Sage Fisher

Erin Rogers
U of U Writing 2010
3/6/ 2016
Gender and Video Games
Gender in video games has been a big issue. With huge gaps between what genders are
playing video games. Leaning primarily towards male in some places and towards female in
others. A big reason for the gap is the game industry's desired audiences often being aimed
towards males, with the over sexualazation of women, and under representation of strong
relatable women.

With 87% of 8-17 year olds playing video games to some degree, it is clear that
videogames have become an incredibly influential medium (Burgess, Stermer & Burgess 2007)
(Gender and Video Games paragraph 8).According to (statista.com) the amount of boys playing
video games vs girls playing video games is 56% boys and 44% girls. These stats may seem to
lean towards boys but not by too much. It looks like it's mostly equal until its split into
categories. There are too many categories to go over so these are generalizations. There are
competitive games, casual games, and solo games; this captures most games but there is
overlapping. The competitive games are all about doing better than one or more real people, this
can include First person shooters to Arcade games. The casual games are less intense, and are
just something that can be picked up and played any time this includes many phone and browser
games. Solo games are games that are played offline there is a wide selection of solo games,
from platforming games to shooting games.

Starting off with competitive games, competitive games are very popular 3 out of the 4 top
played computer games are competitive (statista.com), with the top played League of legends
taking up almost 23% of computer games played. This is a big group making up almost 32
million active players a month, and only 10% of the players are female (destructoid.com). This is
a big change from the 56/44 split. Dota 2 the 4th most popular game accounting for 5% of games
played has a very similar split. The only 10 % of women playing is due to the treatment they get
from males in these online games (BBC).

Casual games and casual gaming seems to lean more towards the females. The NPD
group did a survey of 6,225 people 51 percent of the people surveyed were male and 49 were
female all of them say that games In order to qualify as a core gamer for the survey, respondents
had to currently play Action/Adventure, Fighting, Flight, Massively Multi-Player (MMO),
Racing, Real Time Strategy, Role-Playing, Shooter, or Sport games on a PC/Mac.
(escapistmagazine.com). They were split into 3 groups heavy core, light core, and casual
according to playtime and game, Heavy core plays 5 or more hours of core games a week, light
core plays less than 5 hours of core games a week, and casual play non-core games. The core
gamers were largely male while the casual was overwhelmingly female. The causal took up 51 %
of all participants while light core took up 24%, and heavy core took up 20 %
(escapistmagazine.com).

Solo games are harder to get information on due to the lack of online accounts. Games
like Skyrim and Fallout are very popular solo games. Overall, 70 per cent of [Skyrim] players
are males. Despite a low overall number of female players, the 20 to 24 age group has more
female players than the average game But Assassin's Creed has 81% of the people playing the

game are male (mcvuk.com). Although the average age is younger than the other games super
Mario bros has one of the most even splitting of male vs female being almost 50/50
(mcvuk.com). Mario kart is close behind with the 56/44 split we have been seeing as the average.
With Candy crush only having 41% of the people playing it being male(s3.amazonaws.com page
8).

The amount of female players playing video games being lower may be due to treatment
they get. The idea of videogame playing is often thought of as more of a male thing, and has led
to some bad trends in video games, most notably the portrayal of women in video games, and
video game advertisement.

A big problem is over sexualazation of women. According to a study conducted by

Burgess, Stermer and Burgess in 2007, female video game characters were almost 4 times as
likely to be portrayed in a primarily and overtly sexual manner(Gender and Video Games
paragraph 8). This effects both males and females, women who play games with overly
sexualized women have a lowered self-image, and men were more likely to think of women as
sexual object. Some Games have tried to fix this problem like the new Tomb raider game. Tomb
raiders main protagonist Lara Croft has always been a strong independent person, though she
started out overly sexualized.In the newer TombRaider they have made Lara Croft less
sexualized, Focusing more on her independence.(Video-Game Heroines Can Kick Sexism's Butt)
While other games like many of the free to play mmos have taken steps in the wrong direction,
give women skimpy armor, with oversized busts and under sized waists. These mmos often use
these overly sexualized women in their advertising.

More often than not women in video games are damsels in distress, that the main man
protagonist has to save (Lauren Janik).As a trope the Damsel in Distress is a plot device in
which a female character is placed in a perilous situation from which she cannot escape on her
own and must then be rescued by a male character, usually providing a core incentive or
motivation for the protagonists quest.(Feminist Frequency). Princess peach from the Mario
franchise is a perfect example, she is always locked up hoping Mario will save her.

There is also the treatment women get when they join online games "Are women not
playing hardcore games because they don't like them? Or because they feel alienated?"
summarises Prof Williams. Some women playing hard core games like Call of Duty are often
subject to harassment when men discover that they are women (Why does sexism persist in the
video games industry?). Women get messages sent to them telling them to Make me a
sandwich and many worse comments(Dr Victoria Nagy). This leads to many women never
going back to those sorts of games, they often go to single player games or casual games
instead(BBC). Many women avoid online all together because they have heard about the views
of the online community, women like Lauren Janik. Lauren Janik grew up playing video games
with her little sister but avoided online. Video game industry even says that they are "leaving a
lot of money on the table by alienating women,"(BBC)

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