Do gamers want gaming accessories to look like gaming accessories?

From RGB lights beaming from keyboards to bright piping highlighted gaming chairs, computer accessories designed for gaming can often be identified with a single glance. And it seems to make intuitive sense – many gamers like to display their identity as gamers.

But YouGov research shows that a fair share of PC and laptop gamers who do use gaming accessories would prefer a non-gamer aesthetic. And an even higher proportion would prefer gaming accessories with a subtle gaming design.

We asked gamers about their preference for gamer-themed designs for various accessories separately –chairs, keyboards, headphones and mice – but shares were largely consistent across each of them.

Roughly a third of gamers who used each of those accessories while gaming said they preferred a strong gaming aesthetic. Overall, headphones won the highest share of support for a more gamer-themed look with 69% of gamers saying they prefer units with either a strong gamer aesthetic or a subtle one. Chairs scored the lowest at 63%.

Roughly a quarter of those who use chairs (24%) and mice (24%) while gaming respectively said that they prefer a non-gaming aesthetic for those accessories, eclipsing the share of those who said so with respect to keyboards (21%).

Somewhat expectedly, deeper analysis shows that younger gamers have a greater preference for a stronger gamer aesthetic in their gaming accessories, but income level analysis throws up some less predictable insights.

Broadly speaking, gamers who make between an average range net income (between $40k to $79.9k) are the least likely to prefer a strong gamer aesthetic. And gamers in the high-income range (above $80k) show a significantly higher preference for the same. Lower income gamers show more variability, with their preferences aligning with high-income gamers with respect to chairs and headphones, but matching their middle-income counterparts for keyboards.

For keyboards and mouse, high-income gamers are way likelier than the other groups to prefer a strong gamer aesthetic. Two-fifths of them (41%) indicate their preference for strongly gamer-themed keyboard designs compared to just over a quarter of gamers from the other income brackets (27% each). A similar share also say they most prefer gaming mice with a strong gamer design (38%), which puts them comfortably higher than the same preference among lower-income (30%) and middle-income (26%) gamers, respectively.

Data like this could help inform design choices for gamer accessories at different price points, hitting each group’s specific design preferences most optimally.

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