Female gamers apparently = casual gamers
I read a post on Kotaku yesterday which noted that approximately US$2.25 billion was spent on casual gaming in 2007. And, as noted in the Kotaku post: there’s a Casual Gaming Association? When did that happen?
The thing that’s mentioned in both the Kotaku post and the Forbes article it’s sourced from is that 75% of casual games are paid for by women, 72% by women over 35. While it’s not completely clear whether they mean 72% of the 75% or 72% overall, the gist of it is still the same. What they’re saying is that the women who are buying these games are the ones we all have in mind when we think of the traditional opponents to video games, i.e. the mothers. The mothers who tell us to stop wasting our time, to get a real hobby, or go outside and run around the park, sit up straight and that can’t be good for your eyes. I may be projecting here, because that was the litany I received from my mother until part way through my PhD when I first received money for a book chapter on games and she realised that maybe I was on to something with my insistence on playing and studying games (she now takes great pride in flaunting to other academics that she has a daughter in her 20s who has a phd in games, but that’s a story for another day).
My point is that there is a huge amount of money being spent on casual games by the demographic who insist that violent games should not be freely available to children or that addiction to games is a real problem. Judging by the amount of money being spent on casual games, and the people who are paying for them, the problem is not video games in general, the problem is specific video games. Maybe the problem is people’s constant need to generalise, i.e. all games are as violent and sick as Grand Theft Auto. Or, all gamers are addicted to World of Warcraft (she said sarcastically, fully aware that she is one of those sad addicts). The thing is, these un-educated (I don’t want to say ignorant, but feel free to think that word) outcries about the game industry are only goning to get louder and more effective, especially as the response from the game industry and gamers in general is “Eh. You’re all bonkers. Get lost and let me play in peace.”
Given that women, and in particular, more mature age women, are playing games (albeit different games to the ones we generally consider to be video games), doesn’t that imply that there is at least some common ground? It may be naive to think that this common ground can be used to try to sort out some of the misconceptions about the game industry, but I still think maybe we should try. Rather than just looking at those figures and going “sif u play caz games” and “see? u play 2″, I want to try to look at motivations of play and maybe how those generalise across all games, and how that might be a starting point for lessening all this nonsense about how video games are a factory for churning out homicidal maniacs. I’m not sure what I want to say about it yet, but I will say something.
Maybe tomorrow, when I’ve thought it out a bit more.
