LogInOlder players are less likely to feel guilt.
oatawa/Shutterstock
A new study, called Not Gamers, Just Women Who Play Video Games: A Survey of Women’s Attitudes to Mobile Games in the UK, examined women's views on gaming and drew curious conclusions based on responses of 1,000 participants who play mobile games.
"This study investigates the barriers to playing video games that women face. Despite gaming being a traditionally male-dominated pastime, 51% of women now game in some capacity compared to 53% of men. However, women are still less likely to play some genres and often face discrimination."
The research, done by Stephanie Rennick and Seán G. Roberts, shows that almost a third (28.8%) of responders feel guilty about taking time to play games. Interestingly, older players (aged 55 or older) are less likely (24%) to have this feeling compared to the younger (aged 16-24) generation (31%).
"Guilt was strongly associated with keeping gaming a secret from friends and family – women who kept gaming a secret were nearly three times more likely to feel guilt than women who did not (63% vs. 23%)."
The study found that women were more likely to feel guilty if they thought that gaming was mostly a male hobby (47% vs. 23%), would be embarrassed to call themselves a gamer (44% vs. 22%), or thought that people who play mobile games are not gamers (44% vs. 24%).
Moreover, women are more likely to feel guilty if they don't know which games to try (41% vs. 23%), or think that games are too violent (44% vs. 23%).
Stephanie Rennick, Seán G. Roberts
16% of participants kept gaming a secret for fear of judgement: "The results revealed that keeping gaming a secret was associated with feeling anxiety or depression when scrolling social media: 31% of women who felt anxious or depressed kept gaming a secret, compared to 12% of women who did not."
Curiously, women who felt proud of their achievements in games were more likely (22%) to keep their hobby a secret than those who did not feel as proud (14%).
The responders could pick labels that best described their gaming style between "Casual", "Social", "Competitive", "Hardcore", or "N/A". The multiple-choice question showed that 74.8% of the women had chosen "Casual" and 62.5% of them picked only this option.
"The next most chosen label was "Social" (24%, 12.5% exclusively) followed by "Competitive" (10%, 3.9% exclusively) and "Hardcore" (4.7%, 2.3% exclusively). "N/A" was chosen by 3.7%."
Puzzle games were the most popular genre, played by 77.5% of women, followed by word games (47.7%), logic games (30.2%), card games (37.7%), and board games (23.4%). Genres like real-time strategy, shooters, driving, fighting, sports, and stealth were played on mobile by less than 10% of women.
The researchers found that the main motivation for playing mobile games for women is boredom. However, "although most women feel less stressed when they play, they won’t necessarily seek out games when they feel stressed."
"The difference in results for boredom versus stress may be due to the context of the two emotions, and to (potentially gendered) assumptions about permissible remedies. When players are bored, they may have little else to do (hence the boredom) and so have time to play games. In contrast, when participants are stressed, they may have other demands on their time and thus not see play as a viable (or justifiable) option, even though it might make them feel better."
The paper concluded that "despite being an important part of their lives, many women experience negative emotions related to games," which are associated with "gendered barriers to play, such as not feeling like a core part of the gaming community."
Read the research here and join our 80 Level Talent platform and our Discord server, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Telegram, TikTok, and Threads, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.