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It's official, more women like Sonic than men


Badnik Mechanic

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So does anyone want to comment on the fact that either Sega's market data is wrong and for the best part of 5-10 years they've been marketing Sonic to the wrong demographic?

Or...

That for some reason the gender demographic switches from male to female and it's quite a large shift at that.

Nah, It's exactly like MLP where a demographic likes a thing that's marketed to their polar opposite demographic for some nebulous reason.

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Super Mario is listed right below Mario Kart.

Whelp, there go SEGA's bragging rights on that matter then.

 

Sonic is officially in the dumps when even its biggest fans have said "to hell with this."

 

Actually... I don't believe the list would be too different aside from one or two differences.

For example. If this were a US poll I would imagine the following would be true right away.

1: Fifa would be off the list. Either NBA or Madden would be on it. Maybe not in the same place but it would be there.

2: Champ/Footbll manager wouldon't be on the list/would be replaced by something else. 

Now let's assume the same options are on the list and they don't add games like war craft or league of legends. 

I don't think it would changet that much. The games all use the same hooks, same mind games on people worldwide. It has the same effect and their core appeals e.g sport, war, combat, adventure, strategy etc... isn't really gonna change much due to human nature. Especially not between 2 western first would countries like the US and the UK.

I think Sonic would be even lower, though. SEGA seems to have a much stronger overall brand presence in Europe.

 

Other than Sonic, SEGA's dead in America.

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I don't think I'm terribly surprised. I think a chief part of Sonic's marketability lies in the fact that it stars a bunch of cute characters. And while there's certainly exceptions to this rule (I'm certainly an example...), most guys generally don't GO for that sort of thing. I notice that a lot of Sonic subcommunities are largely dominated by the female demographic (i.e. fanart, fanfiction, both of which being VERY large subcommunities).

That said, I do have to question the conclusiveness of this survey. I mean, who did they ask?

Edited by shdowhunt60
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I have to say I'm not all that surprised either. When I ran WSS last time I decided to do a little bit of research and see how many men and how many women had registered for tickets. More women by quite a few had registered. it something like a 3:2 ratio. 

 

But despite these sort of findings, I wouldn't want them to alter the series to market it to more women and girls. I think it would lose a lot of its charm. Unlike a lot of video games, the Sonic series has already done a lot to target the female audience in a positive way. The Mario series keeps going about the idea of most of their female characters being princesses, whilst the Sonic series has a wide mixture of different female roles, from the typical stereotypes of innocent and sweet (Cream) to the powerful and able to stand on their own two feet (Blaze). I think Sega realises there are a lot of female fans, otherwise I don't think a lot of these female characters would even exist. I'm pretty sure they would have made Sticks a male character if they felt it should only be targeted towards boys.

 

I also agree the popularity is likely down to the design style. Most boys would likely start looking at first person shooters, sports and horror games for realism and potentially role models, but the cuter styles tend to stick with girls, even into adulthood. Although the whole boys and MLP thing still baffles me to this day. I guess even typical behaviour of genders can be flipped on its head!

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Not surprised, really. I notice a lot of fanartists for Sonic tend to be female more so than male. When I check around the Internet, I notice it's usually females and males who are about 12-15. Of course exceptions exist.

Hidden Content

The only thing you have to apologize for is not showing me this sooner.

Maybe because it's more "kiddy" in a way and men tend to go for more mature video games while women like cuter games?

I don't think that's it. If community drive is anything to go by, a lot women tend to really enjoy some mature elements attached to their hedgehog. Shipping, death, fighting. They REALLY go for Shadow and Dark Sonic and Mephiles and all sorts of other things. I'm of the very opposite opinion, but besides the point. They stuff this into their fanart and fanfictions.

Now, that's not everyone of them, I'm not generalizing. Just a theme I see often. But that's a lot of the fanbase in general.

I think it has a lot to do with just the big cast of colorful characters with, at least at a point, established emotions.

 

I'd really like to have a new survey taken and see what game brought them into the fandom. I have this feeling it may have been the Adventure series, mostly. I could be flat out wrong, though.

Edited by WittyUsername
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*More women like Sonic*

Amy's not going to like this...

That depends, Modern!Amy would be furious while Boom!Amy would be meh.

I have to say I'm not all that surprised either. When I ran WSS last time I decided to do a little bit of research and see how many men and how many women had registered for tickets. More women by quite a few had registered. it something like a 3:2 ratio. 

 

But despite these sort of findings, I wouldn't want them to alter the series to market it to more women and girls. I think it would lose a lot of its charm. Unlike a lot of video games, the Sonic series has already done a lot to target the female audience in a positive way. The Mario series keeps going about the idea of most of their female characters being princesses, whilst the Sonic series has a wide mixture of different female roles, from the typical stereotypes of innocent and sweet (Cream) to the powerful and able to stand on their own two feet (Blaze). I think Sega realises there are a lot of female fans, otherwise I don't think a lot of these female characters would even exist. I'm pretty sure they would have made Sticks a male character if they felt it should only be targeted towards boys.

 

I also agree the popularity is likely down to the design style. Most boys would likely start looking at first person shooters, sports and horror games for realism and potentially role models, but the cuter styles tend to stick with girls, even into adulthood. Although the whole boys and MLP thing still baffles me to this day. I guess even typical behaviour of genders can be flipped on its head!

I'm pretty sure that they made Sticks a girl just so that the feminists can't bash Boom for having only 1 main female character.

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On the other hand, who knows. Maybe marketing this towards little girls would work wonders for it with the male demographic. Just look at My Little Pony!

 

...now I'm really sad that SEGA didn't aggressively go to school on things like MLP:FiM to try and find ways to market Boom and the like to an adult audience with more success.

 

(Just a note I'm not making fun of Bronies or anything, I'm just using it as an example of how a target demographic can be widely different from what actually happens, never mind it's clearly very possible to make cute characters appeal to men)

Edited by Sly the Tasmanian Ogilvie
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One would think Sonic would appeal the most to males, specifically young boys. The franchise doesn't come off as feminine at all.

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One would think Sonic would appeal the most to males, specifically young boys. The franchise doesn't come off as feminine at all.

Perhaps that's partially why the series holds such an appeal to women as compared to men: it's not marketed to them to the point of coming off as condescending and pandering to them as is the case with most "girls' shows".

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Perhaps that's partially why the series holds such an appeal to women as compared to men: it's not marketed to them to the point of coming off as condescending and pandering to them as is the case with most "girls' shows".

That's kinda what I'm thinking too. I think specifically marketing towards women would be kinda missing the point. I don't think Sonic being kiddy has anything to do with it either, I mean you look at what fangirls in the fanbase get into its certainly not kid friendly.

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Casual sexism everywhere.

I don't find this entirely surprising however. Sonic is still a family-friendly franchise, and when that happens I feel these kind of demographic breakdowns become more even and can go either way. Regardless, I don't think Sega's going to capitalize on it either, both because there's no reason to and because they have the listening and management skills of a bullfrog.

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they have the listening and management skills of a bullfrog.

How would you know what a bullfrog is capable of >:U?

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I think the sad fact of the poll is the simple fact Candy Crush is Number 1.

This is a sad day for video games.

Why it is sad day for video games?.
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I already said it was a joke. 

Honestly, that people are missing this is funnier than the joke itself.

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More women like Sonic than men? No wonder I'm still single, it's that blasted hedgehog's that they're after!

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Must be because of all the shipping. 

just kidding

 

 Well, I did had some female friends that like sonic. More than me. It's kinda odd to me that Sega targets younger boys as the main demographic when comes to sonic. I always thought Sonic appealed to everybody regardless of gender. That chart kinda proves that. 

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