Brad Wardell has published the Stardock customer report and it’s got little bits of interesting information, especially if – like me – you are interested in, but not necessarily knowledgeable about, the business side of PC gaming and software development in general.
For example, on Demigod:
For Stardock, the more significant shock of Demigod has been the discovery of the low number of PC gamers who play strategy games online. Demigod’s single player experience, while decent, did not get anywhere near the care that the Internet multiplayer experience did. Despite this, only 23% of people who have purchased Demigod have ever even attempted to logon to play Internet multiplayer.
And who are their customers?
Who are Stardock users?
– 96% male
– 35% 20 to 30 years old, 28% are 31 to 40
– 63% are in the United States (24% are in Europe, 9% are in Canada)
– 67% described themselves as expert or power users.
96%!
(Thanks to Cubit on Qt3 for pointing out the release of this report.)
Unless you’re talking The Sims isn’t 96% pretty much across the board when it comes to gaming?
Scott: excluding the best selling game of all time doesn’t seem entirely fair :) More to the point: the average gamer is a woman, if we count casual gamers.
I’m suspicious of that 96% number– the report was based on a survey of people who clicked on an Email from Stardock. This doesn’t strike me as the best way to get the most accurate information.
Not really. For WoW it’s something like 85%.
Yuck. I thought there were more ladies playing games today!
I guess I’m still a stupid minority group.
Hmm, I have a fairly geeky social circle, and it seems like almost all the female gamers I know are console gamers and/or WoW players – can’t say I know any women who are really into strategy games. I would guess the female WoW population is higher than 15% – more like 30-40% seems more like it.
Strategy gaming is very male – probably the most male of the gaming genres, Sims aside (which is majority female.) I know lots of female gamers, but most of them are into RPGs, platformers, and shooters. Not a one is really into strategy gaming, though some are into board games.
I think this could be a good TMA topic…
Considering the typical type of strategy games that are developed, who can blame them?
This may just be my stereotyped perception, but I’d think that if one would want to build more of a female audience for strategy games, one would have to focus much more on the personal viewpoints in the game (e.g., as in Crusader Kings, but without the horribly obtuse interface) and social aspects of the game, and less on the guns and butter aspect.
I’ve done a little bit of looking, and it seems that 40% of gamers are female, but only about 15% of MMO players are female. So it seems plausible for non-Sims strategy games to be +90% male.
http://edugamesblog.wordpress.com/2008/07/23/esa-survey-malefemale-gamer-ratio-is-6040-average-age-is-35/
http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/001365.php
On demigod:
I’m wondering if Brad is erroneously thinking that correlation doesn’t imply causation. As an avid player of online multiplayer strategy games I passed on Demigod because all the reviews and blog posts said that multiplayer was an impossible buggy mess. Now I’m not going to get it because it sounds like no one is playing online.
I still avidly play Warcraft III and have been playing multiplayer since release day. Why? Because I can get a game up in five minutes any time of the day.
People who love multiplayer strategy games are going to play the games that other players play and having your online lobby a broken buggy mess on release day is the best way to make sure this crowd never shows up.