Infographics are a good way of communicating information when you can’t be bothered reading words. That’s why I love them so much. This particular infographic does a great job of communicating some of the more interesting statistics focused on Australia’s gaming habits.
If you’re a regular reader of Kotaku, you’re most likely aware of some of these stats, but it’s nice to have them all in one place, and looking all pretty and stuff.
Comments
50 responses to “Australia’s Gaming Habits In Infographic Form”
I’m kind of amazed that the average age has jumped from 30 to 32 in the space of a year. It suggests that the number of older gamers taking up the hobby is increasing faster than the number of kids taking up games for the first time.
Or it suggests that the Australian population is aging quickly.
Makes sense. I only got one year older in the last 12 months and I’m generally behind the curve on social trends.
No, you misunderstand. ‘Average’ age will go up if there’s less babies being born.
EDIT: Which is to say, the average age of all people in Australia, and given that we know that that is going up, it stands to reason that the average age of gamers (who at this point are the majority of the population as far as ‘gamer’ is defined by these sorts of studies) would track upward pretty closely to the average population age.
Fair point.
HAHAHAHAHAHA everyone in my office just looked at me because I spat Coke all over my keyboard.
Or they just consider someone playing Candy Crush a gamer
Implying they aren’t.
‘filthy casuals’ etc, I guess.
Or some of older gamers just never stopped playing. Me? I started back in 1980 when I was in my last year’s of high school. You do the math.
That percentage number for female gamers has been floating around for years, yet, you could fool anyone into thinking it was barely 1%. With many male gamers saying it’s a male dominated hobby.
Playing candy crush makes you a gamer in this infographic.
A-ha! Trick comment! After recent incidents everybody is avoiding that game!
Nah, was saying games like that account for the large amount of women in the graphic. Super casual stuff like bejeweled etc.
Have you got a source for that claim?
He does, its called the 1960’s
Actually the research that gives the 47%-ish figure generally cites female non-FarmVille etc gamers as nearer to 20%.
Personally these figures aren’t about self identification, which I think is much more important.
Mind you, these kinds of metrics are all super sketchy at best and it’s laughable to claim them as accurate to any degree.
That’s not the point.
Gamers play games, not platforms. Gamers have different preferences of games, something we don’t get to decide for others based on our own preferences.
As much as I don’t like most mobile games, who am I to decide that someone who does is not a gamer? Why do I get to lord my experience in gaming over those who do it for the same reason, to relax and enjoy themselves.
Does a phone playing girl calling herself a gamer somehow cheapen your own designation as one?
Haven’t we put up with enough negative press for being gamers for so long that we would welcome more people to the fold rather than getting pissy about it?
Inventing a straw man to argue against rather than what I actually said makes your lift easier, doesn’t it?
You’re assuming your average 40-60 yr old (the target demographic of candy crush) reads anything that does not come from Murdock.
That, or they’ve learned to not look like women/act like women because they get harassed to buggery. Or not mention that they play games at all.
My wife played WoW for years longer than I did. She originally had a female blood elf (she liked the lore).
Nope, after only a couple months she switched to male dwarf and never turned on ventrilo again (that was what her guild used back then). Some of the crap that she put up with would make anybody need a heavy drinking session.
So just because we can’t see them doesn’t mean they aren’t there.
I was going to say that. But I figured the idea of it being a male dominated hobby forces them to remain secretive. With guys treating women on either two extremes of incredibly hateful or incredibly defensive. With few people going for the middle ground and not having it bother them, and even rarer with people treating them in an individual basis of who they actually are.
Gaming beyond FarmVille or the like is, by all metrics, still a male dominated hobby.
It shouldn’t be, and I’d love to see that change, but for the time being it is.
Fortunately in the 8 and bit years of playing WoW I never landed myself in a guild with fucked up social compasses, or whatever you want to call them. A good chunk were female, a lot of them couples, generally socially progressive. This is on top of the fact all except one were serious raiding guilds. Yeah I considered myself lucky, not because I’m female but because I met normal humans in that game and made some great friends.
I don’t want to minimise what you said, but seriously. Go buy a lottery ticket.
Epilogue to my wife’s story: she ended up in a guild similar to those you described above. It had the 20 minute rule: If the guildmaster couldn’t come around to house and punch you in the face for being a dick within 20 minutes of leaving his chair, you couldn’t be in the guild.
Worked surprisingly well.
I believe it’s closer to 20% when you exclude FarmVille and candy crush like games.
You in denial, mate. Around half the gamers I know nowadays are gamers. MMOs attract a large number of females gamers. And more than a few are bloody good FFS gamers as well. You just need to get over the fact that a woman can kick your arse in games.
Straw man much? You’re arguing with what you wish I was saying, not what I actually say.
Your other post is exactly the same. Zealous and completely off base.
You’re percentage of female games is way off. You have no idea.
Actually I’ve done some reading of research, rather than anecdotal evidence and pulling out of arse. How about you? Butt still sore from yanking out that info?
What? Playing Battlefield 4 … yeah right. You’re just full of shit, mate.
Then, clearly, the answer to this thread is: [citation needed]. Since you’ve done the research, surely you can point those of us who haven’t to the journal it was published in.
What is that daily frequency? The average person plays 24 games a day? Wow… ADHD is more prevalent than I thought…
I thought it meant how often to they play. Daily meaning they usually play games at least once a day.
But…. “once a day” is a frequency in and of itself. What does the 24 mean, then?
24% of gamers play at least once a day? That’s a little low, and inferring a percentage when no other information is given.
24 gamers play games at least once per day? A slight underestimate.
Gamers play, on average, 24 minutes (the only unit that seems close to sensible) each day? Plausible… but still seems very low, and still inferring a unit with no evidence.
The alternative is they play games at 24 separate times during the average day, though those games may be just one or two distinct games (quite possible considering the idea that most mobile gamers play to “waste time”)… In which case my hypothesis should revert to it’s original position: mobile gaming is a virus.
… I dont know if your being serious or not. But i’m gonna go ahead and just say its just a graphic dude. 24 usually signals how many hours are in a day… so “Daily” would indicate 24hrs apart…
Im not sure I needed to explain that though.
24 hours, with the revolving arrows would signify daily. I admit it’s a poor one, I was a tad confused myself at first.
Oh… “Daily” is the data point the infographic is trying to get across, and the 24 is illustrating the “daily”, albeit rather poorly. Every other data point on that line is a number, so I figured it was 93%, 24 ?something?, 32yo, 47%… Lol, I feel rather stupid for not seeing that, now 😛
It’s amusing to take the opposite approach for the average age – “The average gamer has aged 32 years during load screens”. It certainly feels like it at times 😛
Oh, I thought it was one new game every 24 days 😛
I think we need a new definition for ‘gamer’ instead of just being ‘someone that plays games’. I mean, who doesn’t play games these days? They’re pretty much as mainstream as movies.
If we changed the definition of gamer to ‘game enthusiast’, I wonder how the stats would change? Especially the ratio of guy to girl game enthusiasts. It would be great to know for sure what it is without that “girls gamers only play candy crush/Farmville/Bejewelled” nonsense being thrown around everywhere.
I don’t see the issue. I think as gaming in any form becomes a mainstream/everyday hobby, infographics like this will become redundant. I am looking forward to that day, because it means games will be on the same level as movies and music and TV as a form of entertainment.
I can see why you’d want data on who the “enthusiasts” are, but then we have to get people to agree to a definition of enthusiast. Take board games as an example. What about board game enthusiasts? I love board games and consider them part of my gaming hobby, but would I be included in the same survey as Trjn and Freyjr who have a closet full of games and have people over to play every week? If not, why? There’s a clear difference but where do we actually draw a line? Then if you include me, then why not the family that plays Monopoly at Christmas then stops talking to each other for 6 months?
This definitely comes up every time and I don’t know why either. A proper figure for female gamers I guess? I mean it’s probably going to be lower than the 47% shown here, but it’s not going to be that much lower. The “us” vs “them” mentality that always pops up (everywhere) is the bane of human existence.
Well yes, that’s the big problem isn’t it? Coming up with a definition.
Okay, how about we just go by people who identify themselves as gamers? Let individuals decide what ‘gamer/game enthusiast’ means to them. A statistic for how many of these people in the infographic identify themselves as gamers would be interesting.
I think it would be. What proportion class themselves as casual vs. hardcore. What do self-identified “hardcore” players play? What do self-indentified “casual” players play? For how many hours? On what platforms? That would be much more interesting.
Actually, I’m happy with the term ‘gamer’ remaining as it is now. Why complicate matters, after all?
Personally, I’d like to see a number of more detailed sub-studies, however, perhaps by genre or platform, analysing the same trends as the infographic above. That way, you don’t have to argue about who fits into a category that has no firm definition – you can deal in hard, useful data instead.
Are we sure this data is relevant to Australians? At least one of the cited sources (the 47% female gamers) isn’t specific to Australia, which makes me suspicious about the rest of it.
Play MMOs and you’ll see how wrong you are. That percentage of female gamers is about right. They just don’t advertise their gender as they get hassled all the time, usually only letting people know when they get to know them better.
Stop inventing a straw man to argue with. You’re only embarrassing yourself.
1) Nice troll, shithead, but you’re full of it.
2) Do you even KNOW what a strawman argument is?
I’m pleasantly surprised to see we have 120 game development companies.