Friday, February 28, 2014

Do you play mobile games? What gender are you?


As someone who doesn't play games, online or off, I was a bit surprised to see a new survey by social gaming network PlayPhone found that 68% of mobile gamers are women.  61% of them play at home in their living rooms, and nearly a third of those play in the evening. (Baar, 2014)

What about you?  Do you want to play a game?


Baar, A. (2014, February 25)  Women Dominate Mobile Gaming Space.  mediapost.com.  Retrieved February 27, 2014, from http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/220115/women-dominate-mobile-gaming-space.html?edition=70233

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is surprising that 68% of mobile gamers are women but perhaps like you, I am not aware of it because I don't play games either online or offline. Playing games by myself online has never appeal to me unless it's interactive, for instance charades, board games or trivia games playing along with other people interests me. Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of leisure time - with work, school/homework, and running errands - I barely can get to the gym three times a week much less spend an hour or so playing games in my mobile devices.


I suspect these women who have time to play online are less busier than your average New Yorker or anyone who lives in a big cosmopolitan city. I can surmise geography has a lot to do with it and would be very interested to know where the respondents reside in terms of geographical area in the U.S.


From my experience, most people I see on the subway who play on their tablet or mobile device are typically young men and some young women. Usually, when I see women ages 40-64 on their tablet or mobile devices they are either reading a book or checking emails. Personally, the the women I know ages 40-64, I've never seen play games online but then again I don't know what they do in their downtime.

G

Vanessa G said...

When first looking at those statistics, I initially found them to be farfetched considering I don’t play any mobile games and cannot think of any women in my social circle that do either. It’s also rare that you’ll find me at home, in my living room, when most of the hours in my day are spent outside the home. But then again, like the previous poster mentioned, New Yorkers might be busier than your average American and women in NYC are not a representative sample of women across the country. Also, from my own observations, I have seen significantly more men in NY play mobile games on their devices than women. However, looking at it from a national point of view, it’s not surprising that more women are playing these games as previous studies have shown that they spend more time on their phones.

Unknown said...

I actually was not surprised to read that statistic. Even though I am not a fan of mobile games, my mom and sisters love to play them. Also, I find that I know more girls that play more frequently than the guys do. I feel as though men might be more into the news/sports apps, and possibly have less time to play these games than women do.