those taking part in the MegaPanel have a software meter installed on their machines. The report explains, “When a program is run on a PC, the program name as well as the person(s) using the PC is collected by the meter.” The tool is currently tracking over 1,777 individual PC game titles, and with over 185,000 participants, it’s likely the largest and most comprehensive survey of people’s PC gaming habits. Which makes their findings from December 2008 worth listening to.
“The single largest group of personal computer video game players is females ages 25 to 54, accounting for approximately 29 percent of total personal computer game players… When comparing the demographic segments percent composition to the amount of minutes the group contributed to the total minutes played, the demographic segment of females 55+ clearly stands out. The demographic break of females 55+ accounts for roughly 17 percent of the unique game players, but contribute almost 26 percent of total minutes of PC game play for December 2008.”
Of course, this isn’t the shock news that most the people playing Empire: Total War are grannies. The majority of the games being played that make up these numbers are card games, and most of these are those that come pre-installed with Windows. The report states, “Both males and females aged 25 to 54 tend to play the top title, Solitaire, five times a week for about 30 minutes a time.” Of these lonely card players, the vast majority are white, the men working in professional or management roles, while the women are mostly either homemakers or in administrative professions.
Looking at the Top Played Games list, there’s a couple of interesting appearances. Beyond the FreeCells and the Minesweepers, World of Warcraft scores a seventh place finish for both men and women aged 25-54. There’s 1,201,848 male WoW players of all ages in the US alone, and a total of 1.8m players across all sectors, playing an average of 744 minutes played per week per person. Also showing up on the male list in tenth place is Half-Life 2, with 170,968 unique players four years after its release.
Clearly if we wanted to be a successful, mainstream site, all we’d talk about would be World of Warcraft, Second Life and Chessmaster. It’s a good job we’re hell-bent on obscurity, but all three show impressive numbers. Nielsen’s stats show that Second Life is now in decline, with a significant halving of players since February 2008, while World of Warcraft just powers on like an insane bulldozer, always picking up any players it loses during the summer months by the time winter comes around. Meanwhile, PlayFirst’s Chessmaster Challenge is rocketing to almost WoW numbers with around 1.5 million players.
Well, no, clearly if we really wanted to be successful we’d only write about the card games that come pre-installed on your PC. Thinking about it, I play about as much FreeCell as I do anything else. It’s time for a rebrand guys.
Of course, what this data really demonstrates is quite how much money there is to be made in the casual games market. With the balance of players now tipping over to show the slight majority to be female, clearly PC gaming has discovered a deeply lucrative market that is far more age and gender inclusive than any before. There are numbers we’d still really like to see, showing the distribution of players across specialist/hardcore PC gaming, and we’ll nag Nielsen to see if we can find out more. And of course, it should be remembered that all the numbers above come from a purely US-based study, and as such there are cultural considerations to be taken.
Edit: Nielsen have got back to us with some numbers focused on specialist PC gaming.
First there’s a breakdown of the ages of World of Warcraft players:
Male 12-17: 11.37%
Male 18-24: 10.71%
Male 25-54 : 27.30%Female 12-17: 4.38%
Female 18-24: 3.73%
Female 25-54: 24.94%
I think this conclusively proves that women more dramatically lose their cool as they get older. This is why I’m not asked to interpret statistics for a living.
Secondly, Nielsen have given us some information on who is playing shooters, a representatively hardcore PC gaming genre. There’s a little bit of statspeak to penetrate, but it shows that once you remove the card games, hardcore PC gaming is dominated by male players, although with a significant female audience.
“If I look at a genre like ’shooter’ as a more hardcore classification, looking at the players in the heavy tercile demographic breaks only (top 500 demo blocks we define by education/income, etc) males are just above 360,000 players and females are just over 75,000 players. The age break that dominates for most of these players is 25 to 54.”
In the chosen sample, it shows that roughly one in six FPS players are female.
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Ha! Go nerd rage. Sometimes I regret being apathetic about nearly everything, this is not not one of them.
The only windows games I play are Mahjong and InkBall. I don’t quite get Tinker yet.
Hmm… I would say that if you spend more than thirty minutes a day, just about everyday playing preinstalled Microsoft games, then you are a ‘gamer’… mayhaps a cheap one or an isolated? one. But one all the same.
Kinda like my uncle who claimed he wasn’t a bicycler, but did it for a few hours almost everyday. I mean, c’mon. Sure you don’t wear those little shorts but it’s pretty much the same damn thing.
Did this questionable survey also include web games ? say like neopets or that casual EA thing?
AND the ultimate question what ranking was Peggle?
These guys placed Halo 1 PC pretty high on the PC list last year just pointing that out.
@undead dolphin hacker
I say your wrong because I’m 18 and I can not find where these girls are, and judging from the above posts it seems a lot of older people have girlfriends or wives that play games as well.
@Duoade: those youtube vids are powerful images *lighting bolt!*
@Lain : i disagree, 90% of that budget is for graphics, publishers have lost touch with what i care about, almost every game released today has more than “good enough” graphics i really rather they would spend that money in gameplay or better (actually today it would be “functional”) AI or content, i can play 2~10 year old games or low budget indie games and enjoy them a lot more than AAA games
Does anyone here have their spy program installed? Were any of our indie game playing habits recorded?
@Andy –
That reminded me of when a friend of mine (far older than me too) claimed Jim was short for Jimmy, but not James. I almost walked out the room (and away from a free beer).
Nevermind that ‘Videogamer’ isn’t a single word, when chess players, wargamers and tabletop gamers are considered to be “gamers” one way or the other, how can you then exclude that entire group by claiming that the term “gamer” only applies to the field that you’re common with, computerised games?
I think you’re misinterpreting me. I never said that the term “gamer” is specific to people who play video games just that in this instance it is the pasttime that is implied from our discussion. We’re not talking about people who play chess or LARP or whatever – like i said, they are all gamers: “people who play games” but they are not pertinent to this discussion…. we don’t need to define the term when we use it because context gives us the clue as to its function…. but we still need the term. It’s not obsolete as the person i was replying to was saying and it is short for video gamer (sorry, two words!) but doesn’t need to be stated every time we use it in a discussion with appropriate context.
@Duoae
Actually, “video gamer” is a fairly American/Console centred term. Where I come from we were always “computer gamers” who played “computer games”.
I have commonly called them murder simulators,or simulators. Also for anything with you issuing commands wee man games (circa consolevainia) or simply playing with my ‘mans’.
@ JonFitt… okay, so for you gamer (in the context of computer/video games) is short for computer gamer. Do you see why i think Gamer is an appropriate shortened term? There’s no one universal description of our hobby like there is for chess players, for instance. Is it any different in meaning for you?
@JonFitt
Same here, although I’ve noticed the term ‘videogames’ is gaining traction in the UK as well, possibly because of the increasing role of consoles. Personally I’ve always disliked the term, it sounds so much more trivial and childish than ‘computer games.’
I don’t entirely understand why shooters are more hardcore than WoW? Is it just that young male players are more likely to play games designed for young male players or is there something more?
I’m with Steve, although I was going for a more misogynistic angle. That said I’m sure a lot of male WoW players could be mistaken for women.
Video games was what old duffers used to call them back in the 70s/80s. Now it’s the kids who are all about the vidya. That’s how language works.
Oh man. It takes a special kind of nerd to get threatened by both women playing PC games AND World of Warcraft.
Anyway: rock on, sisters. I for one am glad you’re with us and welcome our nice-smelling new X-chromosome-laden overlords.
And I’m kind of scared for my little daughter after reading this thread.
I know plenty of girl gamers, hell my incredibly pretty girlfriend (she might read this…) is in a all female wow guild. They require you to pop onto vent and talk before they let you in lol! Genitalia really doesn’t make the huge impact on human nature that so many seem convinced of. The ability to have babies in no way makes blowing a mutant to bloody gibbets any less fun. The again when I was in my twenties I never admitted my everquest addiction to anyone in a social situation that I wasnt certain gamed. I think when you finally grow up you grow out of stereotyping peoples hobbies. Hell my younger brother is obsessed with his flower garden, and working his way up through the UFC bush leagues. Or maybe maturity just means you no longer give a flying sh*$ what anyone else thinks. Meh wheres my cane at now….damn hoodlums must of stole it…
@Duoae
I’m fine with gamer meaning computer/video game player. I think it’s by far the most prevalent usage of the word. Chess players can suck it :). I just wanted to make sure you understood the limitations of ‘videogamer’. Especially on a UK based PC games site :).
@James G
I have also noticed the rise of ‘videogamer’. I think it’s partly to do with the rise in the consumption of US games journalism in the UK though the web, and also because of the wet-napkin performance of most of the good old British games publishers. The UK used to be a much larger player in PC gaming.
I’m not ranting, I’ve just noticed that 10-15 years ago a lot of the games I was playing were produced in the UK (probably by two guys in a shed in Romford).
Yeah, no. 125,000 is less than a fraction of a percent, and cannot be used for the slightest amount of accurate analysis, with such a small number, and such a high amount of pc gamers, the error margin is more than 80% on this study. Also, it’s of subject matter where this information is gathered from, a recent finnish “study” by an evening newspaper has muchly the same amount of errorenous data in it.
They asked from (interest point here) players/chatters of habbo hotel what they like to do. Is it surprise to anyone that the outcome was ”dating on the net and buying virtual small things(micropurchasing)” ?
So, the study concluded loudly that ”all young people on the net enjoy dating and games where micropurchasing is present”.
It’s just ridiculous. :P
Also, males are less… this is wrongly said, but less GULLIBLE on taking software to their computers that sends data to the internet on sources that they really do not know anything of and cannot trust, and females are more… eager to join these kind of studies.
@spinks
Honestly I think it is just because FPS games were an early genre, therefore we early adopters of video gaming are more experienced, skilled, and nostalgic for these mature genres. So, you end up with self-identified hardcore gamers who feel their entertainment and identity threatened by “casual” games and players. They feel the need to differentiate games they enjoy from games that the new wider audience enjoys.
The unpopular reality is: WoW is no less hardcore than any FPS game. From high level PvP or raiding the game requires the same skills, and more, than the average competitive FPS. The UI is different, the interaction with the game world via the mechanics are different, but it is no more “casual”.
In fact, WoW requires significantly more time, study, logistical, managerial and social skills, and active thought to become truly skilled with than any FPS or RTS game I’ve played. As well it should as it is far, far more complex.
If “gamers” want to identify their games as hardcore because they are more simplistic, that’s fine and really more honest, but I don’t think that is the message they want to send.
FYI: My first video game was Wolfenstein 3D, and I am an active and avid TF2 and L4D player (You can view my Steam profile on my name above). FPS games are my favorite genre and always will be. I am also an active WoW player since release.
I think the people saying this ‘isn’t an accurate’ stat because only certain people would install the software, etc, are being unrealistic.
I mean what are political polls, which are largely accurate: 2000 calls to people? Only certain people would answer the phone, only people who have home phones would answer… and so on.
At some point you have to just accept that these stats are largely accurate.
Habbo Hotel lol, It continues to amaze me that if there is a game out there SOMEONE will play it. Even if it looks like Mario’s pixlated puke there is always some persons out there enjoying themselves with it. take all these Korean grinders for example, they all have tons of people playing on them even though they are all like the same game, how do you choose which one to play ?
Yeah, no. 125,000 is less than a fraction of a percent, and cannot be used for the slightest amount of accurate analysis, with such a small number, and such a high amount of pc gamers, the error margin is more than 80% on this study.
I’m assuming by “Error Margin” you mean margin of error, in which case, we need to go to Morbo. Morbo?
MARGIN OF ERROR DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY!
Thank you, Morbo.
No, really, it doesn’t. Margin of error doesn’t care about the % of the population you interview unless that % is high. In this case, it’s not, so it only cares about the number of people interviewed, no matter how big the population is. In this case, that number is quite high, so the margin of error is less than one percent.
Now, it’s still entirely possible that the survey methods may be inaccurate (which, however, I doubt, and intend to prove later) – but that has nothing to do with the margin of error.
TariqOne: I’m not threatened at all, but women who declare themselves “GIRL GAMERS” and claim they’re as good as guys (I don’t doubt that) make me feel like bursting a blood vessel in my forehead.
Some men can do womenly things, but you don’t see them screaming about and claiming theyre “MALE CHEFS” or whatever.
Attentionwhores, that’s what self-proclaimed “GIRL GAMERS” are.
Think I got a bit off-topic there.
@Steve
Male gamers also don’t suffer from the same social stigma attached to being a gamer (that it is a male hobby), or sexual harassment or ridicule for being gamers.
Now if we apply a more apt comparison, such as say, male nurses, suddenly we do have that as an similarly gender-specific stereotype, and everything you stated is ignorant, inapt, and judgmental. Amazing.
@JonFitt – i know it’s bad to assume (because you seem to be assuming i’m American) but i live and have grown up in the UK…. computer gaming and video gaming have been equal terms throughout my youth… computer gaming (aside from the title of a magazine) as a term is pretty much dead now. Personally i feel that “video games” covers all games played on a video-based device (i.e. TV or monitor) as opposed to board games etc. “Computer games”, for me, only covers the PC (and possibly Mac) but not consoles which means that it’s more limited than the other term. :)
@JKjoker: publishers have lost touch with what i care about
I absolutely agree. If graphics were really *that* important, the Wii wouldn’t be the best-selling console of this hardware generation. (And going back, the PS1 and PS2 both trounced technically superior consoles – Dreamcast and Xbox, respectively – in terms of sales, too.)
Trying to sell games according to their graphics only works if you have an actual game behind the looks, which is precisely why spending three-quarters of your development budget on a graphics engine is invariably a huge waste of money that could (as you say) be better spent elsewhere.
The problem is that developers and publishers think that people demand better-looking graphics year on year, and it’s simply not true. They’re great if you can have them, for sure, but give me an interesting game that looks like a drowned dog rather than a mono-browed corridor shooter with shinies coming out of the ears every time.
@Karrius: Morbo should be consulted more often in discussions about statistics. Or, indeed, anything. Truly, Morbo is the voice of reason in a world gone mad.
Even though we shall all inevitably perish when his numerous and ravenous offspring reach our puny planet.
I was shocked by these results , not because of the number of females playing this game or that game, but by the sheer number of people playing card games that come installed on the computer! Seriously! I played free cell one time and I was like ” WTF I’d use a deck of cards if I wanted to do this.”
I could see playing poker on the net, you need other people to do that with but the games mentioned are all single player :P Looks like a lot of people baught their aging mothers a computer that ended up being a high tech card playing machine for them.
SBHM GSOH WLTM SWF HWP ; RTS, FPS, MMORPG.
These figures are seem almost deliberately misleading. As someone mentioned the huge age range for 25 – 54 is highly suspicious and the graphical representation is either designed by an idiot or absolutely by someone aiming to mislead. Allow me to explain: -
Our eye is immediately drawn to the peaks and so of courss most people focus on those. However, if we spend 10 seconds thinking about it its ridiculous to draw the conclusions mentioned above. Take male gamers: we see that roughly 5% of the player sample is in the age range 18 – 24, that covers 7 years worth births, now look that 20% of the sample is between 25 – 54, representing 30 years worth of births. (Some of you will be able to see where I’m going, unfortunately at least 60% can’t which is why we have the problem in the first place!) 30 is over 4 times larger than 7 so we would expect to see a similar increase in the % of the sample and lo and behold that is exactly what we see. Thanks for your amazingly revealing statistics Neilsen, you’re fabulous!
In terms of the Female skew in the figures, I’m too lazy to go and check but you’ll find that in most Western countries the proportion of Females to males is not 50/50 as you’d perhaps expect but can be in the range of 60/40 (and no this isn’t just old women living longer it applies at all age ranges). Neilsen will almost certainly have taken a representative split of the countries demographic which means they may well have more women testing.
Also, the fact that the bar chart is using the default MS Excel colours for 97 / 03 doesn’t inspire my confidence
Steve: so, it’s OK for girls to play as as they’re, you know, quiet about it?
I play games and I’m proud if it. I’ll stand up and say that. When women move into a traditionally male space, like gaming, I want them to be proud too. I want them to be able to stand up and say it. To claim their rights and their space, and to encourage the quiet ones. One day, when stereotyped social distinctions are a thing of the past we can respond to declarations with “Yeah? And?” We’re not there yet.
“Womenly things”… seriously?
Really, no one should be proud of about spending this much time gaming and being alone.
Timofee you are right of course, I should have learned my lesson from watching Cyber Chase with my kids they had an episode about people trying to mislead you with a graph chart ;P For example showing two charts side by side where one increases by 100s and the other by 10, the one that increases by 100s looks a lot smaller than the one increasing by 10s, giving you illusion that one is larger but really isn’t O.o
Any how all of these polls are misleading on purpose, these Nelson people can make a poll come out to say anything they want or they person paying them to do the poll wants it to say.
@Karrius – You are completely correct. If Nielsen were to take a census of the population they could be sure that, (assuming the sample is fair) it would be accurate to less than 1% difference with the MASSIVE sample they’ve picked. For Nielsen to be 99% confident their results only differ by 2% from the US population, they would only need a sample size of around 4200.
Now, my figures may be a little off, I’m a little drunk this evening.
Clearly there is a point where the sample size can be too low, but it’s not usually the problem. It’s how you pick the sample that is important. And I think it’s a fair criticism of Nielsen. Their figures show information about the sort of people who wanted to be tracked by them, this may be significantly different to the population. If their methods for picking a sample are bad, it won’t change by adding more people.
I just noticed the update to the article.
I still think this study is bollocks, regardless. You had to opt-in and install spyware to be a part of it. There’s a difference between a one-time survey by phone for a statistics poll, and committing yourself to being watched 24/7. It’s going to affect the participation in this study, and its results.
Those statistics polls you see on the news, with small samples, might work and be reasonably accurate. But usually because it’s only relevant to that specific region. You don’t need such a large survey sample in that case, to be accurate.
But what games people play on a PC is a worldwide phenomenon. Yet, here we are with a sample which wasn’t that large, and the study was limited a specific region (the U.S.) only.
Just to clarify: I personally have no doubt that there are significantly more female gamers today, and have nothing against that. I just don’t think these numbers are particularly accurate, as a whole. They’re like the equally worthless NPD PC sales charts.
Get back to us when a larger sample from across the world has been surveyed, where you simply ask what games people are playing rather than expecting them to install spyware. That should help increase participation and significantly improve the accuracy of the results.
If I were Microsoft, I’d be thinking about bundling in an MMO with Windows 7…
whats wrong with using excel 97 ? it has more than enough functionality for regular office work, it is cheaper and it works on old computers and it actually runs better than new office suits
in fact i would say they might be smarter for not jumping into the must-upgrade bandwagon
the only reason i had to upgrade my office is because it would refuse to open documents made with newer versions, meh (same goes for adobe acrobat, stupid bloated crap)
@bitkari : if i were Microsoft i’d be thinking of actually adding meaningful features to win7 instead of just putting lipstick on the vista pig
@Phydaux
It’s how you pick the sample that is important. And I think it’s a fair criticism of Nielsen..
Agreed, and I said as much. :) I’ll go on about this in a sec, but I just wanted to show how amazingly silly the “80% margin of error” was. I mean, 80%, 0.2%. Same damn thing, right?
Now, I had intended to show that the WoW numbers were accurate, as they looked accurate to me, cross-referencing the Daedalus Project. And so I looked it up, and…
The two sources totally differ. Daedalus had females at 16%, yet confirmed the trend that most of that 16% is in more mature women. Leaving us with three choices:
1) The Deadalus project is wrong.
2) The Nielsen Study is wrong.
3) They’re BOTH right – the Daedalus Project, made in 2005, is outdated, and the % of women on WoW has doubled since then.
I find it fascinating, in any case – I’m willing to believe any of the three are true.
But what games people play on a PC is a worldwide phenomenon. Yet, here we are with a sample which wasn’t that large, and the study was limited a specific region (the U.S.) only.
It’s totally unreasonable to complain that the Neilsen study isn’t taking into account people all over the world. Isn’t the entire purpose of this study to sell data to US advertisers?
“software meter installed on their machines”
that explains the sample size
@Karrius:
I realize that Nielsen only operates in the U.S., and who they’re selling this data to.
But that’s precisely what I’m getting at. It’s why we shouldn’t put too much stock in these Nielsen numbers. It’s a U.S.-centric study. (And not a particularly good one, at that.)
A better organization to do this type of survey might be the PCGA. Let them make themselves useful (because I don’t know what the hell else they’ve been doing lately) for a change. Publish a counter-study to this one, based on worldwide data gathering. I’d really like to see that. I’m betting the results will be quite different.
Maybe the data on Half Life 2 is representative of ALL the games that run on the hl2.exe (TF2, HL2 Episodes, L4d, etc), not just Half Life 2 itself.
@Danarchist
Yes, you can regurgitate pc social science 101;, the only difference between the sexes is genitalia etc etc. I’m sure millions of years of role differentiation between combat and hunting for men, and social interaction and multitasking for women is just invented, and yet oh look; men overwhelmingly play games focussed on coordination, combat, tactics and teamwork, while women play games based around socialising and that can be played while performing other tasks, funny that one. Let me guess though, they’ve probably been socialised by the bourgeouis, patriarchal, capitalist imperial oppressors or somesuch other group.
What these statistics tell me is that the ESA/ELSPA should launch an anti-trust suit against MS to stop them bundling games with Windows. They’ve got just as good a case as anyone else.
These seem about as useless as any other US-based PC figures, personally. 180k gamers who specifically agreed to have their gaming habits monitored by Nelson? Eh. This doesn’t say “More women play games” but “More middle aged women gamers pay attention to Nelson ratings and would agree to particulate in such a study.”
@JKjoker:
Yup, absolutely nothing wrong with Excel 97. It even had a Flight Simulator Easter Egg. Excel 2000 has a Spy Hunter clone hidden in it, too. But then Microsoft went all poe-faced and threatened to sack people if they put Easter Eggs in their Office Products… A pity, really.
Agree about the 25-54 thing, that’s a huge segment of the market lumped together. If the RPS guys could send the heavies in to muscle some more info out of Nielsen I’d like to see a breakdown of that category:
a. Is the population evenly-spread throughout that category?
b. If not, where’s the drop-off point? Is it different for men and for women?
The 54+ statistic is interesting though. I’m sure that percentage will rise when the huge number of us who started gaming in the 80s and 90s reach retirement age! :p
@JKjoker and Iain
I’ve got no problem with using 97 or 03, well at least no problem with 03 (97 is severely lacking a lot of really useful formula’s / functions added in 03). I do however have a problem with the use of default colours which are a) hideous and b) show a distinct lack of imagination / branding / effort from such a large company.
@redrain
the PCGA would be precisely the *wrong* organisation to carry out the study. Firstly, they’re an industry lobby group, not a stats/polling company — expertise gap. Secondly, they’re an industry lobby group, not a stats/polling company — OMG teh BIAS!
The thing with the “spyware”/opt-in is a tricky problem to solve, I’d think. And lets not forget, this isn’t spyware per se. The participants will have been contacted, and asked if they would be willing to participate. They might well have been offered an incentive (install our software for a month and we’ll give you a $50 Amazon voucher).
As far as accuracy is concerned, I’d take this data over ringing people up and asking for a list of all the games they played this week and how long they played them.
—
Neilsen Media Research are, for better or worse, a professional stats-gathering/analysing company focused on tv and other kinds of media. They, or one of their competitors, are precisely the type of company who can most accurately produce this kind of data.
Oh, and on the branding thing: that doesn’t surprise me in the least. It was put together by one analyst by pulling data from their subscription product(s). Most of the “produced by a researcher”-type docs I see are similar in structure and format. For anything not handed over to “design” or “marketing” before publication, it’s entirely dependent on whether the company has well defined document templates in Word, Powerpoint etc. Most seem not to!