Lolapps
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Gender and our Games
Here at Lolapps, we
try make our games appeal to both men and women, but
some themes naturally attract one gender rather than another. Since
women are
from Venus and men are from Mars, it's not surprising that there are
measurable
differences to account for when comparing how genders approach game play
and
monetize in games. In our games, we noticed some particularly intriguing
differences.
Of our current titles, two are very gender-centered - Band of Heroes is a
game
where players assume the role of a soldier in World War II, while Diva
Life
allows the player to experience the life of a rich and multi-talented
Diva. As we expected, the former appeals
mostly to men, while the latter found its audience mostly with women.
However,
we were somewhat surprised to find that the fraction of men playing Diva
Life
is much smaller than the fraction of women playing Band of Heroes (see
the
figure below). This is a trend we have observed in other titles as well:
men
object heavily towards playing a female-focused game, much more than
women
object to playing a game traditionally thought of as "male."
Figure 1: share of men and women in two of our games
Another gender-based aspect of game play we've been tracking
relates to player performance within the various games; i.e., at what rate do
players progress through the game content and how much content do they engage
with. When considering Diva Life, about 2% of men "finish" the game -
that is, unlock all realms and finish all missions. That is exactly the same
percentage reflected for women who play this game. Fewer men play Diva Life,
but those who do play, advance with the same rate of game completion as the
women players. When considering Yakuza Lords or Band of Heroes, only half as many
women finish the game as men: 3% of men finish the game, while less than 1.5%
of women manage to finish it.
This asymmetry is also present when considering the number of actions taken per user in each game, as in the figures below (we only consider two of the many actions that a player can make in the game). Actions taken are defined as: any feature or mechanic in the game that requires the player to actively engage with the content.
Figure 3: average # of battle and property actions taken per user and per gender in Band of Heroes
In Diva
Life, men take just as many actions as women on a per-player basis. In Band of
Heroes, women take much less action than
men - completing about half as many actions per player. Hence, even though the ratio
of women /men in Band of Heroes is higher than the ratio of men/women in Diva
Life, these women are less engaged.
This is an interesting asymmetry - female-oriented games attract far less men,
but those attracted to them are just as engaged as the women in them. On the other hand, male-oriented games are
able to attract a fair share of women, but these women are much less engaged
than male players. They will join the game and play, but are seemingly never as
interested as men are.
This means that, at least for our games, men are more selective towards which
games they will play, but when they choose a game, they will put in more effort
to do well in it. Women, on the other hand, are less selective and may play
more diverse types of games, but will only excel in those that they are really
interested in. Therefore, in an environment where there is an equal number of
men and women, having a male-oriented game will attract more users in total,
but engagement will be lower among women.
We are still investigating how a gender-neutral game behaves. The recent Dante's
Inferno is proving to be such game, with a very balanced number of men and
women in it. Since it is very recent, very few users have actually finished the
game and we'll leave this to another post.