Women and video games

In North America, national demographic surveys have been conducted yearly by the U.S. Entertainment Software Association (ESA)[lower-alpha 1] since at least 1997, and the Canadian Entertainment Software Association of Canada (ESAC) since 2006. Other organizations including the Australian/New-Zealander Interactive Games & Entertainment Association (IGEA) since 2005 collect and publish demographic data on their constituent populations on a semi-regular basis. In Europe, the regional Interactive Software Federation of Europe (ISFE) and numerous smaller national groups like the Belgian Entertainment Association (BEA), the Nederlandse Vereniging van Producenten en Importeurs van beeld- en geluidsdragers (NVPI), and the Association for UK Interactive Entertainment (UKIE) have also begun to collect data on female video gamers since 2012. One-off market research studies and culture surveys have been produced by a wide variety of other sources including some segments of the gaming press and other culture writers since the 1980s as well.

Not only has the general female gaming population been tracked, but the spread of this population has been tracked over many facets of gaming. For more than 10 years, groups like the ESA and ESAC have gathered data on the gender of video game purchasers, the percentage of women gamers within certain age brackets, and the average number of years women gamers have been gaming. The ESAC in particular has gone into great depth reporting age-related segmentation of the market between both male and female gamers. Other statistics have been collected from time to time on a wide variety of facets influencing the video game market.

• The author of Pac-Man, Toru Iwatani, attempted to appeal to a wider audience—beyond the typical demographics of young boys and teenagers. His intention was to attract girls to arcades because he found there were very few games that were played by women at the time.[59] Electronic Games reported in 1982 that it was "the first commercial videogame to involve large numbers of women as players";[60] of the nine arcade games that How to Win Video Games (1982) discussed, Pac-Man was the only one with women as a majority of players.[61] In response, the sequel Ms. Pac-Man, launched in 1981, featured a female protagonist.
• In May 1982, sociologist Sidney J. Kaplan reported the composition of arcade video game players to be roughly 80% male and 20% female.[62]
• How to Win Video Games estimated that men were 95% of Defender and 90% of Omega Race players, while women were half the players of Centipede, Donkey Kong, and three other games.[61]
• In 1983, researcher John W. Trinkaus published findings that there were 8 male players to every 3 female players in video game arcades.[63][64]
• In 1983, a Coleco executive stated at the Boston Computer Society that the target audience for the new Adam home computer, based on its ColecoVision console, was "boys age 8 to 16 and their fathers. We believe those are the two groups that really fuel computer purchases". When audience members booed, he added that the marketing strategy was based on consumer research.[65]
• In 1988, Epyx CEO David Shannon Morse stated that California Games was the first game from his company to appeal equally to boys and girls during playtesting.[66]
• In 1988, Playthings reported that among primary video game users, women represented 21% of all gamers.[67]
• In 1988, a study by Nintendo reported that 27% of NES players in the United States were female.[68]
• A 1993 self-reported survey by Computer Gaming World found that 7% of its readers were female.[69]
• In 1994, a survey by Electronic Games reported that, among American women gamers, the Sega Genesis was most popular, with 75% ownership, followed by the SNES with 58.3% ownership, the Game Boy with 58%, and MS-DOS with 50%.[70]
• In 1996, Mattel, Inc. released Barbie Fashion Designer, selling over 600,000 copies. The game was considered an important step in advancing an interest in the design of games for women.[71]
• In 1998, The Boston Globe stated that the video game market for young girls was "exploding" with titles such as The American Girls Premiere.[72]

While 48% of women in the United States report having played a video game, only 6% identify as gamers, compared to 15% of men who identify as gamers.[4] This rises to 9% among women aged 18–29, compared to 33% of men in that age group. Half of female PC gamers in the U.S. consider themselves to be core or hardcore gamers.[73][74] In 2012, an EEDAR survey found that nearly 60% of mobile gamers were women and that 63% of these female mobile gamers played online multiplayer mobile games.[75]

Connotations of "gamer" with sexism on the fringe of gaming culture has caused women to be less willing to adopt the label.[76] "Girl gamers" or "gamer girls" is a label for women who regularly play games. While some critics have advocated use of the label as a reappropriated term,[77] others have described the term as unhelpful,[78][79] offensive, and even harmful or misleading. The word "girl", for example, has been seen as an inherently age-linked term that glosses over the difference between women over 30 and younger women.[80] The term "girl gamer" rather than simply "gamer" has also been described as perpetuating the minority position of female gamers.[77] For many critics uncomfortable with the term "girl gamer", its over-embracement may lead to the perpetuation of negative stereotypes[77] of female gamers as oversexualized, casual, and sometimes defiant or confrontational.[81][82] This in turn can result in poor game design.[80] These critics submit that there is no single definition of a female gamer, and that women gamers are as diverse as any other group of people.[83]

A lack of role models for female gamers[84] contributes to a feeling that they should edit their femininity in order to maintain credibility as a gamer, and that they must fit into the caricatured role of the "girl gamer" in order to be accepted.[77] Negative stereotyping of female video game players as "girl gamers" quite often comes from male gamers who have themselves been negatively stereotyped by the broader society.[77] Social stigma against games has influenced some women to distance themselves from the term "gamer", even though they may play regularly.[85][86][87][88] Parental influence has been theorized to perpetuate some of the stereotypes that female gamers face as boys are bought gifts like Xboxes while girls are bought girl-focused games like Barbie or educational games.[85]

Controversially, some critics such as Simon Parkin have suggested that the term "gamer" is endemic to the stereotypical male audience and has become outmoded by the industry's changing demographics.[88][89]

A 2015 study found that lower-skilled male players of Halo 3 were more hostile towards teammates with a female voice, but behaved more submissively to players with a male voice. Higher-skilled male players, on the other hand, behaved more positively towards female players. The authors argued the male hostility towards female gamers in terms of evolutionary psychology, writing, "female-initiated disruption of a male hierarchy incites hostile behaviour from poor performing males who stand to lose the most status".[102]

PAX South 2016, Texas, U.S.

The top female players in competitive gaming mainly get exposure in female-only tournaments, including such games as Counter-Strike, Dead or Alive 4, and StarCraft II. Canadian StarCraft II player Sasha Hostyn (Scarlett) first gained notoriety in the open qualifiers of IGN ProLeague 4, where she defeated top-tier Korean players. She is well known for being one of the few non-Korean players who can play at the same skill level as male Korean players.[103]

• In 2012, Street Fighter x Tekken player ArisBakhtanians commented on the lack of female players in the community, saying "sexual harassment is part of a culture, and if you remove that from the fighting game community, it's not the fighting game community."[104] He later apologized for his comments.[105]
• In 2014, organizers for a Hearthstone tournament in Finland were criticized for limiting registrations to male players only.[106] This was due to the tournament being an offline qualifier for the IeSF World Championship, with its Hearthstone tournament open only to male players. The winner of the Finnish qualifier would risk not being eligible to participate in the main event if that player were female.[107] The IeSF organization ultimately removed the male-only restriction from all of their tournaments, and in turn the Finnish qualifier that originally sparked the controversy also removed this restriction.[108]
• In December 2015, Kayla "Squizzy" Squires became the first female Call of Duty player to turn professional upon qualifying for the Call of Duty World League in the Australian region.[109]
• League of Legends player Maria "Remilia" Creveling, finished first in the 2015 Challenger Series Summer Split along with her teammates Renegades, which qualified the team for the 2016 North America League Championship Series (NA LCS) Spring Split.[110] She became both the first female and also the first transgender player to compete professionally in the (NA LCS). She joined Renegades as their support player but decided to step down from the team's starting roster three weeks into the 2016 (NA LCS) Spring Split citing anxiety and self-esteem issues as part of her reasoning behind leaving the team.[111][112]
• On March 17, 2016, the esports organization Team Secret entered the CS:GO competitive scene with female player Julia "juliano" Kiran as the in-game leader.[113] They proceeded to win the female tournament at Copenhagen Games 2016.[114]

WIGSIG is a special interest group of IDGA (International Game Developers Association). The group was formed in order to foster a positive impact on the game industry regarding gender balance in the workplace and/or marketplace. It provides a community, resources, and opportunities for people in the gaming industry. It also works to assess the numbers of the women in the games industry and tracks the changes of these numbers over time. Additionally, it works to recruit women into the games industry and make the field more attractive to women while providing them with the support and connections they need to be successful.[126]

Founded in 2005, Women in Games International (WIGI), made up of both female and male professionals, works to promote the inclusion and advancement of women in the global games industry. WIGI promotes diversity in video game development, publishing, media, education, and workplaces, based on a fundamental belief that increased equality and camaraderie among genders can make global impacts for superior products, more consumer enjoyment, and a stronger gaming industry. Women In Games International stands as strong advocates for issues crucial to the success of women and men in the games industry, including a better work/life balance, healthy working conditions, increased opportunities for success, and resources for career support.[127][128]

WIGJ is a group that works to recruit, preserve, and provide support for the advancement of women in the games industry by positively and energetically endorsing female role models and providing encouragement and information to women interested in working in the gaming field. The group was incorporated under the UK's Companies Act 2006 on June 2, 2011, as a "not for profit" or Community Interest Company. Companies in the game development industry have, in recent years, been seeking to balance the gender ratios on development teams, and consoles like the Wii and Nintendo DS have seen increased numbers of female players. In addition to using this growing interest in women in the game-developing industry, WIGJ works to put more women in traditional game development with less stigma attached to them. WIGJ seeks to help women find their place within the growing and rewarding field of game development.[129]

The concept that video games are a form of art is one that has begun to gain force in the latter half of the 2000s, with the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts recognizing games as a form of art in May 2011,[144] for example. In viewing video games as cultural artifacts and the industry as a cultural industry, the disenfranchisement of women from the medium is regarded as negatively impacting the female voice in the industry and the woman's capacity to take part in the cultural dialogue that gaming inspires.[85] From an education perspective, certain gaming genres particularly lacking in female players such as the first-person shooter game have been shown to increase spatial skills thereby giving advantages to players of the games that are currently skewed along gender lines.[85] Video games have also been determined to provide an easy lead-in to computer literacy for children, and correlations have been drawn between male video gaming and the predominance of male workers within the computer industry.[97] With the increasing importance of tech jobs in the 21st century and the increased role of online networking, the lack of female video game players suggests a loss of future career opportunities for women.[85]

Video games have also been used in academic settings to help develop the confidence of young girls in expressing their individual voices online and in their real lives. Video games that promote creative thinking and multiplayer interactions (e.g., Minecraft) have helped young girls to communicate senses of authority and confidence in their social and academic lives.[145][146]

The majority of the people who work on game development teams are men.[147] Researchers have identified that one of the best ways to increase the percentage of female players comes from the aspect of authorship (either in-game as with Neopets and Whyville, or indirectly as with the Harry Potter series' inclusion of Hermione as a playable character subsequent to fan requests).[80] The solution to the problem of societal pigeonholing of female gamers is often identified as interventionist work such as the insertion of women into the industry.[85] Groups like WomenGamers.com and Sony's G.I.R.L. have sought to increase female gamer demographics by giving scholarships to girls considering getting into game development,[148][149] and game developers like Check Six Games, Her Interactive, Silicon Sisters and Purple Moon have openly courted female coders and developers.[96][97]

In addressing the future of the medium, many researchers have argued for the improvement of the gaming industry to appeal to a more general gender-neutral audience and others have suggested that the appeal should be directed to women in particular.[77][79][150] One of the earliest attempts to broaden the market to include women could be seen in Sega's[79] use of the increased number of female protagonists in fighting games.[97] Other examples of this include games like Mass Effect 3, Remember Me, and the Last of Us, which include a female option for the main character.[151] The decision to use strong female characters in important roles, however, is often met with skepticism by marketers concerned with sales.[152] Examination of IGN's "Big Games at E3 2012"[153] and "Big Games at E3 2013"[154] shows growth of the female protagonist in video games, rising 4% from 2012 to 2013.[155] Other efforts outside of making games with female characters have also started to occur. One example is that Women in Games International has teamed up with the Girl Scouts of Greater Los Angeles in order to create a video game patch, which the two organizations hope will encourage Girl Scouts to develop an interest in science, technology, engineering, and math.[156] Activism and specifically female-targeted LAN parties in Scandinavia have helped boost female game playing.[80]