January 29th, 2010 by 
Women, especially mothers, are gatekeepers and budget masters; they own the keys to the marvellous world of consumption, proudly sat on the throne of purchasing power. Traditionally when women are mentioned in the same sentence as video games, people will automatically think it is something to do with controlling their children’s gaming habits. However, believe it or not, women do buy video-games for themselves, as part of their own personal entertainment and are now fast becoming equal in the gaming world. So next time you come across a pretty and well-equipped female Blood Elf in World of Warcraft, she is probably a real girl and not a guy pretending to be one!!
• Why have we never talked about girl gamers before?
In the USA, 40% of all game players are women. In fact, women over the age of 18 represent a significantly greater portion of the game-playing population (34%) than boys age 17 or younger (18%).
The reason why women didn’t get into gaming sooner, is probably down to the repelling image of female characters in video games. Very often in a secondary role, female characters have mainly been sexualised and stereotyped, which represents a real obstacle to any identification process and therefore interest in the game.
According to Helen W. Kennedy “The console games market has traditionally been very explicit in their exclusive address to a male audience. In the late 80s and early 90s both Nintendo and Sega made it very clear that to attempt to market games for girls would threaten their real market – boys and young men. Sony’s Playstation, by addressing youth culture in general, broke with this tradition”
Fortunately, this trend has changed, moving towards a set of powerful, fit, fast and precise female characters.
The Female Blood Elf - Probably Controlled by a Real Girl!!!!
• Is there a video game type for women?
Women don’t have as much time to dedicate towards video gaming as men do. Their lifestyle, children, and household care take up a lot of time on the top of their work! They are more likely to hook up with a game where they can, jumping in and out without being blocked in long-term objectives or achievements to reach.
The importance of the pace occurs with any genre of game. For example Grand Thief Auto, even though rated as one of the most violent and offensive games, does procure instant fun and entertainment, and therefore, generally, women enjoy it.
Something that EA understood very well with The Sims, is that women like to personalize their characters and create something they can identify with. The desire to escape reality in cyberspace tends to be a common element across genders; however, women do place greater importance on the customization of characters and gaming environments.
• So what’s the secret recipe for the perfect video game for girl?
Women who are into gaming, whether for work or pleasure, gather in associations to lobby for the access of video gaming careers to women, by subsidizing loans or giving career advices to young girls. Women want to see “more women making games, and thus, to make more games that women want to play.”
In reality, the number of women working in the industry is already rising: for example 60% of the developers behind The Sims are women. However, this may not be the miracle that women are waiting for. Sherry Floyd , a game designer at SOE’s Seattle studios, comments “I honestly don’t think it’s a gender issue,” she continues. “I think it’s a marketing issue.”
In the popular subconscious, women playing video games are abnormal: games are for guys. Unless they are accompanying their male partner, females are not seen as legitimate in video gaming temples (cyber cafes, game shops etc..). For example, women are more likely to under-report the number of hours the play then men, as if being a video gamer does not fit with being a women.
In statistics, female players are shown as two major clusters: casual gamers brought in by a partner or sibling, and hardcore gamers. But in reality, girl gamers are much more immersed in gaming than the stats like to show, and it’s this ability to adapt their gaming time that the industry should focus on to attract the female segment.
• The girl gamers are crying out loud: give us a real segmentation!
As the figures show, women are now a real sub-group of the market: why not consider them as such?
Fortunately, women can salute the corporate effort to integrate female developers, as it helped the gaming industry to avoid the catastrophe of a full “shrink it and pink it” strategy. However, there is still a gap between the current offer (both products and marketing strategy) and the real landscape of female consumers.
Sources:
Entertainment Software Association
http://gamestudies.org/0202/kennedy/#top
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/ptech/02/28/women.gamers/index.html
Very interesting post…
However, a question remains: is the Female Blood Elf your avatar?
Hi Socket,
thanks for your comment. Yes! You’re right! I mean.. no.. it’s not my character. But it should be! Proud to be a girl gamer.
I will do post a pic of my Blood Elf as soon as possible.
Thanks
Marion
I agree with your statement that, “But in reality, girl gamers are much more immersed in gaming than the stats like to show, and it’s this ability to adapt their gaming time that the industry should focus on to attract the female segment”. I believe stats and studies still don’t capture how many females of all ages enjoy gaming. We just wrote an article over at GamingAngels.com that is based on a study where women play social games for 5 hours but don’t consider themselves a gamer. I think with some welcoming by the gaming community, we can get new gamers, social gamers, to realize that yes, they are gamers. That is why on GamingAngels.com we highlight many types of gaming and hope that we can help encourage our casual gamers to pick up a console now and then. hehe
Have a great day,
Trina
Hi Trina,
Many thanks for your comment and insight. I think you’re right: women are playing video games but stats are biased, and I think this is due to 2 things:
- there is still a gap between the general opinion (media, researches etc..) and cliches, and the reality of women playing video games.
- women do under-estimate or under-report the time they spend playing. This is probably because society does not allow -yet- girls to be girl gamers.
But thanks to Gaming Angels, Mindbubble, and many other women communities, we are restoring the truth
Have a great day too
Marion
“Women don’t have as much time to dedicate towards video gaming as men do. Their lifestyle, children, and household care take up a lot of time on the top of their work!”
I would replace that with “Some” women. Not all of us pop out babies one after the other or spend every waking moment with some kind of OCD against surface microbes xD
Hi Marie,
Thanks for your comment.
I was having a chat with a colleague of mine who doesn’t have any kids either: we agreed that even if we’re not obsessed with the household & family care, we always do think about what to cook for dinner, about that bills to be paid, the landlord to call, etc… when our respective partner would just order a pizza while logging on to World of Warcraft.
But, yes, I do the occasional pizza-WoW night too
Thanks
Marion
I agree that female gamers should be considered more in game devlopment, my fear is that the automatic response to this identified need would be more pink/”girly” insipid games (which seem to be in abundance on DS). I don’t want something designed for women as such, but something that doesn’t appear to be aiming to exclude them.
An obstacle I often find is that there’s an assumption that, as a woman, you aren’t ging to be very good at console games, and there’s a pride issue around being “beaten by a girl”!
I have to admit, some games that are clearly & overtly targeted at boys/men don’t necessarily appeal to me… and of course there’s the fact that few (if any) team sports games on consoles include women players (football, basketball etc). I can only think of tennis, olympics etc that include women characters, and even then it’s highly unlikely a male opponent will agree to play a female character.
Personally, I enjoy the Sims & tycoon games (on PC). On DS I play puzzle, card & board games, Wii sports & sports resort mostly (and beat the guys) and on PS3/PSP I play tennis, Call of Duty/Medal of Honor, Lara Croft & Unchartered (a thinly disguised male version of Lara, presumably to catch all the men who don’t want to play a female character).
I would love to see historic games, perhaps Napoleonic versions of CoD and perhaps games that allowed a degree of exploration of historic environments. I feel gaming has, as yet, missed an opportunity to exploit the possibilities of historic virtual environments
Hi Fi,
Thanks for your comment.
I agree with you – there is an assumption that women cannot be as good as men at video games. This is because of men’s pride but also women being afraid to be good at something seen as a “guys only” thing. It’s such a vicious circle! Hopefully we’ll break it!
Marion
I find anytime I really start to like a game, some stupid male developer comes along and ruins what I liked.
I used to play dynasty warriors on the ps, mainly the girls as they had large AOE ( area of effects to none WOW raiders) weapons and I could hack and slash to my hearts delight. In the new version, all the girls now have long range bows. I hate bows i want to run into large groups of people, mow them down then laugh in the face of my younger brother that my body count is higher.
Case two…..the new Devil May Cry, I could pull off crazy artistic kills while still indulging in the need to drool over very well built men. Not to mention the women were strong, sexy and fun. Now it’s been ” rebooted ” the main character looks like an emo drug addict, they clearly didn’t realise most of the fans were girls.
I would disagree with the statement about women having less time however, I’ve been three years in wow raiding with the boys in the top guilds, held my own and met attendence. I was one of only 3 females in the guild however, I think it’s more the female ability to multi task means most games don’t offer us enough to hold enough intresst to really commit to.
Hi Elspeth,
Thanks so much for your comment and interesting illustrations to this post. I was actually chatting with designers from EA and Ubisoft (guys obviously) and explaining this precise point: we, girls, don’t want these smaller cuter weaker characters!
Regarding the time we spend on video games, from my personal experience, I always stick to “questing” on WoW as opposed to my ex-boyfriend who was happily raiding for hours: because I didn’t want to eat take-away food in front of my computer and you can’t really cook yummy food in a 15 min break with the guild. Don’t you think?
Cheers
Marion
We had a nice balance, on the nights my boyf was meant to cook, we raided as he cant cook so it was going to be take out anyway. Another problem as a girl gamer, we can’t play the same thing over and over, we get bored quickly.
I haven’t logged into WOW since last patch because its just boring, same old same old, I probably wont till the expansion. Same with platform games, where as a guy will play to get the highest score, I’d rather have it on easy and zoom through the content to see it all. We are much harder to keep happy then our simpler male counterparts.
Out of intresst what do you all play?
kudos on the blood elf ^_^ I have a warlock, paladin and hunter….and thats just my blood elf females -_-. I have also heard a lot of girls play wow just to meet men…..anyone hooked up in online games?