DDM Games Investment Review – Feb 09, 2017

Female Gamers by Genre

Reports on demographics in gaming have shown that the gender breakdown of gamers is typically reported as 55-60% male and 40-45% female. Quantic Foundry, a game analytics firm that combines social and data science to better understand a player’s motivation and improve gaming experiences and engagement, recently focused on female gamers. In their blog post, “Beyond 50/50: Breaking Down the Percentage of Female Gamers by Genre,” Quantic Foundry reviewed a pool of 270,000 gamers (18.5% identified as female) along with lists of titles or franchises the gamers enjoy playing. The list from any surveyed gamer was limited to his or her top nine titles. Quantic Foundry grouped three to five key game titles into genres and derived the proportion of female gamers for that genre.

Report Highlights:

  • Top five genres by proportion of female gamers in descending order with key games:
    • Match 3 (Candy Crush Saga, Bejeweled (series), Farm Heroes Saga) – 69%
    • Family/Farm Sim (The Sims (series), Harvest Moon (series), Animal Crossing (series), Story of Seasons, Stardew Valley) – 69%
    • Casual Puzzle (Angry Birds, 2048, Cut The Rope) – 42%
    • Atmospheric Exploration (Journey, ABZU, Gone Home, Dear Esther) – 41%
    • Interactive Drama (The Walking Dead (series), The Wolf Among Us, Tales From the Borderlands) – 37%
  • Lowest five genres by proportion of female gamers in descending order with key games:
    • Grand Strategy (Europa Universalis IV, Crusader Kings II, Stellaris) – 7%
    • First Person Shooter (Call of Duty: Black Ops III, Battlefield 4, Halo 5: Guardians, Counter-
      Strike: Global Offensive, Team Fortress 2) – 7%
    • Racing (Need For Speed (series), Gran Turismo (series), Forza (series)) – 6%
    • Tactical Shooter (Squad, ARMA 3, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Seige) – 4%
    • Sports (FIFA (series), NBA 2K (series), Madden NFL (series)) – 2%
  • Quantic Foundry analyzed 23 genres and noted, “The genre averages range from 2% to almost 70%. This is a 35-fold difference, and illustrates why an overall statistic for all gamers (ignoring genre) can be misleading and confusing.”
  • Female gamers who listed titles that fall under High Fantasy MMOs were two times higher than Sci-Fi MMOs (36% vs. 16%)
  • A few games had a notably higher proportion of female gamers surveyed than the matching genres: Star Wars: The Old Republic under Sci-Fi MMO (29% vs. 16%), Assassin’s Creed Syndicate under Open World games (27% vs. 14%), and Dragon Age: Inquisition under Western RPGs (48% vs. 26%)
  • Compared with their findings on motivation differences between male and female gamers, Quantic Foundry noted “genres with more women emphasize Completion and Fantasy (the top 2 motivations for women). And genres for men emphasize Competition and Destruction (the top 2 motivations for men)”
  • In response to reader comments, Quantic Foundry also noted that the proportion of female gamers in Dota 2 was 6%, League of Legends was 14%, Guild Wars 2 was 34%, and Overwatch was 16%

Read Quantic Foundry’s full blog post and view their full genre chart here.