In the wake of Ubisoft not including playable female characters in either Assassin's Creed: Unity or Far Cry 4, the standard tropes are trotted out...the average age of a gamer is 31. Forty-eight percent of gamers are women. Etc.
These numbers are accurate, but are presented with no context. They come from industry information published by The Entertainment Software Association (1). They include ALL gamers. A 60-year old playing Candy Crush Saga counts as a gamer. The legions of middle-aged women playing Bejeweled Blitz count as gamers. When a parent buys a game for a child, the age/gender of the parent is counted, not the age/gender of the child.
Well, today I spent two hours standing in line with my two sons to play the demo of Super Smash Bros. Wii U. Without doing an actual hard count, the total people I saw standing in line were about 95% men between the ages of 15 and 25 (2). "Core" or "hardcore" gaming--the gaming dominated by the AAA games that cost $50 million to make and another $50 million to market--is overwhelmingly young and male. Citing statistics that count all the people playing free mobile games and the like is not going to change that.
And developers know it. They know the people most likely to slam down $60 for a AAA game on day of release are teen or young-20s men and the games are aimed squarely at them. If you're a woman or an older man and you want to see the industry change, there's a simple way to do it.
Spend money. Until you're spending money on hardcore gaming, hardcore games are going to keep dissing you.
(1) Link to current info. Another "fact" that's funny is "88% of games are not rated M." Watch an E3 press conference and it looks like 88% of games are rated M. (There were some trailers that were too disgusting for me. I can't imagine what the games will be like.) Just another example of how the ESA's statistics have no relevance to hardcore gaming.
(2) The actual percentage was probably higher than that; I'm being conservative. Within my immediate space in line there was one old gamer (me), one young gamer (my younger son), and one female gamer (someone in front of me whom I did not know). Everyone else was a teen or young adult male.
