Study Shows The Video Game Genres That Women Play Most

It's common fact that there isn't a gender gap in gaming, as an Entertainment Software Association report claims about half of the players are women. But what exactly are they playing? Well, Quantic Foundry conducted a study showing what genres have a female monopoly.

While some of the findings are expected, some may come as a surprise.

This study was conducted on 270,000 women, asking them which types of games are their favourite.

Match 3 puzzle games and Farming sims are dominated by a nearly 70% female gamer audience. Behind this, around 40% of women played casual puzzle and "atmospheric exploration" games. 

Further down the bottom of the chart, Tactical shooters and Racing games are under 10%. And in last place, sports games have a mere 2% female interest.

So far, so what you expected, right? Well, break it down further and the interesting and the data shows some curious trends.

According to Blizzard, 23% of World of Warcraft gamers are women - much lower than the 36% average found in Quantic Foundry's study, making it quite the outlier in terms of fantasy MMOs. 

But an opposite outlier can be found in the Sci-Fi MMOs - while the female average lies at 16% for this, player percentage for Star Wars: The Old Republic nearly doubles this at 29% women.

Another interesting spot would be that while Open World games stay pretty low at 14% female average, 27% of Assassin's Creed Syndicate players are women.

This all demonstrates that while there are differences between different genres, the gaps within genres are significantly larger. Some interesting numbers coming out of this! Check out their full study here.