For the industry it's not all that important how many women are playing games, but how many of them and how much are they paying for them.

Of course that's not a big argument in the discussion, but most female friends I know play RPGs and... HOMM3. But not a single one paid for any of the games they were playing.

I know around 20 gamer gals, and every single one of them is a pirate.

So I think statistics coming from online accounts connected to credit cards are more important than how many gals are playing video games.

Just the same like with (flawed) Nielsen ratings for tv shows. IT's not important how many people watch the show in general, it's important how many of them are target viewers (i.e. the ones who pay the most money on goods advertised during the show)

And yes, at the moment when gals will be paying for games just as much as lads, there will be more games pandering to women. For now, the main market is still guys who don't have anything better to spend their money on than games.

Funny. I've never known a single woman who pirates games.

Maybe it's because you're living in a wealthy country. As I've said, it's nothing more than anecdotal "evidence" in my case. In Poland piracy statistics are still pretty high, so it may have nothing to do with gender.

I just figured, women usually have much better things to spend their money on. More responsibilities, etc etc.

Funny, I thought women were the type to spend their money on 10 pairs of shoes and more clothing that they could ever need.

So after buying 10 pairs of shoes how much money do you have left on games? ;P

I have one pair of shoes, so I can afford buying games ;P

I think all gamer guys I've personally met have pirated games to some degree. I agree, this is just anecdotal and doesn't say anything about how men vs. women spend money on games in reality.

Yeah, I wonder if there are some public statistics about this.

I might pirate random TV show episode, but I've bought and paid for every single game I own. I also don't play The Sims, Farmville or Facebook games, and I'm with you that women don't really talk socially about gaming because for many, it's more of a pastime and less of a hobby.

Personally, I like shoes, handbags and games. =)

Farmville, Angry birds, Cooking Mama and WiiFit are not games

How can you still be missing the point? Publishers already know the genders, ages and nationalities of their users. They also know their personal preferences and brand loyalties by purchase histories and Facebook likes and whatnot. That is infinitely more useful than the stats you are requesting. In fact, they can already work out what genres genders may or may not gravitate to but that would only provide a misleading picture because it is not the genres that attract customers; it's the content, and content can be packaged within any genre. (Not that content is really gender based either but they do obviously consider "appearances"—shall we say—when marketing to specific demographics.)

LOL And what clear decisions do you want to make?

The survey that is the topic of discussion in this thread says just that: Unless you mean a stat that includes piracy rates.

It means how many gals and lads bought anything. What is more important, is how much gals and lads are paying and willing to pay for games.

Because even somebody who bought only humble bundle would be counted in this survey. And that's not what industry is aiming at.

I don't like this trend of saying "industry doesn't know what they are doing" and some random internet survey knows better. If the industries are making most games aimed at men, it means from their data, collected over many years shows, it's what gives you most money.

Of course the trends are changing and more and more gals are buying video games, but I don't think we're at the point for the industry to do a total makeover. Although we can see gradual changes, just like you'd expect, and many games (I believe it's over 40%) have a choice of female or male character to play with.

If anyone expects the industry to blow everything up and start over because some surveys show "gals play video games too!", it's pretty naive.

But we will get there eventually.

edit: it's like saying "women drive cars too!" so sports cars industry should start to design 50% oft their sports cars to be targeted at women. While still, just because women drive cars too, it doesn't mean every car should be now produced to cater to both sexes.

Market isn't that simple. It's not only if women buy games, it's also what kind of games, how many, how often, do they care about sex choice in the game (for example, in Mass Effect I think over 90% of the players chose male Shepard), is it affordable and makes sense to design our game to have such choices, etc etc.

Saying "Women play games too so design the next Call of Duty to suit women's preferences as well!" is among the stupidest things you could think of.

The industry constantly shows it doesn't understand its own audience and what it wants.

Haha, this is funny. You know, they don't care about vocal minorities. They only care about money.

So what if you tell them "we don't want another Modern Warfare clone, we want something new!" when every new Call of duty games sells much better than the previous one.

You shouldn't be worried about them. They really know best what's best for them.

I am not a main target of the industry, and I don't cry about it. I am a man and still think most of the AAA games are not aimed at me. I still manage to find dozens of games that are precious to me. So could everybody else.

Regardless of how much they are interested in money doesn't mean they are any good at making it.

A friend of mine who works in a game company once told me (and I've heard others saying the same thing) that people in the industry really make games that appeal for themselves. They are very bad at considering what would appeal to other people.

But that's really what developers have always done, haven't they? They make games they'd like to play themselves. That's not some sort of criteria for making a bad game.