Gaming 2.0

Interesting post on GigaOm about women gamers. Neilsen has a new study on gaming demographics (see here).

According to Neilsen, ratios are:

- 2 to 1: ratio of men to women in overall gaming universe.
- 56%: percentage of active gamers who play online.
- 64%: percentage of online gamers who are women.

The Daedalus Project also shows some interesting demographics. From its survey data, the average age of the World of Warcraft player is 28.3 (SD = 8.4). 84% of players are male. 16% are female. Female players are significantly older (M = 32.5, SD = 10.0) than male players (M = 28.0, SD = 8.4).

So where are all these women and what are they doing?

The common wisdom I am aware of is that most women don't like to play competitive games, or those that require a lot of downloading and time investment in characters. Allegedly they mainly play simple online games that are free. A large part of the potential market is not paying subscriptions.

GigaOm notes that "The consensus is that online, women tend to play casual, Java and Flash-powered web games like Bejeweled5, generally passing on download-install-and-play “hardcore” online world games like World of Warcraft."

Interesting. I know many women play non PC based games like Dungeons and Dragons, so its not sword and sorcery per se that puts them off. And also, in "2nd Life" about 40% of players there are women.

What do women want then?

In observing women gamers and chatting to them, and scouring various chat boards on the subject I come away with a few general principles about what women like in games:

(i) creativity - do it yourself, or at least some saty in defining environments
(ii) being part of a non-competitive social network
(iii) using simple, easy to load and use games systems

This sounds a lot like the principles of Web 2.0. Maybe the way to include women is in the application of Web 2.0 principles to Gaming.

Gaming 2.0 anyone?