A Quick Look At EN World's Demographics

I use Google Analytics to track this website's performance, and especially to get some insight into usage patterns and (anonymized aggregate) demographic data. Here's a quick look at the reports for the last month. I grabbed a few snapshots of total users, gender and age demographics, and location data by country. There are no great surprises: traffic is healthy (although this is by no means the best month so far this year - one month had over 450K unique active users), the percentage of female visitors is still terrible low - far too low - and the US is by far the largest single country of origin. That last item is interesting - the amount of non-US traffic has increased a lot across the board over the last couple of years, and while the US traffic has increased in terms of raw numbers, it has decreased by about 15% in terms of percentage share. In other words, there's lots of new traffic coming in from other countries.

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[WackyAnne]

I'm a Canadian female in my late thirties, but sometimes read this site from my husband's computer rather than my own (he's got a bigger screen, but mine is portable enough to bring as my DM screen).
Trust me, gaming women are not rare at all. Neither are gaming women rare on the internet. But given the experiences we've (almost) all had, especially over the couple year, many of us tend to keep a lower profile, or stick to groups where we can be ourselves, comfortably.
I love ENWorld, almost always feel comfortable here, and hope to see a better showing of women. I really hope that those visitor stats are skewed, but I can't say for sure that they aren't. I know it's not uncommon to declare as either male or no gender for many women in some forums, depending on the level of comfort, so that may skew the stats.

 

[Hussar]

But even if I he stats are skewed which I agree is entirely possible, how much skew are we talking about? Enough to to shift the needle twenty or thirty percent?

 

[Henry]

I'm a Canadian female in my late thirties, but sometimes read this site from my husband's computer rather than my own (he's got a bigger screen, but mine is portable enough to bring as my DM screen).
Trust me, gaming women are not rare at all. Neither are gaming women rare on the internet. But given the experiences we've (almost) all had, especially over the couple year, many of us tend to keep a lower profile, or stick to groups where we can be ourselves, comfortably.
I love ENWorld, almost always feel comfortable here, and hope to see a better showing of women. I really hope that those visitor stats are skewed, but I can't say for sure that they aren't. I know it's not uncommon to declare as either male or no gender for many women in some forums, depending on the level of comfort, so that may skew the stats.

It's a shame, too, because in my experience, having both men and women at the game table adds positively to the gaming experience. I've seen it in home games, and at game days and conventions, it often gives the table a sense of dynamism that is sometimes missing when it's a "boy's club". It's also cool when new players, male or female, can be added into the mix, because the sense of enthusiasm can add, and the fresh perspective, can be a joy to watch.

It can be difficult, however, to convince female players that some male-dominated player spaces are safe spaces, because so many guy gamers either try so hard they overcompensate and come off creepy, or go the other way and don't try at all, or some just go full-on misogynistic to keep the status quo, when the solution isn't really more than a modicum of common courtesy and respect.

 

[TerraDave]

I knew gamers skewed younger then Enworld posters, interesting to see Enworld users also skew younger.

 

[Valetudo]

Man you really love your graph charts. Not haten, just staten.

 

[Demonica]

I am female in late twenties from Czech Republic which is small country with 10 millions habitant. I´m playing RPG tabletop games about 10 years and I have very positive experience from latest years that woman are joining more home games and also opengaming games. And on our local rpg forum we have also several active woman. So I´m positive about the future.

 

[Kramodlog]

Those are reports on the developing world. There is little overlap between those countries and tabletop RPGs.

Fortunately, I'm not saying it is indicative of tabletop RPGs.

What I am saying, is that I wonder if EW's percentage of women who come to the site, 6% , reflect the number of women who play tabletop RPGs or if there are more women who play tabletop RPGS. Since more men use the net, the number of women on EW might not represent the number of women who play RPGs. That number might be bigger.

 

[Hussar]

Fortunately, I'm not saying it is indicative of tabletop RPGs.

What I am saying, is that I wonder if EW's percentage of women who come to the site, 6% , reflect the number of women who play tabletop RPGs or if there are more women who play tabletop RPGS. Since more men use the net, the number of women on EW might not represent the number of women who play RPGs. That number might be bigger.

But, even using your own articles, the difference in gender use is pretty slight. A six or eight per cent difference in Internet users shouldn't translate into a 90% difference on an RPG site.

 

[Nylanfs]

Yes stats! And interesting.

 

[Kramodlog]

But, even using your own articles, the difference in gender use is pretty slight. A six or eight per cent difference in Internet users shouldn't translate into a 90% difference on an RPG site.

Since there are less women on the net, 6% shouldn't represent how many women play RPGs, no? Maybe women represent 12% or 15% or 20% of RPG gamers, not 6%.

Or maybe only 6% of gamers are women.