The Nielsen Numbers Part 1

Uploaded by •PeSa• on 22 Aug ’06, 1.54pm CEST.

I was interviewed the other day for Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidende who wanted comments on recent survey results showing that “64% of online gamers are women”. The paper ran two articles in today’s edition (In Danish: Kvinder spiller computerspil i stor stil and Computerspil vinder de voksne). They were quite well-researched, IMO.

In brief I said:

• More women/girls are playing today than before
• This is caused by a number of factors, but importantly:

• Technological changes have moved (some) games online and this has made (some) games more social/communicative. And some women prefer such games to Moon Patrol style win-or-lose.
• The game industry has aggressively rebranded games to make them cool or at least culturally acceptible (as I mentioned recently elsewhere).

Other Danish media picked up on the story and I was interviewed for radio and television during the day. Since nuances very easily become lost, let me just make clear:

• I have not read Nielsen’s report
• I am sceptical about the results (in essense, here‘s why)
• While I see no reason why US gamer demographics should differ wildly from Danish ones, this is different from “The Nielsen numbers can be generalized to Danish gamers” (which was what television ended up quoting me for).

But at the end of the day, what I’m interested in is the facts. So now, let’s see if I can get my hand on that much-mentioned report… To be continued…

Dette indlæg ligner…
The Nielsen Numbers Part 2 (14/10/2006)

TL Taylor: Play Between Worlds (25/04/2006)

The Project takes a new direction… – or: At least the sub-title is still reasonable (24/05/2005)

The Spam Wars take a new turn (09/05/2007)

A canon of significant games (02/01/2007)