Amazing Stats on WoW - do they apply to SL?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7796482.stm

There are far more females playing WoW now that previously thought, 40% of the total, but the females were found to spend longer and be more dedicated.

Other findings were that they tended to be healthier, and the percentage of bisexual women playing WoW was 5 times higher than in the general population.

I wonder what the stats are on SL?


1. Players: Male, Female?

2. Dedication to SL: average hours online: Male, Female

3. Level of healthiness, compared to the general population

4. Sexual orientation, compared to general population: Male, Female


Rock

"The participants, who were recruited directly out of the game, completed a web-based questionnaire"

Pep ('cos, like, everyone tells the absolute truth when they complete web-based questionnaires . . . )

you saying guys who play WOW like to say their female, or that some guys who play WOW don't know how to spell?

As far as I know, SL has always been about 40-something percent female. The last numerical statistics I have are from last April, at which time females comprised 45.5% of the SL population.


Again, as of last April, females spend about twice as much time in SL as males. I don't know exactly how many hours that is for each, but a little bit of math based on the following numbers would yield a pretty good educated guess:

83.79% of the population is 25 years and older

Hours spent in-world, by age:

* 45 and older: 70.17 hours per user per month
* 35-44: 66.06 hours per user per user per month
* 25-34: 55.55 hours per user per user per month
* 18-24: 37.84 hours per user per user per month
* Teen grid: 24.67 hours per user per user per month



I have no idea. My guess, though, is that it's probably inline with the WoW statistics, assuming you also account or age.


I don't know of any numbers on that. All I know is what a gay friend once told me. "There are no more or less of us in here than anywhere else. It's just that in here, we don't need to hide it."

The percentage of female avatars in SL, from my observations, appears to be a little over half - maybe 55%. So if 45.5% of RLs are female, that indicates either that there are not so many men with female avs as is generally assumed or more women have male avatars than was thought. Of course, we know the situation is fluid as lots of people probably have alts of both genders.

I've noticed there are a lot female avatars online during the day (SLT, pst) than at night or weekends.

I've noticed this during the day (SLT) at clubs mostly, i.e., the female board for contestants is two to three pages, while the male board might have only three contestants.

I've noticed that many times and often wondered why? My conclusion was perhaps more housewives on during the day (however, it's night in other places of the world) so that can't be right. So, perhaps the men are doing something else other than joining contests or clubbing?

I see a lot more female avatars in general than I do male ones, however. I think I see perhaps 3-4:1 (the 3-4 being female, the 1 being male). A LOT of times, it's just all female avatars at an event, and no male models *cries* /joking about the male models.

Maybe you are doing something to frighten the men away . . .

Pep (Or like me, they are sitting at home with a beer watching movies rather than dancing and shopping)

I <3 healthy bi-sexual women that are online for hours on end.

Yes my walking is very frightening because I prefer to walk as a noob, no sexy walk unless it's built into the shoes.

Btw,

Anyone build that pasture for cranky old buzzards in golf attire yet?

It is probably the housewives online during the US day. Yes, it is night in other countries, but while there are lots of non-US users in SL they are not all in the same country like the US people are and may not even share a language. So you would not see them concentrated at clubs.

Where are the numbers on "green hair and Kool Aid"?

I agree the percentage of female avs in clubs is higher than the 55% I guessed, but in places like sandboxes I think I see more males, plus of course non-human avs of indeterminate gender. Also the same in a lot of welcome areas.

Interesting thought.... I wonder what the gender break-down is for people who play SL while at work on the office computer.

This one makes me doubt the accuracy and usefulness of the WoW survey.

Is a WoW gamer identifying herself as bisexual because she once kissed another woman at the encouragement of her onlooking boyfriend?

That would not necessarily fit the Kinsey definition of bisexual.

It sounds to me as if the WoW survey was not very scientifically rigorous.

LOL, true. Some people say they are camping while at work.

i would say if you had to compaire WoW and SL that WoW would have the bigger statistic of men lying about being women..
i mean look what WoW has to offer a girl and look what SL has to offer a girl..
I played WoW for about a year because some friends wanted me to play it with them and it was fun. then they got all serious about the gear..i never met a Bi woman until i went to the RP servers

i tried the RP servers and more guys admitted to me they were girls than i could count on two hands in a years time..
it was actually in our guild which at the time was the 4th largest guild in WoW we had 280 members at the time and if you counted the wives there may have been 5 of us and none of us BI lol..

Here in SL i think you still have a lot of men playing women but There also is a lot more woman because there are a lot more things for us here and from what i have seen the men here are more willing to let you know they are playing a girl..where with WoW they pretty much had someone either confront them or they felt bad and told you..

i just find it so hard to believe that woman in both WoW and SL are that high in stats of being Bisexual..

Actually, the ubiquity of bi and gay women online reminds me a little bit of Lysette Anthony's observation about the number of producers in Hollywood:

"In Hollywood, being a producer is rather like being a lesbian. Everybody says they're doing it, when only a select few actually qualify."

OK, first, the survey was of Everquest II players, not WoW. Warcraft is mentioned in the lead-in sentence, but there is no data on WoW in the article. Secondly, the survey was based on web-based forms. Therefore, there is absolutely no control or verification on the answers. The respondents could have been in reality male, female, or Martians. There is simply no way to know for certain.

While the article raises some interesting points, and some of them may be true, all of the conclusions are based on some very shaky evidence. You could hardly call this info empirical. Unless an observer sees and verifies gender, this information must be taken on faith and while it is probably pretty acurate, since there would be little reason to lie, some respondents might lie anyway.

I play WoW quite a bit on one of its original servers with one of the oldest guilds. We use Ventrilo so I have a pretty good idea of who is male and who is female from hearing their voices. Furthermore, I have met quite a few of my guildmates. From that anecdotal evidence I can tell you that WoW players are certainly not 40% female. It's more like 25% in my experience. And I agree that the gamer stereotype needs to be debunked. Most of the people I know playing WoW are not overweight men. They tend to be people that are concerned about health.

Anyway, just wanted to make a couple of points before people jump to conclusions.

I am 34, and even when I was working I spent more than 66 hours a month on SL, at least 100 hours a month. since being unemployed it had easily doubled.

I guess the average though is just an average, it counts for the hardcore addicts and those who log on for that one or 2 hours a month.

Gyod 100 hours a month, that is 4 full days, isn't that pitiful? I need a life badly.

This is nonsense.

No more then 15% females in WOW and that is probably stretching it.

Hogwash! Females must make up 21.75321% of WoW players. It's the only number that makes sense.

/me starts adding up her offwork hours spent in SL...


/me stomps off grumbling "no wonder my skybox traffic is over 500 and nobody but me has been there in 3 months"

the guild I was in was about 25% women. It always amazed me how many people thought every female toon was really a guy tho. And ya, vent was required, kinda hard to remember to talk like a girl all the time, so I know they were really female hehe

Well, here's my 2 cents worth...

I ran a survey myself with a population of forum readers as the target.

I wasn't so much interested in the number of males versus females but that was one of the byproducts of me trying to figure out how many of those beautiful women AVs were really men.

My numbers show 43% RL females versus 57% males in SL with a total of ( yes I know it is not statistically significant) 284 responses.


If you want to see more results, take in the survey... Once you do you can see the results.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=t_2fIsj9O3Pmt_2bXS_2fC1w7SHw_3d_3d

So how come you never call?

I never liked Vent..teamspeak worked great and was less lag..then my big guild wanted to switch to skype and it never worked..i could hear but my mic wouldn't work unless we were in teamspeak.
i mean it was made for gamers lol