So that happened, or the 2016 Women in Gaming Survey

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Last week I thought to myself, "Self, you need to do a blog post." In trying to think of what this blog post would be about, I thought that maybe covering stuff that had happened in gaming last year from and by women would be a good topic. The problem, of course, was that I didn't have any data.

I made a Facebook post querying about interest in the topic and whether people would help with information, and someone on my list suggested asking what women had been playing last year. I pondered this and decided that a "year in review" survey might be a good idea. I then took a few days of messing with Google Forms and ended up with the survey you see a portion of above. I thought I might get as many as a couple of hundred responses, assuming people were interested.

Oh, what a sweet summer child past Me was.

On Monday, January 9th, I started sending out the links to it. I posted it on Facebook, G+, and Twitter -- once each. It went live at 4:30 PM EST that day. Today at 10:30 PM EST, January 11th, I've shut down responses because I've reached 6000 responses. I was still getting them at a good clip, but honestly I'm nearing the limits of the database to hold all the info.

Just to make sure no one missed it, that's 6000 individual responses. Holy cats. Six zero zero zero.

So... there's no way this is going to be just a single blog post. This is an event. This is article fodder. This is a freaking archive. I deeply regret now not being more rigorous with the questions and filters, because this... this is amazing. It can't be more than an informal survey, and who knows if I'll ever manage to get that sort of response again, but I will absolutely be studying it and posting about it. Who knows, it may even be worth a blog or project of its own. Once I figure it out, though, I'll definitely let people know. This kind of interest and participation should definitely not be ignored.

Again, my thanks to everyone who participated, for everyone who shared it around the Internet and vouched for me and gave me 15 minutes of your time. I will honor the trust you showed by sharing a glimpse into your gaming worlds and try to make good use of the information you gave me. Stay tuned!




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