Forbes: ZOMG Teh Wimmin Gamez?!!!11!
For years, the answer to the question “do boomer women play computer games?” has been as elusive as…as…well as elusive as finding anybody who has ever actually used the phrase “boomer women” in a gaming context. Nonetheless, Forbes’ Brian Caulfield has the answer:
It turns out boomer women do play computer games.
And do they ever. The business of cranking out casual games–snack-sized alternatives to time-consuming fare like “World of Warcraft”–is mushrooming.
Mmmm…mixed metaphors! Unless Caulfield thinks mushrooms are a snack food, in which hey, my bad. Heck, maybe that’s what rich people who read Forbes snack on. Mushrooms and the crushed and lightly salted souls of the cubicle workers whose backs their fortunes are built on. But mostly mushrooms.
To be sure, classifying casual games as “games for girls” would not be fair.
Caulfield then goes on to classify casual games as games for girls:
But casual female-targeted gaming hits with female heroines, such as “Diner Dash” and “Wedding Dash,” make it clear that casual game developers are attacking far broader swaths of the population than the traditional 18-to-35-year-old male demographic coveted by makers of hardcore games.
“Diner Dash?” “Wedding dash?” Sweet Jesus on a Maxi Pad, I think my ovaries just asploded. Which is why–I guess–these games are targeted at “boomer women,” because…you know…they don’t have any ovaries. Or to apply a more scientific definition:
And while casual games appeal to everyone from pre-teens to old men (the world’s richest man, Warren Buffet, 77, haunts online bridge parlors while using the handle “T-bone”), women over 35 are the most likely to pay for them; 75% percent of those who pay for casual games are women, and 72% are over 35 years old.
According to Forbes, a “woman boomer” is a women over 35. Also, Warren Buffet is such a greedy fucking bastard that you’ll pry a subscription from his cold dead jewel-encrusted fingers itellyawhat.
In summary, traditional “boomer women” (of the non-Warren-Buffet variety) are purchasing casual games targeted at women performing traditionally female roles. Zoemygawd that’s profound. Tomorrow we’ll tackle the question “do 10 year-old girls play with Barbie dolls? The answer may surprise you!”
March 17th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Boomer = over 35? My Xer ass. Try over 45. 35+ would mean them gamer ladies was born anytime before ‘72. Don’t think so. There’s some argument as to when GenX began… but NOBODY puts the end of the Boomers any later than ‘66. Many count it from ‘63. By the time you get to 1972, you’re pure Xer. Yikes.
My point being, there’s plenty of us over 35 who will silly-slap you if you call us Boomers. The only reason I haven’t had my ninjas kill them all yet is that when the hump of ‘em hits retirement, they’ll demand a cure for death. Which is a bit of a conundrum for my ninjas.
March 18th, 2008 at 12:15 am
Hmm, a cure for death might not be so bad. As long as I’m the only one who gets to have it, that is.
March 18th, 2008 at 6:22 am
Boomer is the hawtz
Of course Boomer plays with the video games. They are like her cousins.
March 18th, 2008 at 7:09 am
What’s a post about games doing here?!
March 18th, 2008 at 7:39 am
Umm, aren’t you one of these readers now? You know, not like you just walked outside your door and some cardigan clad rich boy smacked you in the face with the latest issue. Admit it, you’re RSSing Forbes, sipping dry martinis for breakfast and adjusting your heels on Diedre, your manslave from Scandinavia.
*Amber just lost 142 populist points!*
March 18th, 2008 at 7:50 am
@JuJutsu: I deserved that.
@Ken. I deserve that. Which is to say I deserve a Scandinavian manslave to cool my heels on. Also, I do believe my Forbes RSS feed has been hijacked, because there are reports of a Negro and a feminist running for President of these United States. Pish-tosh!
March 18th, 2008 at 8:27 am
Warren Buffet isn’t greedy. He says stuff like, “I want to give my kids enough money so that they would feel they could do anything, but not so much that they could do nothing.” Then he gives 85% of his fortune to the Bill Gates foundation.
He was on 60 minutes lambasting the tax code for letting him pay less taxes than his secretary. Not all rich people are evil.
March 18th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
Unless he goes on 60 Minutes lambasting the tax code for letting his secretary pay more taxes than he, I will still think Warren Buffet is evil. Lower tax rates for dividends and capital gains are necessary to avoid punitive double taxation, since the dividend income was already taxed at the corporate level, and the capital gains were from after-tax income that was invested.
March 18th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Just to be clear, I wasn’t really opining on Warren Buffet as much as I was parodying the awkward paragraph he was mentioned in. For the record, I love Warren Buffet. I saw him in concert once, and he was amazing!
March 18th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
Lol. I didn’t know you were a parrot head Amber.
March 22nd, 2008 at 6:14 pm
And she’s back!
I think if someone were to call me a boomer I might actually smack them in the head. Especially since I say things like, “We’re never going to make any progress until all the damn self-important boomers are dead.”
First they try to insult us as “the slacker generation” and now we’re just lumped in with baby boomers. Fuck that noise.
But then, I’m not *quite* 35.
April 10th, 2008 at 8:10 am
Yeah no joke. I’m 29 and i know people 6 years older then me are definitly no boomers. Arn’t boomers like 45+ now? i know some people call my age the end of gen x and i think there’s a gen between us and the boomers and after me is gen y? meh. anyway.. That sucks that the boomer classification is getting bigger and bigger. weak
On the original topic, I’ve noticed alot of sources saying middleaged women control the casual games’ market.
April 16th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
I *am* a boomer, though a young one. 35 a boomer? You must be joking, a 35-year-old is a mere child. I’m pretty sure the 35-50 year olds are what we called “Gen X”.
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:31 am
I think the number of female gamers who will be playing Age of Conan will surprise anyone who bothers to research it. And that game has a Mature rating, though we all know how well *that* is going to work.
Signed,
a female gamer, age 45, just waiting to split some skulls