I was feeling a little lost and hopeless when I began my research on gaming demographics. I didn’t know where to start, nor what to even look for. None of the websites I’ve visited required a log-on, or identification of any sort. If these sites have users accessing these games through complete anonymity, how was I supposed to find out who these users were?
Alas, Wikipedia to the rescue! I first found the “online gaming” article, which was more about Massive Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG). From there, I found the “casual game” article, and exactly what I was looking for…
“A casual game is a video game targeted at a mass audience of casual gamers. Casual games can have any type of gameplay, and fit in any genre. They are typically distinguished by their simple rules… [and] require no long-term time commitment or special skills to play[...]. Casual games typically are played on a personal computer online in web browsers although they now are starting to become popular on game consoles too.
Casual gaming demographics also vary greatly from those of traditional computer games, as the typical casual gamer is older and more predominantly female, with over 74% of those purchasing casual games being women.”
The demographics of casual gamers amazed me… who would’ve ever associated women with casual gaming, or, any gaming, for that matter? And since I’m going to study Political games (for which there are no designated categories, but can usually be found in the ‘Action’ or ‘Life and Style’ sections of gaming websites), I decided to look up some voting demographics as well. According to 2004 Census figures:
“…74 percent of women and 71 percent of men were registered to vote in the 2004 presidential election.
Women were more likely than men to vote (65 percent compared with 62 percent)…”
So, perhaps Casual Online Games with a Political emphasis or theme are actually significant. Not necessarily significant in the way of swaying votes or voters, but by the fact that they exist and are primarily played by women.Maybe Palin should create a game to attract all those casual female gamers’ and their votes…. Then again, I saw the debate. Maybe not.
