40% of Gamers are Girls!

Recently the Entertainment Software Association released a study revealing that 40% of gamers are girls. In addition to uncovering this changing demographic for the video game industry other data points to the fact that video games truely are becomming “main stream”.

Needless to say this study surprised me greatly. Typically I’ve considered the majority of my users, and World of Warcraft players as a whole to be male. Though I think this study trumps it entirely. Check out some of the other notable data points collected during the ESA’s study.

• 65 percent of American households play computer and video games;
• 38 percent of American homes have a video game console;
• The average game player is 35 years old;
• One out of four gamers are over age 50;
• Women age 18 or older represent a significantly greater portion of the game-playing population (33 percent) than boys age 17 or younger (18 percent); and,
• 41 percent of Americans expect to purchase one or more games this year.

The one aspect that this study doesn’t delve into it is the very definition of a “gamer”. For the purpose of this study I imagine the term was lightly used. Are these female gamers really just online flash enthusiast house wives?

Possibly, but for fear of alienating my female user base we’ll assume not, =)

I’d love to see how these demographics compare in the various types of games. Online flash games, console games, and PC games among others. I imagine there would be stark differences between in sex, but more noticeably in age between the various gaming mediums.