Demographics

When I first started studying the culture of videogames, I would take a date. It was a fun thing to see the various places that gamers would frequent. My date could see things I didn’t see.

One day we were going to a place when my girlfriend stopped me. She didn’t want to go it at all. This particular spot was considered a safe haven for gamers. The girl who was usually there was working. There were signs that girlfriends got special deals.

“It smells like man,” said my girlfriend.

While going to PAX in Seattle, I saw something similar. I don’t think the organizers saw it this way, and worked hard to make it an open appealing place. There was a lack of women. If they were in the area, they were either at work, or with a significant other/Child. The demographics otherwise were fairly ordinary, and matched the Seattle area.

As I already said, the PAX event was huge. It covered several blocks of downtown Seattle. The second day in, I started to notice something within the Arcade. The male to female count was 8:1. In other words, there were way more men than women.

Even more interesting was that every woman I saw had a male with her. There were Mom’s tugging their kids along, girlfriends with their boyfriends, and wives with their husbands. In fact, seeing a single female was impossible on Saturday.

While walking the floor, there was some really big problems. If you took out the women that were at work, the female population was cut in half or more. I was taken back by this, since I knew there were way more female fans than there were present at the show.

The first thing I did was ask questions. This was pretty easy, since there were lines to games. The first line was for a cool racing set up.

I will talk about how much fun the game was later. The girl who got in line with me was in her mid 20’s, and not with anyone. This turned out to be false, she was with her husband. They met at Gonzaga university and both got degrees in religion. They both seemed happy to be there, and were only separated for a little bit.

I asked one of the women working at that display. She worked at the Ubisoft PR department, and wanted to get free tickets for herself and her little boy. First off, this was actually an internet display for Xfiniti, but it seemed they were sponsored by Ubisoft. Second, even the woman I asked had a boy she wanted to show this to.

The next line was to a Virtual Reality movie experience. Once again, I will talk about it later. It was on the Indie floor, and had bright lights everywhere. The woman behind me was in her early 30’s, and once again was happily married. She worked at Amazon answering complaints. Her husband and she both loved games, and looked forward to see the show. I asked her about why it seemed the female population was with someone.

“Well, i consider myself to be an intelligent, sane human being who likes videogames. If what you say is right, and there are less females than males within this group, it would be expected that they would find a mate. So, every woman with a child, or with a boyfriend/ husband would mean that the women are simply sane and have a large selection.”

Leave it to Amazon customer service to answer questions for me. I got a brief question answer sessions with someone at a mobile game display. Her response was that she was married, and taking her husband to the show. The basic answer was that even women working there seemed to have someone to take to the show.

There was one other person I met, and even played a game with, but I didn’t get to ask her anything. We both sucked at Super Mario 3D World though.

I didn’t feel like this was a good enough answer, and wanted to check it out more. Sunday, I ended up somewhat sick. The chance I had to explore the floor was spent away from the convention, and trying to get my whits together. Loud Arcades, and constantly talking to people can sort of sap your mind. I forgot how to pay for a meal at a restaurant I frequent.

My friend helped me think straight, and talked about life in the midwest. An entire house can be rented for $400. That just blows my mind. Thats the price of a shared room in Hawaii.

Anyway, I didn’t get to see if there was any other answers. I did see cosplayers, and noticed that if there were women, they had men with them as well. It was a group of friends, but no significant other.

When I asked men about it, I was told there had to be single women, because they would be seeking out men. Then they would ask what I wanted to date. Having to explain that I was doing this as an anthropologist was sort of embarrassing.

On Monday I was able to go to the mainfloor again, and check. There were more girls present, and they weren’t all with guys. If they were cosplayers, they would be in groups of females. I got Thor and Loki without a guy.

The show floor did have a little more detail. Although slight, there was a more likely chance of a female at a booth if the line was short, or if it was colored brighter. If the booth had a long line, or was very dark there would be less females. In fact, the World of Tanks booth only had women working at the booths, and no fans.

I did find some cool outliers though. For example, there was a Princess Peach with her hero Mario.

At the Fantasia booth in a hotel lobby, I met a couple that had been dating online. He lived in Florida, and she lived in Canada. They met at PAX to have their first date. The line itself was long, and once again mostly male.

Near the end of the show I ended up high fiving people for over an hour. My arm hurt, and I got sort of tired. People gave out hugs, hand shakes, one guy gave me a headbutt -it hurt-, and a few let me touch their elbow. Although I hadn’t meant to, I had just checked the demographics of the show using the best sample size a lone anthropologist could get.

First off, there were fairly accurate representations of ethnicity in the city. If you walked down an average block in Seattle, you would see the same percentages, as you saw on that escalator. There were things where some ethnic groups were found mostly with each other. So, going down the escalator would be 6-7 Japanese game fans, but it didn’t stop some groups having a single asian.

The female to male was a little higher on monday, making up a little less than a quarter of the population. I hypothesize that half the females were cut in half by women at work, and women just being fans. It was a good sized number.

I did not see a single female ever. By this I mean, there was no woman on her own, and just there because she enjoyed games. It simply did not exist. The lone females I met, were actually waiting for their husbands. My friend who took me to the restaurant was holding a guys hand as we wandered Seattle -not my own. In other words, finding a lone female at PAX would be like finding Bigfoot in the Cascades.

I first noticed that there was a lack of females while working at the arcade. Then walking the floor, I saw that half the women in the area were at work. If there was a female, she would have a male counterpart of some kind. Cosplayers kept in groups, and at times could be all female. Although there were outliers, the show seemed male dominated. All other demographics seemed neutral or similar to that of the Seattle area.

Although there was a lot of work done to find out info, I didn’t feel like I did enough work. In fact, I am fully willing to look at other’s photos, and experiences to recheck. If this is accurate, I do not think it represents all gamers, just those that went to the convention.

On the other hand, there is a lot to look at, and a great deal of discussion that needs to be made. There is a lot of history here, and it needs to be discussed before someone decides to have a big social movement to change things. Also, it seems that the women I met were happy with the numbers at the convention. It meant that so long as you were sane, you had a date.