52% of All Computer Gamers Are Women | Hacker News Reader

52% of All Computer Gamers Are Women

code.likeagirl.io

40 pointsmathchick22 comments

If 52% of Computer Gamers are women, isn't that a counterpoint to the thesis of the article--i.e., that more women need to be writing software so that software appeals to women?

EDIT: It feels like we've reached the point where any statistic, no matter which way it swings, will be used to support a feminist agenda. If only 10% of gamers were women, I trust that would also be used to support the article's thesis.

or maybe games aren't really that sexist and women are enjoying games like Zelda just as much as men are. i dont think it takes being a man or woman to enjoy mario or metal gear or a good story.

It's not like samus ever stopped me from enjoying metroid.

Quite the opposite!

A relevant example is the massive success of games from Japan in the US, even though they were written by people from a different country and culture.

"52% of gamers are women" is a misleading statistic. Women are overrepresented in casual gaming, and men are overrepresented in non-casual. There is a lower proportion of women out there who have bought a games console, and lower proportion again who've bought a PC with a beefy graphics card.

If you were going to target a gender for your game, if it's casual, you should target the women, and if it's not casual you should target the men.

> in 1985 37% of women had a degree in Computer Science. In 2010, this number rolled down to 18%. Without a doubt, this negative tendency will have a huge — and potentially demolishing — effect on tech companies.

We'd all love to have more women in tech, but "huge", "demolishing"? Tech has been highly successful despite that decline. Other fields do just fine without gender balance (psychology and veterinary doctors are dominated by women, for example; the fields aren't being "demolished").

Yes, some studies show that greater gender balance is good for an industry. But many factors affect an industry's success. There is no need for alarmism.

Exactly. Is nursing being demolished? Are oil rigs being demolished? Is kindergarten being demolished? Is the car maintenance industry being demolished? Is metal working suffering?

50% of car drivers are women, cars use gasoline, where is the uproar about 97% of offshore oil rig workers being men? Why shouldn't we bring more diverse thought into crude oil extraction?

The reason you haven't heard people complaining about that is likely that people don't complain about the lack of oil rig gender balance on the sorts of web sites you visit. A moment's googling, however, finds people who work in the oil industry who are upset at the imbalance there.

Having said that, nobody is claiming that women oil rig workers are better qualified to produce gasoline for women, whilst that is the claim the article makes about women developers. So your question isn't really apropos.

Women developers aren't better than men developers at writing business logic and math for videogames, just like women oil rig workers aren't better at extracting crude oil. It doesn't matter who does either one of those, genders don't play a difference in code writing just like they don't play a difference in train conducting or operating cranes. The end result is you have a bunch of code that executes machine instructions. There is no "female object orientation" or "female monadic enterprise patterns".

If you were to argue that female game designers, product managers, producers and writers are better qualified to make games for women, female marketers are better at marketing to that demographic, sure, I can absolutely buy that argument.

However the gender imbalance people always focus on is the one for individual contributors and programmers, not marketers, not designers, nor people doing the higher level product or creative work.

If diversity really makes a difference when it comes to writing machine instructions, diversity should matter for mechanics, miners and oil rig workers.

> The National Center for Women and Information Technology states that in 1985 37% of women had a degree in Computer Science. In 2010, this number rolled down to 18%.

Ugh, this is a badly distorted statistic. The link says 37% of computing graduates were women, which makes more sense. This kind of obvious poor attention to detail makes any other statements about the current way of things suspect.

Bit of a click-bait title, I wanted to read about female gamers not gender inequality in the work place...

not to mention the assertion of 52% is based upon a link to an article that references (but does not link) to a 2014 study (https://iabuk.net/about/press/archive/more-women-now-play-vi... actual study PDF requires membership.

Amusingly the press release states that "The growth in women and older gamers has been driven by free games, primarily mobile apps." and "Trivia/word/puzzles are favourite genre – driven by older women", which kind of does not line up with the "Computer Gamers" statement (or maybe I am just nostalgically thinking that means mouse+WASD).

Ah the Internet, proof of the amazing ability of information to twist and turn out of context.

Also, technically Mobiles are Computers (CPU, RAM, Storage, IO) so Candy Crush is a Computer Game and my Grandma is a Computer Gamer.

Yes it is a click bait.

>Recent research shows that a man’s brain mostly utilizes gray matter, whereas women’s brain usage is predominantly white matter. This leads to pivotal differences in the thinking process, enabling men to offer strength in focused activities and making women greater multi-taskers.

this is baldly incorrect. The study they allude to 1. doesn't make this claim and 2. has some reasonably nit-picky things that make me think it's underpowered.

"A more thorough review of the distinctions between the male and female brain leaves a pressing feeling that we came from different planets (Venus & Mars, no less)"

I'm not sold on there being a distinct anatomical difference between the brains of men and women. I think it's more accurate to say that the differences between individuals is larger than the differences between the genders. That is, you'll find plenty of women with 'male' aspects and plenty of men with 'female' aspects.

A study of 1400 individuals that seems to be in opposition to the paper the article references: http://m.pnas.org/content/112/50/15468.abstract

I don't have a biology background, so I'm not sure which paper should be held in higher accord.

When psychologists or neuroscientists hear "male and female brains are from different planets", as the article writes, they cringe.

It's true that there are some average differences between male and female brains [1], and we shouldn't forget that, but we still understand little about how the brain works. Also the article goes so far as to say

> Peculiarities of the brain structure make women emphasizers, able to interpret other people’s emotions better and share their feelings. Men are more inclined to be systemizers, somewhat more able to analyze, explore and intuitively understand how things work [..] It all boils down to the fact that women can add some much needed balance to the tech industry — adding an alternative thought process and bringing intelligence to the table.

Which amounts to "we need more women because their brains are different", which is worth comparing to the old-school sexism of "we need less women because their brains are different".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_sex_difference...

This is very tiring. The only thing we need to do is to prevent sexism and mistreatment towards women and then encourage women to pursue careers they are afraid of pursuing. I do not see a reason to have 50/50 f/m team. It makes no sense to hire less capable woman vs more capable man.

100% of all Wives in a couple are Women.

farmville and candy crush?

Please don't post unsubstantive comments.

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