Game DameWhat’s the Real Life Gender Breakdown on WoW?
In December 2006, I got to interview for a job at Blizzard. I was so excited that I nearly peed my pants for every day before the interview. (That takes a lot of Mountain Dew, I tell ya.) I was applying for a job that I thought would be a slam-dunk for me: Subscription Marketing Manager. I mean, hell, that’s exactly what I did in my last job and it was finally a way to transition into the gaming field. I even had an inside angle: a friend of mine had worked with the Director of Marketing back when they were both at Sierra. Unfortunately, friends, it was not to be. I don’t know if they’d already picked someone internally and they were just interviewing me as a courtesy, or if they thought I was “too” something — old, young, white, ugly, pretty, fat, skinny, or… female. It certainly wasn’t because I was unqualified: I excelled at every skill required and had exactly the prescribed background. I cried my eyes out when I heard I hadn’t gotten the job. I was depressed for weeks.
Okay, but that’s just the lead-in for my question. One of the bits of information I got in the course of the interview conversation was that they believe (according to their “market research”) that only 5% of their subscribers are female. By this I mean that they think only 5% of the account holders, not toons, are female, which is their justification for primarily male marketing. I was flabbergasted. At that time in my WoW gaming life, I didn’t even know any male players! All my friends were female in Real Life (RL). I know this because I’d had various forms of proof from each of them, including voice chat. They told me, patronizingly, “Oh you just think they’re female. But are they really?” Of course, it’s an interview situation so I’m not going to argue with them, but this stat has stuck with me ever since then.
My question for you, readers, is what do YOU think the RL percentage breakdown is for males and females playing WoW? Do you think the Blizzard Boys are right? If not, what do you personally think the breakdown is?
Filed under: Game Talk | Tagged: blizzard, gaming, gender, world of warcraft, wow
My thought?
70-30.
But I wonder how many girls play on someone else’s account? I mean Beowulfa’s account is technicly in my name… but it is her account. I can easily imagine a lot of couples where the guy gets the girl the account so that she’ll play and she ends up leading his guild and PWNing him in pvp etc. But the account is in his name. Because way back in the begining, he was trying to get her to play.
Hm, an interesting theory, Dammy! I bet they never took that into account. Since I know how this research often “works” (or not), I’m betting they sent their list of account names through a first-name gender assignment program. [This type of program marks everyone named John as male and Janes as female.] In this case, your theory is dead-on. It also would mean that they were not very careful with their research. The best way to find out this type of breakdown is to do surveys with players — and in WoW’s case, they’d have to do a random sample of alts, not accounts, in order to get a fair idea of the gender split.
I would say Dammer’s estimate sound about right… i’ve been surprised a few times when listening to a female voice in vent coming from a person i was SO sure was male… i guess when you’ve been gaming long enough you tend to assume everyone is male until proven female…
I would have to go a little lower than Dammerung. I’d say 20% female. I know a lot of females that play the game, but even more males. The majority of females I know that play do so to be with their spouses and therefore I don’t believe the ratio could ever approach 50/50. I do think that Blizzard is marketing incorrectly if they believe only 5% of their players are female. ^_^ I wonder if they ever thought it’s because they only market it to males?
The only thing I’s sure of is that the total be 100%…
70-30 sounds about right… there are actually quite a few females that play the game, a lot of them are in my guild/Ventrilo and there are ridiculous amounts of them in LiveJournal communities like WoW Ladies. 5% sounds really really low to me…
Informal nose count of guild(West Kingdom on Khaz Modan). I included those who play at least once a week (otherwise there would be more males in the count).
Of 20 guildies, 7 are female, 13 are male. So.. 30%.
For reasons I won’t go into, I happen to know exact gender breakdowns for a couple of other current MMO games. Most of them have about a 10-15% female player population.
It is quite possible that WoW has a better ratio because of it’s positioning in the market. However I also suspect that most anecdotal evidence is usually pretty off one way or the other (the developers no less than ours). My circle of in-game friends is heavily female and extremely lacking in 13-23 year old males. But I know they are out there, and I know they are a major player population even though I never interact with them at all.
So my complete-guesstimate for WoW would be closer to 15-20%.
Incidentally, I wouldn’t be too sad about being turned down by Blizzard. The things I hear … anyway, I’ve been turned down by them three times now. *grin*
I agree with the majority of posts. Me (21 year old Male) is in a guild and we can get 25 guys all in the one raid. Other days we can have 10 chicks and 15 guys, it all depends on the day and run.
RL I know 4 chicks that play and like 5 or 6 guys. This leads me to think that it is probably about 1 in 4 characters are female.
Its always weird when you get someone hop on vent and its a chick when you swore it was a guy playing a female character… lusciousgirl isn’t a name that a chick would choose… well thats what I thought
Hrmm, the logic escapes me. Blizzard believes that only 5% of their subscriber base is female (that has to be way low, I know too many RL female players… anecdotal, I know, but still), therefore their marketing should target a male audience?
It seems to me that those numbers would justify the opposite.
I mean, hey, we’re the biggest subscription MMO around, and our customers are 95% male. How do we grow our subscriber base? Oh, I know, let’s target guys!
I’d be interested to see where they got their data from also. More than likely from the credit card info on the account. Even in this day and age, that’s more than likely to be from a male rather than a female. Dad’s card for the minor childs subscription, boyfriend or hubbys card buying the sub as a gift. I’m in the odd minority there where my account is actually on my wifes card. Unless they send out a mandatory census - ie: you can’t login until you fill it out - they’ll never have an accurate measure. Even then I wonder how all the character sellers and gold farmers sway the data?
Wilhelm: The marketing dept would look at a 95% male statistic as proof that the game appeals to males and not females, so they would then target more males to bring them on board. If 95% of Ford Mustangs were bought by 27 year old men, Ford would be foolish to try to market them to 48 year old soccer moms. They’d get a better return on their marketing dollars by trying to convince more 27 year old men to buy their car instead of the competition.
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