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Female Video Gamers
marchelove
Registered User new member
Registered User new member
Hey there all you ladies (or gentlemen pretending to be ladies, if you really want to you can join in, I can't tell from here anyway.)
I'm researching into my target audience for a brief I'm doing and that audience is
FEMALE VIDEO GAMERS!
Already many of my preconceptions have been shattered by what I have found but I've only tipped the iceberg. I would like you all very much to help me understand the opposite sex and their gaming habits so that I can use your research for my degree. I'm genuinly interested in what you have to say as well so please take you time and fill as much or as little as you want in and then just repost it. Simple!
Thank you very much for your time ^_^
1. How long have you been a video game player?
2. What kind of games do you like playing? Why and examples?
3. What kind of games do you DISLIKE playing? Why and examples?
4. Which consoles do you own and why? Why not the others?
5. do you agree, that the video game industry uses exploitation unneccessairly in both games AND advertising in order to get an easy and wide market? and if so how does that make you feel?
6. how do you feel about nintendo and sony using the colour pink on their consoles to attract a female audience?
7. if you could change the ways that games were marketed to women, or perhaps in a more unisexed manner like the wii/DS, what would you change about it and why?
Now some aesthetic (what appeals to you) based questions. Try and give as many examples as you can
8. What do you like to look at? (imagery, certain films, colour schemes, tv programs, cartoons, anything else) Give examples generously
9. What do you NOT LIKE to look at? (Same as above but opposite if you catch my drift)
10. Which cultures visually appeal to you? Could be a countries culture and its colours , a kind of sub culture like the metal scene.. anything you want and as many examples that suit you.
11. and finally, who are some of your favourite artists/illustrators/idols or just some people who's image you like?
Thank you so much if you've managed to get this far through the questionnaire, I'm forever indebted to you and as a small thanks, feel free to claim you now own a small portion of my soul. How cool is that? Use it for whatever purposes you see fit. (bragging rights, creepy shrine of other young mens souls.. bargaining chip..)
I'm researching into my target audience for a brief I'm doing and that audience is
FEMALE VIDEO GAMERS!
Already many of my preconceptions have been shattered by what I have found but I've only tipped the iceberg. I would like you all very much to help me understand the opposite sex and their gaming habits so that I can use your research for my degree. I'm genuinly interested in what you have to say as well so please take you time and fill as much or as little as you want in and then just repost it. Simple!
Thank you very much for your time ^_^
1. How long have you been a video game player?
2. What kind of games do you like playing? Why and examples?
3. What kind of games do you DISLIKE playing? Why and examples?
4. Which consoles do you own and why? Why not the others?
5. do you agree, that the video game industry uses exploitation unneccessairly in both games AND advertising in order to get an easy and wide market? and if so how does that make you feel?
6. how do you feel about nintendo and sony using the colour pink on their consoles to attract a female audience?
7. if you could change the ways that games were marketed to women, or perhaps in a more unisexed manner like the wii/DS, what would you change about it and why?
Now some aesthetic (what appeals to you) based questions. Try and give as many examples as you can
8. What do you like to look at? (imagery, certain films, colour schemes, tv programs, cartoons, anything else) Give examples generously
9. What do you NOT LIKE to look at? (Same as above but opposite if you catch my drift)
10. Which cultures visually appeal to you? Could be a countries culture and its colours , a kind of sub culture like the metal scene.. anything you want and as many examples that suit you.
11. and finally, who are some of your favourite artists/illustrators/idols or just some people who's image you like?
Thank you so much if you've managed to get this far through the questionnaire, I'm forever indebted to you and as a small thanks, feel free to claim you now own a small portion of my soul. How cool is that? Use it for whatever purposes you see fit. (bragging rights, creepy shrine of other young mens souls.. bargaining chip..)
marchelove on
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This discussion has been closed.
Posts
To be honest, it doesn't actually matter if you are a boy or a girl, just that you have given the impression that you are one by actually answering this survey. So if you want to help me, don a metaphorical dress and get answerin'!
Cheers
EDIT: .. I thought i'd completely checked the rules for anything like a '# of posts before posting a new thread' but I've overlooked it apparantly. Sorry about that. This research is valuable to me but it doesn't look like i can gather it here.
Two hours in the corner.
I'm gonna go shopping. Then I'll have a looksie at this thread again and come to conclusions.
First, as has already been mentioned, you can't be certain any of the respondents are female.
Second, any demographic information you can get from users of this site is not going to be representative of the population as a whole. This forum has a very, very strong console/retail pc gaming bias. You're omitting vast swathes of people who probably don't consider themselves "gamers" but who play games on their mobile phone, Flash games on the Web, or even things like Buzz! which don't conform to the standard console gaming market.
Third, a lot of your questions are poorly constructed and/or worded. Like:
"What do you like to look at? (imagery, certain films, colour schemes, tv programs, cartoons, anything else) Give examples generously"
What does that even mean? How the hell are you going to perform any kind of meaningful analysis on the answers?
I also hope you can back up your assumptions that the colour pink is being used to attract female gamers, and that the Wii and DS are "unisex" in their marketing.
Its true that by posting here I'm eliminating those other types of 'gamers' but this isn't the only place I'm trying to collect research from and I've been collecting data from female students in my area using much simpler forms of this questionnaire which talk about flash and mobile phone games, I've managed to omit them from this version though somehow.
You're right, the questions towards the end are poorly worded, I've been having trouble trying to summarize such a complicated request for information into a question. Should try and split it into smaller questions maybe. What I'm trying to garner from that paticular question is a taste of what the audience finds aestetically appeasing so I can then research into that and hopefully turn my final piece towards what would be considered visually catered towards Female Video Gamers.
Bit complicated isn't it. I hope you can see what I was trying to do with that explanation though. I'm afraid this really is for a degree, first year at least but degree non the less. Bit ashamed that my gathering skills have done this badly. What do you recommened that I change now that I've attempted to explain myself?
I know that I can't be sure that my respondents are female but that is the risk you take when you research using the internet and I'm taking that full into account. Unless you can think of the fool proof method which would be great.
And about the colour pinlk being used to attract female gamers and wii/ds being unisex are based on what my target audience has told me already, they are popular opinion from those I've talked to and don't represent my own views. Thats how I've presented them in my collected research anyway, i need to check I still give that impression.
Hope that answers some of your questions and I hope you can help me with the problems I've shown you.
Will
EDIT: And to Echo, it does seem to be piling up quite bad doesn't it. I hope it improves but at least its a lesson for me on trying to obtain nformation from people in this way.
Its not that I don't care if the person answering if ACTUALLY female or male, its that
1> I would just have to assume that that person considered themselves to be a female or
2> Take into account that some men may just impersonate/lie and answer the questions.
This is something I need to take into account and you're right, alot will probably be inaccurate but at least I've tried to research using this method on the internet. This is something I can document at least and say why it was sucessful or why it failed. The lack of accurate return I'm getting back is bothering but it all becomes part of the learning process. As is learning not to ask leading and dodgy questions.
Ah. First year ain't so bad, you made it sound like this was for a dissertation or something. I think the problem is that you don't know what question you're trying to answer.
You say that you're doing a brief. What kind? Is this for marketing purposes, product design? I'm assuming you're trying to plan either marketing material for an existing game, or trying to design the game itself.
In any case, you can't really decide to aim for "female gamers" because that's too broad a definition. I really doubt anyone could produce a product that would appeal to all women, of all ages, from different backgrounds whose only common ground is that they happen to have an interest in gaming.
You need to have a specific question, something like "will this game concept appeal to young women of ages 16 to 35 who are interested in fashion?"
Once you have a question like that you can craft useful questions and plan in advance how you'll analyse them. At the moment you seem to be asking "What do female video gamers like?" which is a valid question, but you need to break it up into a set of smaller questions like the one above, and draw conclusions about smaller demographic groups. If you did get answers to the questions you've asked, the answers would cover such a broad range you'd end up unable to draw any conclusions.
I do see you've already kind of started to do this, (the Wii/DS questions and the questions about the colour pink) which is good, it's the pattern you need to follow to get useful information. Ask specific questions, draw conclusions based on the answers, target further questions using those conclusions.
That guy's almost as bad.
You need to put a little more effort into your research. Simply writing a few forum posts and kicking back to collect the data is not, in my opinion, dedicated thesis development.
omg ur a gurl? where do u liev? keke
Even if this is based on what you believe to be the opinions of some other demographic, this is an extremely leading question. It asks the question 'what would you change about the way that games are marketed to women' which explicitly stating "the Wii/DS are marketed in a more unisexed manner", implicitly stating "a more unisexed manner is perhaps better", and implicitly stating "the way games are marketed to women should be changed". You should learn to avoid putting things like that in a question that is meant to get information on someone's opinion, because the way that the question is phrased can definitely change the answer that they give.
Free WoW gold guys! cheapest prices!
2. What kind of games do you like playing? Why and examples? RPGs, action type stuff. WoW and Smash Bros. being examples.
3. What kind of games do you DISLIKE playing? Why and examples? First person shooters like Halo. ick.
4. Which consoles do you own and why? Why not the others? Wii, PS2, Gamecube. Who doesn't own a PS2? And the wii was the cheapest (and neatest) option available.
5. do you agree, that the video game industry uses exploitation unneccessairly in both games AND advertising in order to get an easy and wide market? and if so how does that make you feel? Exploitation? You mean like, of women? Who doesn't?
6. how do you feel about nintendo and sony using the colour pink on their consoles to attract a female audience? Capitalism works?
7. if you could change the ways that games were marketed to women, or perhaps in a more unisexed manner like the wii/DS, what would you change about it and why? Uh, why do women need special treatment? We're equals, we don't need pandering!
Now some aesthetic (what appeals to you) based questions. Try and give as many examples as you can
8. What do you like to look at? (imagery, certain films, colour schemes, tv programs, cartoons, anything else) Give examples generously Matching colors, dramas, comedies, good stories, etc.
9. What do you NOT LIKE to look at? (Same as above but opposite if you catch my drift) Bad colors, jagged graphics, horrible writing
10. Which cultures visually appeal to you? Could be a countries culture and its colours , a kind of sub culture like the metal scene.. anything you want and as many examples that suit you. Gamer (duh!) and the Japanese. I'm going to move to Japan one day, because I think it's so neat how their culture does stuff!
11. and finally, who are some of your favourite artists/illustrators/idols or just some people who's image you like? I like the guy who plays house, that stubble is dreamy
I'M A TWITTER SHITTER
We are on the same level, my friend.