Gamer Moms: You're Not Alone

[CrystalSeas]

Activision paid for a study of moms in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States to get a better idea of who they are and what they prefer.

Gamer Moms White Paper

Mom = Female respondents aged 25-54 with at least one child under 18 in the household

Gamer mom = Moms who play video games across mobile, tablet, PC or console. (not TTRPGs, though: It's Activision)

Non-gamer mom = Moms who do not play video games across mobile, tablet, PC or console.

Some interesting results
1) Most moms are gamers.
Gamer moms account for the majority of all moms. In the four markets surveyed, over two-thirds of moms reported engagement with video games, playing across mobile, tablet, console and PC, making gaming a powerful platform to reach this influential consumer group.

2)Gaming delivers moms value and positivity.
Gamer moms view entertainment, including gaming, as an important and positive part of their lives compared to their non-gaming mom counterparts. They are also more likely to feel they can easily relate to their children. For gamer moms, gaming is a connective tissue in their relationships with their kids.

3) The gamer stereotype is inaccurate.
While 71% of moms are playing video games, only 48% of mom gamers actually describe themselves as gamers. This lack of self-identification has led to the perception of gaming as an activity enjoyed solely by men, which is both outdated and inaccurate

Their conclusions?
The stereotype that women, and especially moms, don’t enjoy playing video games couldn’t be further from the truth. Women don’t just play video games, they love them. They see gaming as an important part of their lives, one which brings them value and joy.

=========================
While a study of "moms who play video games" isn't an exact fit with "moms who play TTRPGs", I think a lot of the same stereotypes still linger in the TTRPG realm. Especially the ones where active gamers don't self-identify as gamers

In the US, 77% of the moms say they play daily; only 29% self-identify as gamers.

I'm curious to hear the stories of the Gamer Moms who hang out here on the Paizo boards.

If you want to talk about the study results, please read the study before you comment If you want to argue about the study results please provide data, not just anecdotes

[CrystalSeas]

In my own case, I was the GM for most of our early family games. One of the kids loved to draw the castle plans and that led to an early interest in architecture as a profession.

And when my youngest was going through some teen-age difficulties, having other adults in the gaming group who could help him learn to be a decent human being made it that much easier for me. He got to work through some tough emotions via his characters, and the rest of the group was able to say "that's not cool" without it always coming from Mom.

[Heather F]

I've moved this to General Discussion. The linked study is worth a read, and it's nice to learn that there are more gamer moms out there than one would have thought.

[CrystalSeas]

Another survey of women gamers, this one showing that 59% of them mask their gender when playing online, to avoid harassment. The research was done to help brands improve their market reach, and has some specific advice to on how to do so.

Reach3 wrote:

The Future of Gaming is Her

Using next-gen insight methods, Reach3 is empowering the growing gaming revolution among women

To grow, the gaming industry must fundamentally embrace a diverse and inclusive community of gamers, but gaming online can be a toxic space that many women just learn to “deal with.”

Here’s what we learned from speaking with 900 women gamers in the US, China, and Germany about the issues they face.

Quote:

77% have experienced gender-specific discrimination when gaming, such as...

Name calling / insults
Inappropriate sexual messages
Unsolicited relationship asks
Men throwing or leaving the game when finding out the player is a woman
Gatekeeping
Patronizing or dismissive comments
Double standards on skills / being judged more harshly
Mansplaining / unsolicited advice

and this type of explicitly sexist behavior is normalized in online spaces, with little to no repurcussion.

Reach3 Insights Gaming Survey

Short summary

[Quark Blast]

I've known gamers who throw this type of behavior but I've never been in a game where it was exhibited in a gender specific direction. Although several of those categories are highly subjective, so maybe I have. It's hard to tell but literally every game (online RPG or TTRPG) I've been a part of I've had "unsolicited advice" sent my way. And I mean literally every game. Trash talking on TeamSpeak (or one of its clones) is also a constant - usually not truly vulgar though. I've played a zillion times where the de facto party leader was female and don't ever recall a problem arising from that but then people self-select, so maybe that's why.

There's some age and gender stats graphics at the top of this article that might interest people.

[CrystalSeas]

Quark Blast wrote:

There's some age and gender stats graphics at the top of this article that might interest people.

I wonder what group they're talking about? That page doesn't indicate who was surveyed: North Americans? Europeans? World-wide? Attendees at GenCon? Video game players like the previous articles? WotC customers?

It also doesn't indicate how many people answered the questions, or how many people declined to answer*. Can you provide a link to the actual results or a description of the research? Age and gender percentages about an unknown group of people are hard to interpret.

All I could find is that the graphic was provided by Wizards of the Coast.

*This is an interesting data point because of the other research that says that 77% of gamers who are women mask their gender when playing. I wonder how that affects their participation in and responses to public surveys.

[dirtypool]

I’m not sure the “I’ve never seen this behavior directed at women” argument holds much water. Gamergate coverage from years back exposed exactly these kinds of environments. Ten minutes on XBL showcases the kind of toxicity described, and that’s just a place where they have access to your voice.

[Rysky]

Even with the best intentions, “I’ve never seen that” is almost always literal aka “I wasn’t paying attention and so did not see it”.

[CrystalSeas]

Quark Blast wrote:

Although several of those categories are highly subjective, so maybe I have.

Currently neuroscience does not have the tools to label people's emotions accurately just using brain measurements. So if you want to do research about how people feel in a situation, the only good tool is to ask them. Which, of course, is subjective data, not rigorous laboratory cause-and-effect research with a null hypothesis.

It's pretty clear that people respond differently to the same situation based on their current stress levels, previous experience, and other situational factors. At this point, the best data available is what people tell you they felt in that situation.

Sometimes when people express those feelings, there's actual gaslighting ("the thing you think happened didn't actually happen") and other times there's negating of their feelings ("that thing happened, but you shouldn't feel that way when it does").

It's helpful in getting a better picture of people's comfort level in a situation if people are free to express those feelings without being shut down.

[Quark Blast]

CrystalSeas wrote:

Quark Blast wrote:

There's some age and gender stats graphics at the top of this article that might interest people.

I wonder what group they're talking about? That page doesn't indicate who was surveyed: North Americans? Europeans? World-wide? Attendees at GenCon? Video game players like the previous articles? WotC customers?

I would assume D&D 5e players across all platforms they have data for. WotC wouldn't really be interested in anything else. The stat I found most interesting is the lowest proportion being in the 15-19 yo bin. Does that mean the next generation is losing interest in the game?

But we can't really dig into those numbers without context. We can only assume WotC understands the data they collected and aren't presenting it in a format that is deceptive.
.

CrystalSeas wrote:

Quark Blast wrote:

Although several of those categories are highly subjective, so maybe I have.

Currently neuroscience does not have the tools to label people's emotions accurately just using brain measurements. So if you want to do research about how people feel in a situation, the only good tool is to ask them. Which, of course, is subjective data, not rigorous laboratory cause-and-effect research with a null hypothesis.

It's pretty clear that people respond differently to the same situation based on their current stress levels, previous experience, and other situational factors. At this point, the best data available is what people tell you they felt in that situation.

Sometimes when people express those feelings, there's actual gaslighting ("the thing you think happened didn't actually happen") and other times there's negating of their feelings ("that thing happened, but you shouldn't feel that way when it does").

It's helpful in getting a better picture of people's comfort level in a situation if people are free to express those feelings without being shut down.

There's many ways to slice the "are you a gamer?" pie. I know of people who own more TTRPG stuff than I ever will, yet don't actually play. Played at one time of course but now are what we might call a nostalgia collector. Do such people still call themselves "gamers"? Likely.

The WotC graphic showing a 60/40 split between male and female is consistent with my experience but what happens to the answer if you look at number of hours/week playing? I expect it would skew even more heavily male as hours/week goes up.

Now as for the OP - Activision, so video games - I would expect the numbers to skew the other way for mobile devices. However the "white paper" doesn't report variance for any of the stats and since gamer culture is full of slang I'm not certain they are actually measuring the same thing across cultures anyway.

For the video world I would expect that what people buy is a better measure of what they are interested in actually doing (I've never heard of anyone collecting all the versions of Candy Crush for example; and yeah I know that game is largely "free"). Maybe someone buys video games just to have them but it seems safe to assume the vast majority of people buy games to play them. So measuring who buys what will get you better info than self reporting.

I don't know how you would get an accurate account of hours played if the game itself wasn't keeping track and reporting in. I remember exactly how many hours of CoD I played last week but that's because it was only one time and yesterday and there were some pretty eventful things that happened either side of that. I have no good idea what a typical week for me looks like. Maybe I did when I was 15 but not anymore.

[dirtypool]

The argument that the demographic split may be 60/40 - but not really because men play more frequently is strange, irrelevant, and unsupported.

The topic is the behavior exhibited toward female players. The rest is obfuscation.

[CrystalSeas]

Quark Blast wrote:

I would assume D&D 5e players across all platforms they have data for. WotC wouldn't really be interested in anything else.

If a company only focuses on selling products to its current customers, then in the long run, it will see a declining number of customers. To counterbalance that, they seek new customers. So your assumption that they're not interested in data about non-customers makes no sense.

The rest of your post is your personal assumptions and conclusions, unsupported by any data, and really just showcases your personal opinions, without any relevance to the actual experiences women have in gaming.

This thread is for moms and other female gamers to discuss their experiences. Dismissing actual data about how women experience games* is not only off topic, it borders on a baiting derail.

*(since gamer culture is full of slang I'm not certain they are actually measuring the same thing across cultures anyway)

[Quark Blast]

CrystalSeas wrote:

Quark Blast wrote:

I would assume D&D 5e players across all platforms they have data for. WotC wouldn't really be interested in anything else.

If a company only focuses on selling products to its current customers, then in the long run, it will see a declining number of customers. To counterbalance that, they seek new customers. So your assumption that they're not interested in data about non-customers makes no sense.

You misunderstand what I'm saying. The WotC data isn't presented as even trying to answer that question. As presented, the summary stats represent D&D 5e players. Therefore, relative to that presentation, they don't care. If they did they would present different data, showing that they looked into the issue from that angle.

In short: Those data aren't about non-customers.

As for the 60/40 split in the WotC data:
See page 27/28 of the Activision Blizzard Media "white paper" linked in the first post on this thread and compare. When hours go up participation goes down. That's for video gaming across all platforms and that's also what I've seen for TTRPGs. All the times gamers have made the news for dying in their gaming chairs it's been a male gamer. Given that propensity, I expect that the percentage numbers don't go down as fast for male gamers as for female gamers due to that skew from the subset of "obsessive" male gamers. That's not to deny other gender identifications can be "obsessive" about their gaming, only that the prevalence is different enough among males to skew the larger aggregate results.

CrystalSeas wrote:

The rest of your post is your personal assumptions and conclusions, unsupported by any data, and really just showcases your personal opinions, without any relevance to the actual experiences women have in gaming.

I can count on one hand the number of multi-player or team games I've participated in where there have been no apparent females. The vast majority of my gaming experience (TTRPGs as well as console/PC gaming) has been in mixed groups regarding gender.

CrystalSeas wrote:

This thread is for moms and other female gamers to discuss their experiences.

Maybe you should've lead with this in your first post because, so far, I'm the only person who's actually interacted with the content of your post and interacted with the "white paper" you link to.

CrystalSeas wrote:

Dismissing actual data about how women experience games* is not only off topic, it borders on a baiting derail.

*(since gamer culture is full of slang I'm not certain they are actually measuring the same thing across cultures anyway)

I'm not dismissing the data!

The study was conducted across four distinct broader cultures - US, UK, Germany, France - and we have no idea how the questions were put to participants in each of those areas.

Further, as given on page 6 of the "white paper", it looks like the labels (Moms, Gamer moms, Non-gamer moms, Mobile-only moms, Multi-platform mom) were assigned by the people conducting the study and not by the study participants - so strictly speaking we don't know how many self-identify as any of those categories. For example, see page 29 in the "white paper", less than half of all "gamer moms" self-report as "gamers". Why? We don't know as none of the data given help us peer into that curious result.

And, as mentioned previously, there is no raw data given with the "white paper", or even variance given for the stats they present, for a reader to evaluate the study results. All we have to go on are the author(s) bald assurance that, "Where comparisons have been made between gamer moms and non-gamer moms, percentages were tested for statistical significance at p < .05 and all comparisons were found significant with 95% confidence."

So then, all we have to work with is our understanding of what the study results are meant for. Advertising the brand, first and foremost - or as they say in the study itself, "The idea is simple: great game experiences offer great marketing experiences."

Otherwise, who knows?

One option for finding out more is right there on the last page of the study:
"To learn more about the research or how your brand can reach the gamer mom audience, please contact: [e-mail]"

So there you go! Contact them and link this post you've started and maybe you'll get the participation you desire. I hope you do because, so far (these nearly two months in), I've been the only one trying to interact with your post and links.

[Rysky]

Quark Blast wrote:

I've been the only one trying to interact with your post and links.

Congratz, want a cookie?