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The Most Recent ESA Report On Gamers


Beocat

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So, I'm attaching to this post the most recent ESA (Entertainment Software Association) Report from 2016.  Inside are cool statistics about United States Gamership including but not limited to....platform ownership, genre purchasing distributions, gameplay preferences, gender and age examinations, and more!  Anyways all, check it out.  If you go to ESA's main page, they will detail a few tidbits that they believe are interesting in a "news summary" but the PDF is much more nitty gritty.  From what I'm seeing, the average age of female gamers has stayed roughly the same in the past five year (if I remember correctly).  It's also nice to know I'm in the 11% (VR purchasers, and yes, I'm glad I got it even if I don't play as often with it).

 

Hope you all enjoy.  The link to the PDF is below!  Anyone else see anything especially interesting?  I personally thought RPGs would have a bigger marketshare...but this is a US based study....probably would be completely different in Japan!

 

ESA2016.pdf

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2 hours ago, Wedgy said:

What I found most jarring about this... supposedly the largest demographic of female gamers was aged 50+. The older female crowd is evidently more abundant than even the 18-35 crowd. However, anecdotally, most other gamers I've met via my own games (generally online PVP,) are roughly 30 or so, sex nonwithstanding. What I'd like to see in more detail here is what particular kinds of games are most popular with each age demographic. For example I find it hard to believe all of those 50+ women are all playing games like PUBG and not just some Bejeweled clone they installed on their iPads.

PC and mobile platforms did outrank consoles so that is something to consider.  I think part of it has to deal with disposable income and many of these women having children that play.  From the study, a surprising amount of parents are playing games with their kids now (as opposed to just checking in on them when they play). I can verify that some parents I've personally known to play with their kids are doing so because they lost custody of them and playing minecraft online helps them stay connected in their kids lives. Then they learn they love it and they start branching out. 

 

But then again, gaming is gaming folks! I try not to judge the CandyCrushers out there. They may be on the path to hardcore gaming if I just let them walk it freely :) though I do wish it had more info on which were casual and which were hardcore gamers (they would inevitably have to provide a definition for the criteria).

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On 2/16/2018 at 3:44 AM, Wedgy said:

What I found most jarring about this... supposedly the largest demographic of female gamers was aged 50+. The older female crowd is evidently more abundant than even the 18-35 crowd. However, anecdotally, most other gamers I've met via my own games (generally online PVP,) are roughly 30 or so, sex nonwithstanding. What I'd like to see in more detail here is what particular kinds of games are most popular with each age demographic. For example I find it hard to believe all of those 50+ women are all playing games like PUBG and not just some Bejeweled clone they installed on their iPads.

I can't help but think some of those statistics are way off border, because it's been common knowledge that the largest demographic is males aged 35 plus, followed by women in their 20's, men under 35, women in their 30's and finally the different teenage demographics. If it really changed, I feel like there would have been some huge story about it somewhere, and i never saw it. That said, I'm naturally not willing to trust the ESA because they've been more and more like a government operated organization than one meant to protect, or even be honest to the gaming communities out there about the major issues with the industry in the hopes of protecting their investments. The journalism side of me doesn't trust much of anything they say right now, and it's hard to know how long they've been untruthful to people. 

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