Finally! The Gamer Survey Results, Part I: GamerCouplehood

It has been far too long in coming, but I have finally produced the graphic analysis I want from the (now closed) Gamer Survey Scrz and I conducted in August and September of 2012. My sincere apologies to all the participants and other interested parties for the long delay in publishing the results. I am excited to present them to you now with some explanation of the various questions we posed to each gamer. Each of the graphs below is clickable, if you want to see it full size.

I received a couple of comments regarding the definition of gamer which I will share in a second. As far as the survey goes, this is an implicit question. By completing the survey, the respondents declared themselves to be gamers, whether the rest of us would consider them as such is irrelevant. (Comments are in quote blocks and Helvetica font. All comments used were edited for uniformity of spelling and grammar, and to maintain anonymity.)

I consider myself a gamer but you may not, LOL. Non-gamers (AKA my wife) tell me all I do is play games. Other gamers, meanwhile, are perplexed when I tell them I only have an hour or two to play just now. I just can't win! As much as I love to play, I've managed to keep bigger priorities in my life just that—bigger priorities. It constantly shocks me how shocked almost every other gamer I talk to is by that.

Even though I'd played WOW for hours a day for almost four years (single at the time), I didn't really consider myself a gamer until I tried my third MMO, LOTRO. And that was after I'd started this gaming blog. In retrospect, I totally was a gamer.

I ticked we were both gamers prior to meeting, neither of us actually would have described ourselves as gamers way back then (we played megadrive type games and PC RPGs) It's only since we've been playing MMOs that we consider ourselves gamers. Plus our gaming history stretches back for around *cough* 15 years so the term may not have been invented :P But even so, wouldn't have categorized ourselves as such.

Gender
My lovely bride has told me on several occasions that I just don't get sexist issues from her perspective. I have to confess this is true. Despite being concerned with sexism in all aspects of life—including in the gaming community—some issues I view as "no big deal" are actually a very big deal to my female friends.

ONE HUNDRED FOUR (104) people took the survey, about two thirds (66) of whom were males, and one third (38) females. With such a small sample, I can't know whether that reflects the gender breakdown of the larger MMO community. I say MMO because this blog is almost exclusively about MMORPGs; and, as you'll see below, every respondent "confessed" to playing them. I used the gender question to break down the results.

Relationship Status
This question leads into the next. But if a respondent didn't have a significant other, we didn't ask the next two questions about S.O. gaming habits and influence. The legal status of the relationship was not relevant, so we composed it as generally as possible. Female respondents were somewhat more likely to be in a relationship at the time of the survey.

We'll return to include our single comrades in the next round of results.

Gamer Status of Significant Other
So about six months ago, Sctrz and I had a couple discussions stemming from recent gaming news, specifically a PR faux pas made by a developer from Gearbox, creators of Borderlands 2. The Mechromancer character was described as a "girlfriend mode" apparently because it was/is easier to play than other character types in the game. It made me curious about how female players got involved with gaming in the first place. Specifically, what is the likelihood that a gamer, regardless of gender will be attempting to introduce a female to gaming, versus introducing a male to gaming. I was hoping to get more gay and lesbian respondents to confirm or deny my hypothesis, but only a few took the survey.

Female Respondents (30 total):

Regardless, the males seem to have the most "opportunity" to get their significant other interested in gaming; though I'm guessing most already have, and their S.O. simply is not interested. I hope no one has an S.O. openly hostile to their hobby.

Male Respondents (46 total):

S.O. Influence on Gamer Status
So how much influence does the gamer exert on their significant other to start gaming? Hard to say. All of the male respondents were gamers when they met their S.O. (None were influenced to start gaming by their S.O.) On the other hand, none of the female respondents have an S.O. that does not also play, at least some of the time. I realize now that perhaps I should have separated "hardly games" and "never games" in the prior question. Don't give up hope, guys; almost a quarter of the male respondents have successfully introduced their S.O. to gaming.

Now, I know that we are looking at both sides of the same relationship in some of these tallies. That is, both partners responded to the survey, which is great. A full 80 percent of the female respondents were already gamers prior to meeting their S.O. and that's wonderful to see. It's also cool to see how many relationships were formed over multiple sessions of WoW or other games.

I'm refining the text of the remainder of the results, but I wanted to get this first part out to you since it's finished. Perhaps the juiciest questions and answers are yet to come. Lots of good comments in the survey remarks. Stay tuned.