Educational Game Developers Can Track Steam Reports for Latest Trends

Steam is sort of like iTunes for video games. Once players buy a game, they can download and play it on any computer. Consequently, it is a major force in PC gaming.

A nice feature of serving gamers online is Steam’s ability to garner data from each player’s PC. Since most indy games and many educational games are introduced on the PC platform, statistics on the platform are welcome.

Head over to Steam’s Game Stats section for details on various top game achievements and content server data. Most interesting of all is the Steam Hardware Survey. Here we find such interesting nuggets as the majority of PC gamers in December 2009 were Windows XP 32 bit users, running at least 2 gigs of RAM on a motherboard with an Intel chip 2.3 gigs Mhz or higher in speed. More users had graphics cards made by Nvidia than ATI, and RealTek led the installed audio devices base. Other info on hard drive size, broadband speed, and available processing and graphics RAM might provide game makers valuable insight into typical user specs when developing products.

ESA Survey: Male/Female Gamer Ratio is 60/40; Average Age is 35

A new survey by Ipsos MediaCT for the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) indicates 40% of gamers are female and the average age of gamers is 35. Other findings:

- 65% of US households play videogames

- 38% of US households own a console

- Women over 18 make up a larger percentage of gamers than boys under 17 (33% to 18%)

The new 2008 “Essential Facts” booklet by the ESA is available in PDF format here.

References:
Heflinger, M. (2008, July 17). Survey: Average U.S. gamer age is 35; 40% are women. [Online]. Available: http://www.dmwmedia.com/news/2008/07/17/survey:-
average-u.s.-gamer-age-35%3B-40%25-are-women

Update:
Click here for info on new games designed for female players and how software companies are tackling this emerging market.