re: What caused the massive demographic shift that lead to more girls playing video games now?

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Nah man, those lobby chats were awesome. They separated the men from the girls.

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Mostly separated the children (physical and mental) from the adults not in need of counseling and/therapy, but to each his own, I suppose

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You think companies like Rockstar, Microsoft, and Blizzard don't know their demographics?

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I would be willing to bet they know their customer base is far from the 55/45 stat, based on the type of game.

Blizzard's World of Warcraft has a female player base that appears to be around 16%.

For Microsoft's Minecraft, it's around 22%. For something like Halo, it's anywhere from 2%-6%.

For Rockstar, the only stats for gender pegged GTA V's population at ~15% of players being female.

By pretty much any available metric, games such as these are far more appealing to males than females.

Any business worth its salt tries to grow its customer base, these gaming companies are no different. The problem comes in when someone brings in something like that 55/45 statistic and portrays it as applying to all types of games. There's little difference in applying bad data versus applying data badly. As mentioned earlier, that 55/45 statistic creates the false belief that there is this great mass of potential female gamers out there just waiting for some RPG, MMO, MOBA, FPS to just add/create female-focused content to bring them all in.

There isn't. Most females simply aren't interested in those types of games, not because there are no female character models or that their outfits aren't "pretty", but that those types of games just don't interest them at a fundamental level. This has always been and will always be because males and females are generally different in their video game tastes.

To each his own. But 2009-2012 was the best period for gaming, period. There’s no arguing that.

I’m 24. Thank god I was old enough to experience the Golden Age of Video Games (2009-2012) because it was unrivaled. No micro transaction bullshite, and COD developers actually had to put the effort into making single player campaigns intriguing. Now they just want to prop COD games up as a promotion for Warzone, with no originality at all. Just unoriginal cash grabs.

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At least we can agree that the market for video games in 2023 is absolutely awful! This is the worst era of video games we live in

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Do you play anything other than online competitive shooters?

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10 years ago, Twitch female gamers who played FPS were unheard of. Now it’s the new trend for Gen Z girls to stream themselves playing COD, Battlefield, RDR2, GTA, etc.

Gaming used to be dominated by middle class male youth and it was like that for a long time. What caused the shift in demographics?

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Girls are playing games more than they used to because of a few reasons.

1. More games that interest woman, more slow paced, story focused, and less mechanic driven games are more abundant and appeal to women more.

2. Its more socially acceptable to be seen or known as a "gamer"... that used to be simply reserved for teen boys/nerds... now even grown up celebrities publicly talk about or even stream themselves playing games.

3. For male attention. You mentioned twitch as an example of seeing women playing games. There are plenty of desperate men that will give plenty of attention, praise and money to a cute girl who even appears to share the same hobby as them.

4. Because men and women relationships are breaking down (marriage rates dropping, differing childbirth/becoming childless.. etc).. women in general have more free time to game and keep themselves occupied.

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Says the 24 year old

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True dat.

For me, one of the greatest times was the late 90s to early 2000s when online gaming was just starting to get widespread exposure. It was the wild west where people were pushing the limits of the tech of the time (both game players and game developers) as well as hilariously fumbling through creating social aspects in a whole new environment.

Being in on the ground level of some new genre starting up is something that just can't be reproduced.

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True dat.

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LOL at the 24 year old thinking he's seen any "golden age" of gaming.

There is no shift. Its not a coincidence that the most successful female streamers are attractive. That's because people who are actually interested in video games are overwhelmingly male and males like looking at pretty girls.