Arcania Demographics
Those of you who regularly drop by the blog proper (rather than reading this via RSS) may have noticed that I removed the Vizu poll plugin I was trying out in the sidebar. (I wasn’t real keen on the way those polls worked; I think I’d rather try a per-post polling system that gives me more control over what polls and what results are displayed at any given time.)
But while I was running those polls I used their built in demographic polls to collect some demographic data on Arcania readers — or at least Arcania readers who didn’t mind answering personal questions, which was apparently less than 300 of you. Still, I thought it painted an interesting if incomplete picture of who we are in real life.
We are primarily — but not overwhelmingly — male. 69.1% of the 233 readers who responded said that they are male, compared to 30.9% who said they are female. This was slightly more male-leaning than I expected, but compare this to data from MMO games EQ2 where less than 15% of the players are female and we’re not doing so badly.
Most readers who responded said that they are between the ages of 18 and 24 (32.4%), followed closely by those who said that they are between 25 and 34 (25.9%). The rest of the 293 respondents were scattered up and down from those peak ages. This data corresponds fairly strongly with our expectations for a gaming audience: we’re largely young, but some of us are getting older fast. *grin*
Only 180 readers wanted to share details of their marital status. Of those, 66.1% are single while 33.9% are married or cohabiting. I suspect that that reflects the age ranges more than anything else. (I didn’t bother writing down the household income data, since very few readers responded to that one and it’s a pretty straight-forward reflection of the age ranges anyway.)
So what have we got? Simplifying past the bounds of good sense, we are mostly single, young adult males.
Except of course that we aren’t. (I barely qualify for any of those categories myself: I’m female, married, and in a couple of months I’ll be out of the 25-34 bracket.) Really, we are a mixed community of all ages, genders, household arrangements and incomes, representing a wide variety of religions, political parties, and philosophies, and brought together primarily by our interest in a particularly obscure niche of the online universe.
And that’s pretty neat.
36 Comments
I either never noticed the plugin (despite checking the site and only pulling headlines through RSS) or it was blocked by one of my add-ons.
I wouldn’t have skewed the results, being 25-34/male/married.
Thanks for bringing us together :)
I voted to all the polls I saw. I never saw the household income one. It is interesting that according to those polls we are mostly made up of single male players…I’m female and married lol. I agree, I think female gamers have come a long way (stop being so scared of the computer, girls…lol).. :) Thanks for posting the results of the polls.
female (2/3 of my main characters are male),24,and i has a muse :B. i didnt poke any of the polls.i avoid even mouseing over banner ad like things (that might explane the low numbers you got to a point to).i have enough computer problems as it is without my antiviruse exsploding…
I was filling the votes out like crazy ^^ I think theyre fun and interesting to see the results. Maybe you’ll do more someday?
sorry but i thought this is the only way to blog you i want to ask how kaet’s been doing
21, m, cohab.
gf also plays. 20 (on 6/24), f (duh), cohab.
she works Staples full-time.
i work Shopko full-time.
both min. wage. .___ .;;;
i know alot of girls that play.
mainly cause their boyfriends play.
but i might have a skewed view—
i went to a Tech. college and hung with geeks/nerds/tech-savy people.
I play female characters.
my gf plays mainly female characters.
most other girls i know play male or mix.
another friend (male) plays all female characters.
didn’t notice polls.
i’d answer them on a direct blog, but not on an ad-like thing.
Im female, marriged and 30 :P
I replied to all the ones I saw and, because I’m awake at very odd hours, sometimes I was the first to take them!
I’m female, 18-24 (23 right now) and unmarried and I’m quite surprised of the gap between the genders - I thought there would be more girls reading the blog, but perhaps fewer females were willing to take part in the poll.
Was there one to ask which continent we’re all from? I can’t remember taking part in one like that but I imagine those results would have been quite interesting.
Huh, never even saw the poll. But then again I’m a lurker more often than not.
Female/20/single
Heh, 2/3 of my characters are male simply because most of the Horde females look really bad to me.
Loved the conclusion! Pretty neat indeed :)
Female, 28 and married here :-)
Missed those polls… =/
I would have skewed them, though. While male, I recently turned 44 and have been living together with a lovely lass (who sadly hates WoW) for almost 10 years.
Did you get any location demografics? I’m always curious to see where people come from.
I saw the polls, but was kinda shy about giving my data. I wouldn’t have minded the basics - female/married/41 (wow! gasp! etc.!)/play mostly female characters, some male. But any questions too indepth and I start wondering where my data is going, whether it will be used again, that kind of thing. Plus with identity theft out there, it’s always something I try to be careful with. I mean, when you blog there’s already tons of info you’re providing, so I get leery of handing out too much more of that info. Also since I have your RSS feed I think I missed all but the one I saw.
(I used to give surveys like this in grad school, so I do really enjoy reading about it. And if I knew that you’re the one controlling the database it’d not bother me to answer anything in the future.)
I said the “gasp” bit in humor thinking I’d be aged compared to the younger skewing demographics and neglected to read Jayhawk’s comment. Cool, I’m not the only one in my age range! *glee!*
No, you are not the only two… Though Jayhawk actually is a little older than me ;)
And I did skew the polls (i.e., filled in most of them when I saw them…)
I’m not sure if I saw the polls. I saw a lot asking “what is your highest level character in game?” but nothing about my age or something. Shame I’d love to see results of polls=( But yea I’d have broken everything! I turned 16 yesterday, is a female and in a relationship. And 100 % of all my chars are female because I just think gender swapping is odd. I like the character to be like an avatar of yourself
And a continent poll would be cool. I’m a curious girl
I am married,37, and play all female characters :o) I think it is great that there are as many females on here that play. My hubby and daughter got me hooked on this game, as originally I didn’t play any games, but I didn’t hear from them for 2 weeks, and thought I better join them, lol. I have been hooked ever since, and can’t wait to play. Thanks for the fun blog Mania.
I, too, find it amazing that so many people that are so different can enjoy something so much.
Thanks for all your hard work Mania.
Asariah– Not only do we enjoy the game so much, but to be here, we enjoy PETS a whole lot, too, which makes us AWESOME. :)
lol, I saw the polls, but to be honest, it never made any sense to me. But since everyone else is doing it - male, 53, married 32 years, retired military of 22 years (USMC and USAF. WOW is my first game of this type. And got my grand daughter , daughter, son in law and my sister, playing. :)
Forgot to add -
“Angelakane - happy sweet 16!” Belated wishes and good luck to you in all things you do.
That’s not really a surprising turnout. Anytime some news site does something similar, those are usually the results.
Personally, I didn’t fill out any of the polls. At first they just looked like ads. It wasn’t until one finally asked a WoW related question that I started to take them seriously. Being skinned pink like the rest of the site probably should have given it away though…
It would be interesting to compare hunter stats to those from another class’ site. Are all those undead rouges mainly mopey highschool males? Do older players play more of the magical classes? Who are all of these people addicted to raids and instances?
Not to worry, anyone who skipped the polls: One of the reasons I decided not to keep that particular plugin was because they did look a lot like ads. I’ll be poking around for different polling plugins an see if we can’t find something that works better. Like I said, I’d like something I can control a little more.
25, married, and female. I did answer the polls but didn’t see all of them.
I can add to the data, but I should point out that those stats are fairly in line with what industry insiders have said are the norm. I’ve argued for ages that 1/3rd of all WoW players are women. That’s roughly 3.3 million women play the game. The mathamatical average age is 33 (that is add up all the ages and divide by the number of people). Another form of average says that the most common player age tends to be 18 to 34.
I’ve never seen marriage statistics; however, when you think about it, the under 25′ers are going to be predominantly single. The over 25′ers are likely to be married.
I am female, 33, single.
About to hit 35, male, single. Didn’t see the polls either. Maybe my addon blocked them or else I thought they were just adds. Will keep a better eye out in the future.
Doh, I must have missed the poll. Just like me..
30/Married/Female
I know lots of females that play the game, with both female and male toons. I myself have 2 70’s and one is a female, and one is a Belf Male, though those are slightly female anyway.. so heh.. It is awesome to see that I am not the only old gal( and old as in gaming old, since most gamers start out at 5 lol) that plays this game.
Your sites amazing and though my hunter days are on the side, I never go a day without checking your site to see whats new and if there is a new pet I need to get onto my hunter to get :) Keep up the amazing work chicka
im a 15 year old male and single for a week now, my main is male, while all my other chars are female :)
male, 46, single
First (M)MORPG was Meridian59 (servers could handle up to 150 players online, back in those days *g*).
38/Male/Single
I always clicked the polls just because they were there. :)
I took the polls. Female, married, 32. But I know my mom didn’t and she’s been playing WoW for almost a year now. She’s female (um, yeah, obviously), married, and 65. :)
25-34/male/married
I’m one of those with the poll blocked.. No Script is my friend, and I don’t enable more than I need to, to allow a site to function..
female well over 45(thats all you get lol) and married. I never saw the poll but I lurk like many. I guess I like to play more than post.
Sorry, I did not do that poll.
I played EQ for almost 5 years. Most of that time was in a guild run by 3 women. More than likely, this was the reason why this guild had a goodly number of females. One of the best guilds I have been in. When the Progression servers came out, I formed a guild that had a minimum age requirement of 25 years old. The oldest member was a guy that 2-boxed at 64 years old. The average age was 36 years old. The male/female population was about 60/40. It was the 4th largest guild on the server.
When I moved to WoW, 3 of us from EQ formed a guild, with the same age requirement.
I have not worked it out, I would guess our average age is upper 20’s. The male female ratio is 70/30.
I am 57 years old.
i was actually refreshing my page to see what the next poll might be lol. they were neat :)
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