Today, a female gamer is far from uncommon, but rather the opposite. And the percentage of females who like to play computer games or consoles is increasing. Research on the tastes of the female audience is conducted from time to time by various companies, including the analytics company Quantic Foundry, My.Games and even Opera GX.
In this article, we summarise our research and highlight the main game genres favoured by the female half.
Dossier of a girl gamer
When conducting research, each company generates its own questionnaire. This allows us to create a general portrait of a female gamer and give a brief characteristic on common traits.
The respondents were women between the ages of 15 and 54. The distribution of female respondents by age is as follows:
- 15-24 years old — 22%
- 25-34 years old — 25%
- 35-44 years old — 30%
- 45-54 years old — 23%.
The analysts select questionnaires for those girls who have played PCs, consoles or mobile devices at least once in the last month.
Among those surveyed, only 44% of respondents have higher education and 28% of female gamers are qualified professionals in various fields. Meanwhile, the employment statistics of those surveyed are as follows:
- 28% are qualified professionals,
- 20% are unemployed,
- 12% are students,
- 10% hold managerial positions.
Although it is commonly believed that a female gamer is a loner who prefers to watch anime and spend evenings playing games, studies have shown otherwise. Almost half of the female gamers surveyed are married, 24% are single, but most are in relationships, and one in eight female game fans are divorced.
In addition, the girls were asked how their relatives and friends felt about the hobby. More than half of the women surveyed said that their environment is generally neutral towards their hobby. Only one in ten women stated a negative or disapproving attitude. Slightly more than a quarter of respondents said that people react positively to their hobby.
Play preferences
According to the survey, women are more likely to play on mobile devices. Although more than half of the respondents prefer PC games. More precise information on the respondents’ choices is provided below.
- Mobile devices – 85%
- Personal computer – 60%
- Gaming consoles – 23%.
The gamers who took part in the questionnaire were asked to list up to nine games that they had spent a fair amount of time playing on their smartphones, and the projects in question were then sorted into genres. As it turned out, the most popular genres with the ladies were indeed casual games. According to the resulting data, the vast majority of girls playing on their phones love the genre “three in a row”, games like Candy Crush Saga, Bejeweled and Farm Heroes Saga. Slightly inferior to the most popular genre are life and farm simulation games: The Sims, Harvest Moon, Animal Crossing, Story of Seasons, and Stardew Valley.
Overall, the findings divided the taste preferences of female gamers for mobile games in the following ratio:
- Puzzle games – 88%
- Board games – 80%
- Racing – 47%
- Simulators – 47%
- Action games – 39%.
While the overall ratio of platform popularity is almost identical to the male survey results, women are more likely to choose smartphones and tablets (85% vs. 76%) and less likely to play on a PC (60% vs. 72%). Meanwhile, roughly half of female gamers shopped for games regardless of platform. Surprisingly, the survey on the PC games most often played by girls showed that the preferred genres on this platform differed from those most often played on mobile devices.
- Racing – 54%
- Life simulators – 53%
- Strategies – 47%
- Shooters – 46%
- Social games – 42%.
Of curious facts: Star Wars: The Old Republic is more likely to meet a girl than World of Warcraft, the percentage of females in these games being 29% and 23% respectively. That said, the high fantasy genre is preferred by far more girls than the sci-fi genre: 36% vs. 16%. The majority of girls named Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate as their favourite open-world game, while Dragon Age: Inquisition was highlighted as their favourite Western RPG.
The difference in genre choice between smartphones and PCs is obvious to the untrained eye. In terms of games on consoles, however, girls’ tastes are similar to those on PC.
- Racing – 62%
- Sports simulators – 48%
- Life simulators 48%
- Shooters – 47%
- “Sandbox” games 43%.
Summary
Contrary to common misconception, most of them do not come to computer and console games for the attention of guys, and for the most part, not even to share their boyfriend’s hobby. Believe it or not, girls are just as human as men. And the same types of entertainment are on the radar.
Today, there are almost as many Minecraft fans among high school girls as there are boys, and they play on par. Even more so, you can find true groupies at PUBG, Dota 2, Overwatch or CS:GO. And yes, they play for the sake of the game. And some of the gamegirls so don’t like the increased attention to their persona, and hide under men’s names. Others have simply adapted, used to either ignore the increased attention to their person (not always positive), or to snap back nicely.
So if you meet a girl gamer in the game … you should treat her like a normal teammate. Believe, this way you will earn a more adequate attitude towards yourself as a fellow gamer and as a person in general.
