In the mobile gaming world, Honor of Kings introduced many women to the MOBA genre for the first time. This is a user behavior and business phenomenon worth exploring.
As women move from light-hearted casual games to competitive combat games, this not only heralds a larger market upgrade and consumer spending migration for the mobile gaming industry, but also means that heavy mobile games can take more account of the potential needs of non-typical players.
Why do women get into King of Glory compared to men who are more familiar with multiplayer teams? What are the expectations and gains in this game? What new imagination space does their continuous participation bring to the competitive mobile game market and game IP?
Through in-depth research and data analysis on players of all ages and regions across the country, Penguin SmartCool hopes to discover the secrets and inspiration behind the emergence of female players.
A total of 19,040 male and 3,894 female Honor of Kings players participated in the study. By comparing the answers to some survey questions, there are obvious differences between men and women. The core findings are as follows:
1. Women are more likely to join the game later: 51.7% of women have played Honor of Kings for less than six months, compared to 35.3% of men.
2. Most women play MOBA games for the first time, 80.6% of women and 54% of men. Overall, the barriers to entry have been lowered so that the “inexperienced” can play and participate.
3. Women are more likely than men to start playing because they are curious about their friends and are recommended by their friends. Social became a key part of the game’s audience acquisition.
4. The proportion of female players choosing heroes based on appearance (17.8%) was higher than that of male players (6.3%), and the proportion of female players choosing heroes based on team composition (27.1%) was lower than that of male players (42.8%).
5. The most popular hero type for female gamers is mage (65.7%), not assassin (10.8%) and warrior (13.3%).
6. Making the hero look better is the number one motivation for women to pay, and for men to play more heroes.
7. Female gamers sacrifice watching TV shows (44.1 percent) and variety shows (28.3 percent) to play games, which may have a long-term impact on the overall pan-entertainment ecosystem.
8. Among the players considering buying peripheral items, female players are more enthusiastic about buying peripheral items/dolls (39.8%) than male players (22.8%). The acceptance of games based on IP brings relatively optimistic expectations for the box office.
9. King of Glory drives esports viewing, with 36% of female players joining the viewing team and about half of male players watching.
10. More than a third of male gamers have been tempted to change their phones for gaming; Among female gamers, 19.8 percent also thought about replacing their phones.
We also spoke to three female gamers born in the 1990s, ’95 and’ 00 to hear about their experiences playing Honor of Kings. Although it is a case, but also intuitively feel the user characteristics behind a phenomenal game. (Interview content is at the back of data report)
(Special disclaimer: All data and analysis in this report are the independent data research and analysis of Penguin Smart Cool as a third-party research platform, and do not represent the official position of Tencent and King of Glory.)
Details of the report are as follows:
1. Female players generally join the game late, with nearly half playing for less than half a year
Among surveyed players, the percentage of female players who have played Honor of Kings for more than a year is significantly lower than that of male players, with nearly 20% of female players playing for a year or more, compared to nearly 40% of male players.
The percentage of female players who played Honor of Kings for less than six months was higher than that of male players, with about half playing for less than six months, compared with more than a third of male players.
Core findings: The power of social scaling in the later stages of a game may be more important in attracting female gamers than the experience and genre factors of the early stages. From the perspective of snowball effect, female players in competitive mobile games belong to the outer ring with a higher proportion of social adhesion.
2. Honor of Kings is the first MOBA game played by 80% of women
Among female players of Honor of Kings, 80.6% had not played a MOBA game like DOTA or League of Legends before. 54% of male players have never played.
Core finding: This is one of the biggest things to watch for in the game itself, which is to make MOBA games accessible to a massive new audience, especially women. The market education and women’s awareness of games that Honor of Kings has accomplished may benefit the industry in the future.
3. More than 60% of female gamers are drawn to games because they are playing with friends
Most players start playing Honor of Kings because they are intrigued by their friends. This is especially true for female gamers (61.7 percent) compared to male gamers (52.2 percent). Women also slightly outperformed men in the percentage of friends who recommended playing with me and people who discussed more on social media.
Core findings: Female gamers are more influenced by the behavior and opinions of people in their social circles. This is a consistent finding across multiple studies of other things, that women are more influenced than men by the opinions of their social circle or social network. For companies targeting female users, this becomes a key issue in terms of how to increase word-of-mouth and social impact among their user base.
4. Female gamers are no less influenced by recommendations from friends of the same sex
The survey found that king of Glory gained a high word-of-mouth transmission power due to mutual recommendation between players. In the survey, the number of players who have recommended King of Glory to their friends is relatively high, with 64.5% of players recommending their friends to play the game.
Nearly three-quarters of men who ended up playing the game on a friend’s recommendation were more influenced by a male friend’s recommendation. Female gamers were not only influenced by their male friends, but 46.7% were recommended to join the game by their female friends.
Core findings: Gender drive shows significant differences, which can be used as a reference for social communication and user drive of mobile games. In addition to the traditional male user relationship chain recommendation, the influence of female players on the same sex and opposite sex is rapidly rising.
5. Women are more likely to pick heroes for their physical appearance than men
When it comes to choosing a hero they want to play with, players generally tend to choose a hero whose skill fits them, with more than 60% of both male and female players, with a slightly higher percentage among women.
However, in terms of the needs of the group, the percentage of female players was lower than that of male players, accounting for 27.1 percent compared to 42.8 percent.
Although the hero’s appearance is not a fundamental factor overall, the percentage of female gamers who prefer the hero’s appearance is much higher than that of male gamers. Even female gamers are more concerned with appearance than historical background. Men, on the other hand, tend to focus on the character’s historical background in between.
The core finding: Women value physical attractiveness more than men, which has a cognitive basis in mass consumption. Somewhat surprisingly, in highly competitive combat games, this pattern of female sexual attractiveness remained strongly supported by the data. Making female-friendly heroes look more “soft” is an area where game design can focus.
6. Mages are the most popular hero type for female gamers, followed by shooters
Compared to men, female gamers showed a clear preference for common hero types. Among female gamers, 65.7 percent used mages as their hero type, followed by archers at 53.9 percent. These two hero types are far more popular than other hero types, with warriors and assassins each accounting for only about one in 10 female players.
Male players did not show such a large gap, with all heroes being chosen at around 40% except for the highest shooter (53.9%) and support heroes (slightly lower).
Core finding: Women prefer mage and archer heroes, in part because these are two types of heroes that don’t require melee attacks and tend to use ranged skills. But for the sake of a balanced game mix, if we want to increase the number and participation of female players, we can do more to encourage female players to focus on and use other types of heroes.
7. Pay core motivation bid farewell to “constantly getting stronger”, female sex appearance level male sex experiment
For the users who have paid and recharged in the game, 43.6% of female players have a higher demand for the enhancement of the appearance of heroes, while the first motivation of male players is to experience more heroes.
The ability to make your hero more powerful ranked third, with little difference between men and women. Gift-giving shows a slightly lower demand for topping up.
Core discovery: The core motivation of traditional online games to “make yourself stronger” for payment only ranks the third among King of Glory users, which is worth paying attention to. The ceiling of stacked equipment designed to protect game balance has worked, and we’re seeing a new dynamic of differentiated payments between men and women being exploited.
8. Nearly half of female gamers are cutting back on TV to play games
In this research, we focused on the substitution of King of Glory for other entertainment consumption and the differences between male and female users. As you can see from the statistics, less than a quarter of players are not having their other entertainment life replaced by King of Glory.
Honor of Kings was the strongest substitute for TV entertainment, with more than a third of male gamers spending less time watching TV shows, and nearly half of female gamers. After film and television, the second most entertainment time sacrificed by female gamers was watching variety shows, while male gamers were “playing other games”.
Core discovery: King of Glory’s integrated experience in the four fields of competition, game, social and entertainment gives this game a strong pan-entertainment “crossover competitiveness”.
9. Female gamers show stronger contextual preferences than male gamers
According to our player survey of Honor of Kings, 43.5% of users said they would consider buying merchandise from the game, and female gamers showed a stronger preference for merchandise.
Among those who are willing to buy accessories, nearly 40 percent of women said they would consider buying dolls and paid emojis on wechat /QQ. Male users, on the other hand, are more likely to buy digital accessories for mobile phone cases than paid emojis.
Another statistic worth watching is the consumption potential of film and TV adaptation. Given the game’s strong user base, this penetration ratio has an expected appeal at the box office.
Core findings: 43.5%. “Peripheral development” to some extent has become a test OF IP powder absorption ability of a hard index. While there will be an iteration from willingness to actual consumption, the surrounding development potential of King of Glory is still worth looking forward to.
10. King of Glory drives esports viewing, and female players join the following teams
King of Glory in addition to mobile games on the label, there is also a concern about the identity of “e-sports”. According to our player survey of Honor of Kings, 49% of male players have watched live or video footage of the game.
The esports penetration rate of female gamers, while lower than that of male gamers, is surprisingly higher. As a “non-mainstream audience” for traditional e-sports, 36 percent of female gamers have watched live or video games of Honor of Kings, while 23.8 percent have watched similar video games.
Core findings: In practical terms, King of Glory has changed the mobile esports industry to a great extent. The huge player base is not only the potential “appreciative” audience of mobile game e-sports, but also the strong social magnetic field and team dependence of the game make many users, especially female players, have the real intention of “watching the masters to improve themselves” and become “learning audience”.
11. Men are more likely than women to consider switching phones for a better gaming experience
Whether we have thought about upgrading our phones for a better gaming experience is also an interesting topic for us to focus on. In the survey, more than a third of male gamers said they had been tempted to switch phones for games.
Among female gamers, 19.8 percent also thought about replacing their phones. Hardware upgrades for a game were not uncommon among male gamers in the PC era. But in the age of mobile games, the “switching stimulus” that a game can generate, especially for women, deserves to be considered an “important variable in consumer choice.”
Considering that some of honor of Kings players have already chosen not to switch due to their top-of-the-range phones, the overall effect of honor of Kings’ consumption stimulus among real potential users may be higher than the data suggest.
Key takeaway: Considering honor of Kings’ huge user base, and the desire to switch phones for a better experience, it’s easy to understand why some mobile manufacturers are especially optimizing the game, or even selling it.
In addition to the above data survey, we also conducted interviews with three female gamers, from which we can get a more intuitive sense of female gamers’ experience of the game (all users are pseudonyms) :
Player: Xiao Yi (female)
Post-00s, living in fourth-tier cities, junior three students
In the summer vacation of 2016, I started to play King of Glory. I got to know it for the first time because my classmates were playing around me. As a middle school student, she only plays king of Glory in summer and winter vacations and unloads the game as soon as school starts. In her class, almost all the boys play, and about two-thirds of the girls do.
King of Glory’s biggest attraction to Yi is playing in teams with friends and classmates. When forming a team, it is not to pick the master students together, because winning or losing is not so important, but more for entertainment.
Her most commonly used hero is small Joe and Sun bin, to her, these two are mage, good start, and the appearance is more lovely. Most of her female classmates play mages or shooters, like assassins and tanks, which require close combat, which she says she can’t do.
In the game, small according to spent about more than 100 dollars, mainly used to buy skin. As for improving her skills, that’s not what she cares about. When it comes to “technical topics” like how to fight in a team or what equipment to use, she consults her male classmates who are good at playing — and among the female students, the constant discussion is about which heroes are better.
As a contact king of Glory has a year of “old players”, she is now playing not so often before, is generally invited by friends to play. Compared with last year, she found this summer vacation to pick up the game back to play, has been very different from before, she said, Sun Bin was changed are not recognized. But the people around you who play the game. That’s a lot more than last year.
In the interview, Xiaoyi repeatedly asked when the game will be available for Android and iPhone. This summer, she used her father’s eliminated iPhone, but the hero and achievement she had played with Android before could not be guided over, which was her most dissatisfied place.
Player: Kid (girl)
Post-90s, living in first-tier cities, pharmaceutical enterprises office workers
As an office worker who has worked for more than a year, Xiao Tong only started playing King of Glory in June 2017. “Actually, I haven’t played many mobile games. I saw a girl in my department playing and she was very excited. I was curious to try it and let her take it to play.”
In addition to that, Tong revealed another reason: “A boy I like also likes playing the game, so I thought if I play, I can see him in the game.” However, tong has never teamed up with the boy, but silently pays attention to the other’s game status, which allows her to read more information about him.
In addition to playing by themselves, tong usually teamed up with his colleagues offline, often during a lunch break with five people to discuss tactics with each other. The feeling of winning a game together with group intelligence made her feel good. She thinks it’s like a tug of war. “I like the process of working together for a goal, and sometimes I’m happy to fail.” She estimated that about 60 percent of the men in her department played, and nearly half of the women.
When it comes to common heroes, she said she used Lu Ban No.7 recommended by her colleagues at the beginning, and even liked to use Lu Ban’s electric Boy skin for a period of time. Later, she switched to Miyue because she liked the function of “bloodsucking” and it was not easy to die. She now has the ability to select heroes based on the squad, and can play all heroes like Arthur, Kay, and Xiang Yu. From our cross-cutting understanding of female gamers, tong is one of the female gamers who are making rapid progress.
Player: Cookie
Born in 1995, living in second-tier cities, sophomore
Just entered the university, in the past only played such games as cookies, was pulled by roommates began to play king of Glory, think of many people around to play, she did not refuse. Among her four female roommates, two play more, one has an account but plays less, and one does not play. She estimated that about 30 percent of the girls in the department played.
Cookie’s game time is concentrated at night. For her, the most interesting part of the game is the ability to try out different heroes. She often uses auxiliary heroes, such as Daqiao, Sun Bin and Zhang Fei. Occasionally also can play a mage, such as Mi Yue, do not know fire dance. Cookie has been with Honor of Kings for a year, and now she’s playing more than ever. “Winter vacation when nothing to do to play more, then inadvertently paid attention to the king of Glory of the game commentary Li Jiu, play more.”
This game enabled her to contact professional game matches and live broadcast for the first time, especially during the KPL (King of Glory Professional League) spring match, she followed many matches live. Watching the contestants’ first view inside, watching their consciousness and operation, listening to the announcer’s commentary and learning something from the middle made her feel fruitful. According to her observation, there are not a lot of girls around watching the live broadcast of the match, and they will have their own favorite anchors and favorite players.
The introduction of new heroes or activities in the game also kept Cookie interested. She said that once there was a collection of stamps for Kay and she had taken part in it so as not to have to save up for gold to buy it. Cookie is a relatively low willingness to pay users, only in the beginning because they want Zhao Yun to recharge, and then only occasionally buy some special benefits. Cookies are not impulsive when it comes to game spending.
(Intern Wenqi Jiang contributed to the report.)