Biggest Gamer Data Dump EVER! 50+ Infographics!

by John Uke Last update: March 13, 2024

Table of Contents

All your questions answered

A while back, we teased you all with a portion of our data insights, but we still have so much more information to share with you! We have accumulated a lot of data across thousands of our users over a wide range of metrics. We believe that in sharing the infographics below, we can learn to better understand ourselves and the gaming community.

About the sample

I think this bears repeating from the previous set of data insights: All data presented in this report is available to the public. GameTree is a Public Benefit Corporation, which is acknowledged as a charter purpose. Our hope is that this large data dump will be helpful to gamers, game developers, researchers, journalists, investors, and many others who are involved or interested in the gaming industry. For inquiries and database queries, write to help@gametree.me.

While we’re at it, we will also take the data from the previous article and further expand on it to enrich the discussion even further.

ALL USERS

Before we get into the nitty-gritty details, let’s begin by showing data based on all of our users as a whole. This will give us a better perspective of the numbers as we start to narrow things down and be more specific about the people we are talking about.

Among all of our users, we have a large amount of 13-17 year-old people, with 18-22 following afterward. This is exactly what we were expecting, since the younger crowd is usually the ones most involved in gaming and the community. As the groups grow older though, we start to see a deep decline in the amount of users belonging to those older groups.

This too is a normal and expected result. As gamers grow older, they have more responsibilities and therefore less time to get as involved as they would like. This isn’t to say that these older groups don’t necessarily like gaming anymore, but rather a large amount of them don’t have time for it.

For the distribution of genders amongst all of our users, we have a result of 92.1%, with 7.9% being females. This is another fairly common thing to see, with the gaming space holding a largely male audience. In general, the amount of women getting into games is actually getting higher, but as far as our users go at the time of the survey, this is the result we got.

For the sake of being thorough, we added another graph that includes an alternative for anyone that doesn’t identify as any of the two genders. This only changes the male bar, bringing it from a 92.1% to 90.9%. The “Other” category is only 1.2%, but we think it was still worth mentioning.

Across all of our users, the most prominent personality type is the ENFJ, with ESFJ and ENTJ right behind that. It seems that most of the extroverted types are at the top, while the more introverted personalities are understandably on the lower end. We could be here talking about personality types all day, but you can get a good idea of what all the types consist of by visiting our wiki page.

The above image is the Gamer DNA data across all of our surveyed users. We can see what everyone prefers in all listed aspects of games. Apparently, characters, lore and excitement are what people ultimately look for. Teamwork and socializing with others also stands pretty strong toward the top.

Dominance and status are the lowest ranked things, but the numbers are still nothing to sneeze at. For the most part, players prefer a game that can give them a well realized world with memorable characters and moments they can appreciate, as opposed to something that is more mechanically stimulating or competitive.

After surveying all of our users, the results show us that Action games are the genre of choice for most gamers, hitting an impressive 90.3%. Below that, we have Adventure games and RPGs, hitting a solid 68% and 65% respectively.

The overall preference across all of our users is that they would very much rather place their games on PC, with mobile gaming coming in at second place to that. The lowest platform is understandably the Wii, since it’s old age is a big part of why it isn’t any higher.

Based on all the users that were surveyed, 43.3% are from Eastern Europe, with USA & Canada being the second biggest audience. The smallest amount of people come from Africa and Oceania, making up 1.2% and 1.6% of the user base respectively.

AGE GROUP PREFERENCES: GAMER DNA

The next data we’re going to share with you is age groups. Starting at age 13 and going all the way to 53+. We noticed an interesting trend in how the preferences practically flip upside down when expressing what people look for in a video game as the player grows older.

For kids 13 and up, we can see that there’s a heavy lean toward socializing, which makes sense for that age range. Status is right below that, which would also fit well within someone’s teenage years. Teens tend to search for their unique identity and also obtain approval from their peers or the person they have a crush on.

It’s interesting how this is also reflected in the games that they want to play. Pay attention to the placement of the categories, as they will start to shift around and end up in totally different places as users grow older.

In the 18-22 range, we can see dominance rising up to the top and status having a slight increase. Socializing is almost all the way at the bottom now, and a far lower priority than what gamers in their teenage years had deemed important. Other categories that have risen up are sound, grinding, and difficulty.

Now that the players are older and more experienced, they want to play something that can actually challenge them. That very likely goes together with dominance and status, in which the desire is to dominate a challenging game to obtain a higher status among their friends.

Moving to ages 23-27, we have these young adults caring more about sound, roleplay and characters, while practice, dominance, and even status have been dethroned and taken all the way to the bottom.

One interesting detail here is that socializing went from -0.1% to -3.6%. Pay attention to this parameter as the players get older, because it seems that the older one gets, the less they yearn for connection with others and would rather look at the content of the game itself. According to what’s at the top, this is an age range where players prefer to get immersed into the experience of the game without a necessity for social interaction.

In this really cool-looking graph, we have the 28-32 range. The preferences are getting smaller as we see the top choice be only 2% on the side of complexity. On the opposite end of the spectrum, we can see -11.7% for status.

At this age, gamers seem to practically forsake the idea of a higher social status through games. Instead, they seem to favor something more compelling that encourages critical thinking. A lot of the same parameters from the 23-27 range are still in the same spots, but their percentage has decreased. Interest in games is generally decreasing.

Let’s move a bit further in time and check out the gaming preferences of the 33-42 range. Compared to the younger ranges, this graph is looking significantly more purple. At around this age, interest in gaming is getting lower and lower. There are only four positive categories while the rest don’t incite any interest from the players. A lack of interest in socializing, dominance and status continues to rise.

Although it might look a bit depressing to see these preferences slowly get smaller and smaller, this data is actually showing us something completely normal. As people grow older, they have more responsibilities and other tasks that take up most of their time. Desiring more out of life and finding interest in other things makes people stray away from video games a bit more, as opposed to a kid that has all the time in the world to play games. With that said, let’s move on to an even older range.

For the 43-52 range, we are seeing much older people show a relatively minuscule amount of interest for these aspects of gaming, with graphics being the only thing that truly piques their interest. The only other thing in red is a measly 0.1% for exploration.

They have pretty much no interest in status, dominance or even having the game be particularly hard. Again, we want to remind you that is totally normal and natural for older people to have less preferences in games, since people change a lot over time.

And finally, we have the 53+ age range. Here, we can actually start to see things turn around. Instead of disinterest going up, it’s actually going down a bit, and also we see more categories make it to the top. Graphics, sound, complexity, and difficulty are the preference of people over 52 that plays games, while the disinterest is actually going down for all other categories.

AGE GROUP PREFERENCES: GENRE

Starting off with the teenagers that range from 13-17, we can see a firm decision made in favor of Fighting and Action games, while RPGs, Strategy and Casual games are left in the dust. Not only are Fighting and Action games visually stimulating, but they are also fast, loud, stylish and can mostly be played with friends.

This aligns quite nicely with our previous data indicating that gamers of this age like games that will give them both status and social interactions. Fighting games in particular can get competitive, and so beating other people at these games will give them status among their friends.

During the Gamer DNA batch of info, we saw a lot of categories switching from top to bottom as the players got older. However, here is the age group of 18-22, which shows more of an addition of genres, as opposed to them switching places, with only one exception. Here, RPGs have risen to the top while Action stays in almost the same spot. The once uninteresting Casual, Adventure and Strategy are now a part of the red team for genres that 18-22 year olds are interested in.

This goes hand-in-hand with the previous results implying that gamers of this particular age want something that is a bit more challenging and cerebral for them, as opposed to the teenager range that would rather go for something a bit more simple, like Fighting, which is now at -0.6%.

Moving on to the 23-27 year-old age group, RPGs have risen up significantly. This genre tends to have large and elaborate worlds with detailed characters to immerse yourself in, so it would make sense that RPGs would be their genre of choice. Based on the data, this particular age doesn’t fully prioritize challenge and instead goes for something more immersive and enjoyable.

This would also explain why the Casual genre took a big jump from 0.6% to 5.8%. Remember that as these gamers are getting older, they have many other things on their mind besides what they’re going to eat for lunch during recess. This age group, and the rest moving forward, are those that don’t have as much time to play as they used to, so gaming is usually a way to relax from a long day of work. They prefer these genres because they are either fun and don’t require much brain power, or they are a temporary escape from the real world.

On the other hand, Strategy is still up there at a healthy 5.5%. RPGs can also have strategic elements as well. Some of these top genres, especially RPGs, are predominantly single player experiences, which fits nicely with our Gamer DNA results showing that this is the point where social interaction is not as desirable as it once was.

For the 28-32 age group, RPGs only went down 0.3%. However, everything else increased a bit, with even Sports & Racing finally breaking through the blue and onto the red bars of preference. If you haven’t noticed, the Action genre has kept going down in preference as the players grow older.

When gamers reach the 33-42 range, Strategy games are now their top preference. RPGs and Adventure games are now tied for second place as Sports & Racing makes a big leap from 0.7% to 10.8%. Fighting games made a small comeback with a 3.6% preference. Music & Party along with Action are not the preferred kind of game to play at this age.

Casual games took a big rise as the 43-52 range shows us a vastly different image than the younger group’s results. Strategy and Music & Party games are the only other genre that’s relevant to this age range, while all the other genres a not necessarily on their radar.

As people grow older, things like their reflexes and eye sight get worse, which would explain why Action games have a -17.0% result in preference. Action games tend to be very fast and high energy, which clashes with older people that enjoy it as well as they did before.

Lastly, we have the 53+ age group. Casual games are now at the top with 9.2%, with Music & Party and Sports & Racing next to it as the preferred genres to play. This makes sense, since these genres tend to be lighter and easier to understand.

All the other genres involve a lot more commitment, fast movements and reflexes that gamers of this age might not necessarily have anymore. Of course, this means that Action games are far behind at -28.4% with no signs of getting better in the future.

AGE GROUP PREFERENCES: PLATFORMS

Now, we are going to tackle age groups in terms of platform preference. Ranging from home consoles to mobile and even tabletop activity in the real world, there is just as much of a variety of results than all the previous batches of data we have.

Our youngest age group of teenagers have a predominantly mobile preference. If you have seen kids at the store or in a restaurant play with a tablet constantly, then you know this piece of data is true and accurate. Joking aside, It is pretty interesting seeing all the other platforms that come below, like the Wii for example.

It’s surprising that the preference is higher than say PlayStation, which is all the way down to the bottom. Nintendo is far better known for having more family-friendly games than PlayStation, but the having the Wii higher than a more modern console like the Switch is surprising.

Mobile gaming does a complete 180 as they go from the top and now all the way to dead last in preference. This age group has now turned to computers and have become PC players. They don’t seem to show interest in any of the other platforms. Tabletop gaming seems to be rising in preference

Mobile gaming is preferred even less in the 23-27 age group. PlayStation and Tabletop gaming are much higher now while preferring to play on PC is slowly getting lower. Pay attention to the Computer category as continues to dwindle in preference as players as the age groups get older, while Tabletop keep getting higher.

As gamers age, they seem to be less and less interested in mobile gaming. When it comes to consoles, all of their percentages have increased a little, with PlayStation at the lead and meeting people over Tabletop as a close second.

Moving on to the 30s, we have the Computer joining the Mobile platform in terms of non-preference. The main three consoles (PlayStation, Xbox and Switch) are strong at the top, much higher in preference than the previous age group. Tabletop is starting to rear its head though as it’s slowly, but surely starting to pick up steam with an older demographic.

For the 43-52 crowd, we have Tabletop gaming rising to the top, with PlayStation and Xbox receiving about half as much interest. Computers are still very low on the list, but Mobile is actually making a bit of a comeback with 2.0% preference, which is much better than the -10.2% that the younger group had.

Time to pour one out for the PC master race because it is at the lowest point, with PlayStation and Xbox in tow. For people of this age, tabletop gaming is more interesting than playing a video game. Because Tabletop games are more personal, a bit slower and require you to be in the same room as someone else, they prefer it than say playing online with someone else through a console.

AGE GROUP PREFERENCES: LOCATION

When it comes to age group preferences based on location, we can see a very clear, and almost exclusive, preference toward Eastern Europe, while all other locations are at either 0% or less in preference. Even though Eastern Europe is at the top right now, the tables will turn in the complete opposite direction very quickly.

And just like that, the 18-22 age group has USA & Canada at the top of the preferences for location. Eastern Europe has surprisingly dropped all the way down to -5.4. There is as much of an interest in gaming in that territory as it now is in North America, Southeast Asia and Western Europe.

The appetite to play games in USA & Canada in dwindling a little bit within the 23-27 group, but it’s actually increasing in other territories like Western Europe and Latin America. Interestingly, the lack of preference to play games in Eastern Europe keeps getting bigger the older gamers get.

When it comes to the 28-32 age group, Eastern Europe has arrived at the same point of non-preference that USA & Canada was once at. But now, it has 7.8% in preference, with Western Europe and Latin America also increasing.

Eastern Europe is at its lowest point here with -29.2% as USA & Canada continues to become the place of preference for gaming at 18.2%. At this age range, the preference of playing in Africa, Middle East and Southeast Asia has increased a small amount.

For the 43-52 age range, we are seeing some notable changes. USA & Canada is starting to drop to 15.4%. Also, Easter Europe showed a small change from the previous -29.2% to -28.7%. All the other locations in between those two are showing the usual small increase in preference.

USA & Canada, after it’s winning streak of being the top place of preference for gaming, is now second to Africa, with only a 0.2% difference between one another. All the other locations have slightly decreased as well. Most of the bars seems fairly balanced, but only because of USA & Canada’s big descent in preference. Although Eastern Europe went from -28.7% to -8.3%, it is still the lowest location in gaming preference.

GAMING PREFERENCES BY PERSONALITY TYPE

This is a big chart with all of the MBTI personality types showing Gamer DNA differences divided by personality type. If you already know what each personality represents, when a lot of what you can see above makes sense.

Extroverted individuals like the ENTP and ENTJ love things like status, complexity and dominance. This is in sheer contrast to the INFP, INTJ, who are introverted and don’t want any of that. Instead, that prefer something more along the lines of complexity, critical thinking and sound.

The genre preferences by personality type, Action come out on top, at least on average. When we get more specific about what each individual personality likes, then it gets a bit more specific. It seems that the more extroverted personality types prefer Fighting, Sports & Racing and Music & Party games.

These results would make sense as extroverts would most likely want to play something where they can engage with others and not play alone. For introverted personalities, we can see a long and consistent strip of red in favor of more casual games. Strategy, RPGs and Adventure games seem to be highly preferred by introverted gamers.

Next up, we have preferences in platform, split up by personality type. On average, 71.4% of gamers would rather play on PC, but if we look closer into more specific personalities, we can find some interesting things. First off, the extroverted crowd is more about playing on the go with mobile gaming. There is a little bit of tabletop gaming in there, but not as much as expected, considering how tabletop is mostly a social activity.

Ironically, it’s within the introverted side that we saw a large amount of people preferring to play tabletop games. Interestingly, there was also a pretty sizable amount of introverts that preferred playing on Nintendo Switch and Wii over other consoles.

GAMING PREFERENCES BY GENDER

Moving on from age groups, we will now proceed to comparing gender groups and see how they compare in gaming preferences such as genre, platform, and Gamer DNA.

When comparing male and female gamers, it looks like females enjoy Casual games more than Action games, which is what the males like. This is to be expected, since Adventure and Music & Party games are also within female preferences, while the male side has a preference for Sports & Racing and strategy games. This is all the typical stuff we have come to expect, but it gets more interesting the deeper we delve into this data.
When it comes to the platforms that different genders are into, we find that women are far more flexible in trying anything out short of a PC. They prefer PlayStation, Xbox and even Tabletop. For men, it’s almost exclusively PC, which isn’t to say that they don’t play on other platforms; this is just a preference.

This next graph is pretty cool, since we can see what aspects of games the different genders are generally interested in. For females, we can see that they have a preference for graphics, achievement and artistic creativity among other similar things. The genres they like seem to fit well with the Gamer DNA shown here.

This is in stark contrast to males, who prefer to play games that can provide them difficulty, status, dominance and complexity. This also makes sense, since their favorite genres happen to be action-oriented or involve sports.

This is an interesting graph depicting the skewness between males and females across the 16 personality types. Several introverted categories tend to lean towards the female side (looking at you, INFPs!), while some of the extroverted categories leaned towards the males (those extroverted, thinking, judging types). The most heavily-skewed personality types on the male and female sides are polar opposites of each other. Perhaps opposites don’t attract after all.

Our user base seems to have a lot of females from Oceania; 91.0% to be precise. USA & Canada also has a big presence of females with 56.8%. The male side has a 42.8% from Eastern Europe.

GENDER PREFERENCE + OTHERS

This set of data will cover a combination of gender preference differences and other metrics such as age groups, Gamer DNA, location, and more.

This graph shows some very interesting information as we delve into gender preference difference based on age groups. Immediately we can notice the “Other” category with a massive 586.6% result for the 53+ age group, which comprises 0.5% of the total. On the other side of the spectrum, we can see 37.9% of the 13-17 age group. 24.9% of it is male, with female gamers making up -25%. The rest is “Other” with 14.3%.

In seeing gender preference difference based on Gamer DNA, we can see come very clearly leanings that almost go completely at odds to one another. For example, we have the males, who prefer to play games for the difficulty. However, the females have a similar number pointing at the opposite direction. The same thing can be said for dominance and complexity and status. It’s really interesting how one results is almost a flipped-around version of the other.

Men seem to prefer Action and Sports games, while women are more into Casual and Music & Party games. We certainly don’t want to sound stereotypical, but these results are so unsurprising that it’s difficult not to. The numbers don’t lie, and it looks like these two genders are at odds with each other here too.

Gender preference difference based on location shows some stuff that is very similar to other pieces of information throughout the article. A male majority from Eastern Europe is pretty expected, but there is a wider spread from the “Other” category from Asia, Middle East and Southeast Asia. The 0.5% of Africans has a 78% of women and then -37% and -100% result for males and “Other” respectively.

When it comes to personality types, the “Other” category occupies a little bit of everything, but mostly the lower end of the percentages, with many of them consisting of ISTJ, ISTP and ESTP. Moving to the top, we can see males with 143.4% ENTJs and then 133.7% ESTJs. Females mostly occupy the INFP spot with 121.3%. Lastly, they have ENFPs and INFJs with 57.6% and 68.7%

For platforms, we have a fairly expected set of results, with males preferring to play on the computer more than any other platform. Females seem to be more open to playing games on many other platforms like Wii, Switch and even tabletop. The “Other” category comprises of mobile, tabletop and Wii. This one is pretty self explanatory and can be connected to many other graphs we have here.

GENRE DIFFERENCES BY GAMER DNA

After surveying our users and comparing Gamer DNA and genre differences, we noticed that players think of Fighting and Sports games for status and dominance, in almost the same measure of preference between each other. Of course, these games can get very competitive, so it makes sense that these are the reasons people would play them. On the opposite end of the spectrum, we see games like RPGs and Casual games that show a complete disinterest in the part of the players if status and dominance is something they want out of them.

Strategy of course has the players’ preference when talking about difficulty, critical thinking and complexity; these are relatively obvious. One of the more surprising results is Music & Party games, which contains the most positive reception with the only lack of preference comes from Critical Thinking and Status. Other than that, Music & Party provides a little bit of everything.

GENRE DIFFERENCES BY PLATFORMS

It looks like people prefer to play action games on their computer more than anything else, while the kind of game that they would play the least is a Music & Party game; just a little bit more over sports. People that play games on their Wii though are entirely the opposite in that the game that PC players would not play are exactly the ones that Wii players would. A 49.9% preference for sports and a whopping 78.9% for Music & Party games on the Wii.

GAMING PREFERENCES BY LOCATION

When looking at Genre preferences based on location, we get some interesting results in what kind of games people prefer to play. For starters, it seems people from Asia, Africa and Southeast Asia really enjoy playing Music & Party games. Meanwhile, North America has an almost exact 40.0% preference toward Casual games. Despite that, the average preferred game to play around the world is actually Action games, with a whopping 90.3%.

If any of you were looking for some BIG numbers in these graphs, you finally arrived at the one you wanted. This particular set of results shows platform preference by location. Despite Xbox having an average of 13.9% preference around the world, North America has an astounding 255.4% preference to the Microsoft console. The Nintendo Switch is only a little bit behind with 199.8% preference in North America.

The big numbers don’t stop there. Latin America and Africa seem to love the Wii a whole lot, while the rest of the platforms having a tiny percentage by comparison. And finally, Asia and Eastern Europe seem to prefer mobile gaming over playing consoles or tabletop.

It seems that most of the world think that there truly is something to gain out of gaming, since these results show a pretty mix of preferences around the globe. The most noticeable one is probably Easter Europe, where they apparently prefer to play games for both difficulty and status. That’s normal, since bragging rights tend to follow when overcoming a challenge.

Other interesting tidbits are that USA & Canada prefer to play for grinding and dominance, similar to Europe in which they try to rise up to the challenge. For other areas like Southeast Asia, they focus less on the difficulty of a game and more on sound and practice, although there isn’t a lot here that they don’t prefer.

The most striking result here is Africa with 151.9%, 128.5% and 108.4% in INFJ, ENTP and INTJ respectively. Western Europe has a wider variety of personality types, although mosts of them a largely introverted. Asia has a 117.7% of ISTPs, but Southeast Asia has a bigger variety of personality types throughout, with ISTPs also being the highest.

GAMING PREFERENCES BY PLATFORM

We have another interesting set of results in the form of Gamer DNA preference by platforms. It’s surprising how focused the PC platform is being played for status, socializing, difficulty and mechanical skills. These are the only categories while the other categories demonstrate a strong lack of preference for playing on PC. This makes sense, since a mouse and keyboard can provide more precise movements in games like first-person shooters and MOBAs. People that are more on the competitive side and care about performing the best can tend to play on PC.

Other than computers, the mobile platform is the only other one that is played for status. All other platforms have a strong presence toward the contrary. The other consoles have pretty self-explanatory rises in preference in place where it makes sense, such as Xbox having high preference for dominance and graphics while Tabletop is preferred for roleplaying.

Nintendo Wii, Tabletop and Switch have high preference on Casual, Music & Party and all else that leans on the side of simplicity and accessible fun for everyone. This is pretty commonly known, so it makes sense to see Nintendo cover these categories, especially the Wii. Tabletop in particular also has the addition of Strategy for why people prefer to play this platform, which fits well with games that involve armies and handling many units all at once.

Most of these results look similar, with the exception of PC that is preferred for playing Action, Adventure, RPGs and Strategy games. Xbox and PlayStation also control the corner for fighting and sports games, with the only exception being that the Wii has a higher preference percentage for Sports.

WRAP-UP: WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED?

Overall, the data presented for gaming preferences via many different metrics indicate a pretty natural progression of a human being’s growth and how their interests grow alongside it. They start out amazed with games as kids, with nothing but their seemingly infinite time and a desire for status and socializing with action-packed and fast experiences, seemingly on phones and then on PC. They get to know others as they get to know themselves as well. However, as they grow older, they don’t yearn for the same social rewards and instead would rather be challenged or play something more thought-provoking that doesn’t require social interaction. And if it’s a social activity, older gamers seem to prefer Tabletop gaming. For males, things are more competitive, action-oriented and focused on difficulty. Females on the other hand are more emotional, preferring sound and having enjoyable experiences with not a lot of competition.

Time passes and gaming isn’t that much of a priority anymore. They like the sound, graphics, and appreciate the overall production quality, but they are not interested in much else. In fact, many of them would rather leave the digital and engage in a more physical board game. It’s not until the age of 52+ where it seems like interest is somehow rekindled, which results in more categories rising up again.

Hopefully this enormous dump of information is helpful and brings about a better understanding of Gamer DNA, gender, age, and personality type, and a better understanding between gamers. Feel free to write to us at help@gametree.me with any questions, inquiries, or comments.

This report was only possible thanks to our GameTree users, so thank you for your continued support. If you haven’t had the chance to get to know us, we would like to invite you to join us at GameTree and become a part of our community.

Data science by Daniel Du and article by Jorge Varela.