The video game industry has always been based on exclusion. For most of the history of gaming, the products were targeted at male gamers. But in the recent decade, the number of female players has revealed the potential of exploring new horizons for the industry.
According to Statista, 47% of players are women in the United States. In Brazil, Pesquisa Game Brasil (PGB) revealed that 50,3% of the audience is female. The research also revealed that women are the majority of gamers who use smartphones (61%), while men prefer to enjoy a good game on a console (61,5%) or PC (66,9%).
The Genres Girls Like To Play
In an article by SB Games in 2016, researchers questioned 668 female gamers to build the type of Brazilian female gamers, who “reported playing more social games, puzzle/card games, music/dance games, educational games, and simulation games more frequently than male gamers. The three game genres that both male and female gamers played equally frequently were sports, racing, and adventure games.” That was before the popularity of indie and cozy games.
In the last decade, especially during the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, many girls came to the gaming industry wanting comfort and a new world to explore and be part of. Games such as Genshin Impact, Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Stardew Valley became popular in the time among women on the internet. Making them, 52% of switch consoles were female-owned in the US.
When asked about the associated type of girls that play, Gabriela Luz, a 20-year-old student and gamer, explains that “many women enjoy cozy games, but that doesn’t mean they’re the only genres they play. There’s a huge diversity of tastes among female gamers.”
Then, she highlights that “the preference for single-player games may be related to the search for a safer and more controlled experience, especially given the negativity many women face in online environments.”
Another 19-year-old student and gamer, Sophia Pazos, reveals that online discourse is not fun anymore because “it’s very encouraged in these spaces to insult others, creating a toxic environment in a game module that should invite positive interactions.”
The Feeling Of Hostility
The exclusion of the gaming industry leads women to face discriminatory sexist practices based on the gender inferiority discourse. The machism still rooted in society creates boundaries for many women to overcome who want to enjoy a fun game.
It’s also important to highlight that this industry is still elitist and mostly white dominated (75% in the US). This also reflects on the representation of minorities in videogames, nearly 80% of characters are white males, and women are highly underrepresented in most genres.
According to Sophia, “for a woman to be able to play videogames as an adult, we have to give up the desire to be taken seriously as a ‘grown woman’. Men are much more encouraged to maintain passions they had as children, while women are encouraged to grow up as quickly as possible. I know very few women who collect things or worship old movie and game franchises. As women grow up, we try to tone down our ‘more childish’ tastes to feel more mature and be taken seriously as people, which in the process also diminishes us.”
This feeling of hostility towards the gaming industry is also reflected by many games targeting men from a marketing perspective. Nowadays, the increase of women in gaming has become a future prospect for the developers, making single-player games in which the main character can be customizable or traditional games transforming the protagonist into a female, such as Grand Theft Auto VI.