Why is there less women into mainstream video games?

[PirateRose]

Woah, the first few posts of this thread is like walking into the 90's.

You just know the wrong women as far as I'm concerned. Myself and my girlfriends have been playing video games since childhood, Skyrim, Fallout, we were all really into Mass Effect till Bioware broke lore, destroyed a fantastic series, and gave much of there female fan base the middle finger by deciding the male fans were priority.

When we play multiplayer and MMO's, we usually stick together to avoid perverts and dirtbags.

You know, it's really hard to be a female fan of video games when many of the developers and players frequently spit in your face and try so hard to kick you out of the boys pillow fort.

 

[kommando367]

Because there are way more dudes than girls that actually play mainstream video games.

 

[Bara_no_Hime]

I read somewhere, that statistically, 42% of gamers are women.
Also, the majority are over 30.
Both facts fly in the face of conventional wisdom on the subject. But... These statistics do include a lot of things which aren't considered part of mainstream gaming. (Solitaire being the world's most-played game, for instance)

This.

Still, have a look at mainstream games and you might find a few answers;
Have you noticed the articles mentioning that "Games with female protagonists" don't sell?
Are you aware of how many games assume the player is a white male between the age of 15 and 25?
Mainstream gaming is, in terms of how most games are marketed, aimed at that audience.
Asking why these games aren't played that much by people who aren't officially part of the target audience is a bit like asking why more adults don't watch Sesame Street.

And this.

Ever wonder why female gamers keep arguing that we need more female protagonists? This is why.

More female (and non-straight, and non-white) protagonists will go a long way to making people who aren't white males feel comfortable and more interested in gaming.

Cause most of them you can just kind of ignore the numbers, pick a class you like and button mash your way through.

If you can "button mash your way through" then it isn't an RPG. It's a hack-and-slash fantasy game. An actual RPG requires tactics and skill.

Edit:
Wow. To those of you who have comments saying "because mainstream games are too complex for women" - wow. How amazingly insulting.

 

[Camaranth]

Ugghh I'm getting bored of seeing this thread.... short answer :There isn't!

Well okay there is but I don't think it is down to any big issue that can be solved. Why are there fewer women into hockey? Or other mainstream sports?

Yes part of it is stigma, yes women are rarely the targeted demographic and yes the default assumption of a person is male.

Personally, the games that appeal to me are single player narrative driven games. I have no real statistics to back this up but it wouldn't surprise me if this were the case for a lot of other women as well.

I've known a couple of other women who are into gaming as much as I am but we didn't really hang out much so we never talked about it or played together.

Simply, there are plenty of female gamers who play mainstream games. and we're too busy playing these games to spend the time to disprove your assumptions.

Ps: Some of you are being rather insulting in your reasoning. I'm sure it's not meant to be offensive in anyway but think a little harder about how you are generalizing over half the population, please.

 

[DRTJR]

Fandoms are incursive almost seeking to be exclusive beasts. As such in the beginning most of gaming was male dominated and that perception coupled with the protectionist attitudes that the fandom at large has overall is why a lot of the "Hard-Core" game like your boishocks and red dead redemptions are perceived to be almost always played by guys.


Also Most Commander Shepards are dudes, as in 18 percent elected to play as a femshep. So I think the female protaganist is mostly wanted by a small vocal minority and most people when given the choice are going to opt for the Male shepard vs. the female shepard. Which is kinda sad, in my humble opinion.

Source for the statistic.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/105655-BioWare-Gamers-Prefer-a-Manly-Shepard

 

[dyre]

Games are generally marketed towards a teenage, male demographic, but that's probably just one of many factors, some of which us regular people have little understanding about. Why are less men into fashion? Is it nature or nurture? An effect of our evolution that was useful at one time for one reason or another? Who knows...

Also Most Commander Shepards are dudes, as in 18 percent elected to play as a femshep. So I think the female protaganist is mostly wanted by a small vocal minority and most people when given the choice are going to opt for the Male shepard vs. the female shepard. Which is kinka sad, in my humble opinion.

Doesn't seem that sad to me. I tried both a maleshep and femshep, and ended up going through the trilogy with a femshep, but it's understandable that in a roleplaying game, it's easier to play the role of a character who is similar to you (in this case in gender terms)

 

[FEichinger]

Also Most Commander Shepards are dudes, as in 18 percent elected to play as a femshep. So I think the female protaganist is mostly wanted by a small vocal minority and most people when given the choice are going to opt for the Male shepard vs. the female shepard. Which is kinka sad, in my humble opinion.

Doesn't seem that sad to me. I tried both a maleshep and femshep, and ended up going through the trilogy with a femshep, but it's understandable that in a roleplaying game, it's easier to play the role of a character who is similar to you (in this case in gender terms)

I know of at least three more people - including myself - who played a FemShep and noone who played MaleShep (except for ME3, because fuck EA) ... I still find the statistics pretty interesting with that in mind.

 

[dyre]

Also Most Commander Shepards are dudes, as in 18 percent elected to play as a femshep. So I think the female protaganist is mostly wanted by a small vocal minority and most people when given the choice are going to opt for the Male shepard vs. the female shepard. Which is kinka sad, in my humble opinion.

Doesn't seem that sad to me. I tried both a maleshep and femshep, and ended up going through the trilogy with a femshep, but it's understandable that in a roleplaying game, it's easier to play the role of a character who is similar to you (in this case in gender terms)

I know of at least three more people - including myself - who played a FemShep and noone who played MaleShep (except for ME3, because fuck EA) ... I still find the statistics pretty interesting with that in mind.

Well, femshep's better obviously, but when we're talking about all gamers, I wouldn't be surprised if many of them played the series just for the action.

edit: what I'm saying is when we're talking about large bodies of people, it's hard to predict trends because most people suck
edit2: your avatar...what happened to vault101?

 

[Abomination]

Because not every woman likes video games? Because not every woman who likes video games likes that particular type of video game?

It's the same for men.

The reasons 'why' are too numerous, various and of fluctuating impact to give a single answer to.

The better question is why SHOULD women need to have the same demographic as males in this hobby?

 

[Joby Baumann]

I think less is the wrong word, since more women are playing games than ever before [citation needed, don't quote me on this, it just seems that way]. If by less, you mean as compared to men, it comes down to how games are marketed, i.e. the target demographic for games is 19-24 year old males. Also keep in mind that that was the target audience long enough to mean that most developers [citation needed, you read the last one] grew up around games when the target audience was males, leading it to be a male oriented market.

it really isn't too complex

 

[likalaruku]

Maybe hormones effect taste?

I'm a woman, I'm not very feminine at all, I don't get along with feminine women at all, I don't care about stereotypicaly girly things like children, family, clothes shopping, collecting shoes, romance, emotional baggage, drama, dieting, looking sexy, or keeping a clean house.

Therefore I can't see how people who are into that kind of stuff would like the same things I do; RPG & retro video games, american comic books, manga, american cartoons, anime, Dungeons & Dragons, food that actually tastes good, & cheesy indie horror comedies.

Now I went to a Bigfish Conference once & I can tell you that the bulk of Casual Gamers are middle aged women. Maybe 3 people at the whole convention under 40 & only a few men.

If ya wanna get into fake gamer girls, I'd go with the attire; All that sitting around on your ass is bad for circulation. You're gonna want sweat pants & a jacket on.

 

[Yuuki]

Here's your typical LAN gaming event/party, just randomly searched (not cherry-picked at all, google it yourself):
http://playwise.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/dsc02016.jpg
http://cult.razerzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Assembly-2.jpg
http://www.seriousteam.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/DSC_6319.jpg
http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/aa50/preeeezy/reloaded2010/SANY0080.jpg
http://friday-night-gaming.com/images/geex08/geex_lan_party.jpg
http://blog.andrewboy.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/lanparty4bg.jpg
http://www.forgelan.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/IMG_2383.jpg

Finding females IS possible, just...not easy. Now those claiming that 40-45% of gamers are female, please note that I am NOT disputing that fact. I 100% believe it, it was published officially after a lot of research.

But unfortunately that statistic was extremely "blanket" and despite me going through the entire report, I didn't find a single attempt to break-down those statistics into what genres/categories males and females are playing. There is no reason why the survey (or whatever method they used) couldn't have included gender vs genre/category, but I fear the reason it wasn't published was that it paints a rather jarring gender imbalance in what KINDS of games males/females tend to go for. At least, that is my guess.

The last thing I will say is that it's a bit silly seeing people repeatedly ranting-off their personal experiences, i.e. how many male/female gamers THEY personally have encountered. While your stories are welcome, I just hope that you're not trying to generalize/imply anything...your personal experiences are utterly insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Typical example:

Erm...Do I really want to get into this thread -.- sigh.

Pretty much all I do is game and I have female online friends who do the same... so I don't really 'get' the OP sorry.

I don't have a boyfriend despite all that gaming but that might be because I'm a bit of a ***** or ugly or something.

Now to deal with the question as to WHY...I can hazard a guess at opinions disguised as answers...

Male/Female ratio in game-development studios and teams - Roughly 1 out of every 10 game developers is female, and I believe this to be completely relevant as to why we're seeing a lack of women interested in many game genres today. In fact there are entire teams out there with zero female involvement (no dis-respect to the cute coffee girl, receptionist or the HR lady...but you're not involved with the actual game!).
Can teams full of males create games that cater to females as well? Of course, it's been done, there are multiple great examples (which I won't list here). But is it realistic to expect ALL of them to create games that appeal equally to females 100% of the time? Of course not! Of course you will see a heavy male influence, or "bias" as many call it. You're going to see lots of over-sexualisation of females, you're going to see shallow love interests placed solely to drive the plot, you're going to see a jarring lack of well-written female protagonists, you're going to see pretty balls-on-chains that you drag around. Boys/men don't particularly ENJOY such female characters, but they have no reason to lash-out against the developers for it either, they are fine with it. As long as the male protagonist is well-written and awesome, that's what matters.

We NEED to see how a team full of women would design a game, how they would differ to an average male-oriented team. Once they start becoming more common I am sure we will start to see the balance swing, we will start to see what could be the essence of a game that is aimed at females.

So the first step is getting more women interested in game development, in IT engineering, programming, etc. Nothing can be done to force the ratios and it is generally a bad idea to try to force anything. Game development schools, programming classes, universities, etc are fully open to females...but most of them would rather do Arts, Business, Medicine or the sort.

The history - say what you want, the very foundations/roots of gaming had an overwhelming male presence. In the 1970's and 1980's when Japanese companies like Sega, Nintendo, Sony, etc were still in their infancy, the entire management and developmental sides of these corporations were male. In Japan a female were more or less absent from places of power or influence during those times, so you can partially blame that (if you really feel that was the entire reason ) but there were other factors as well.
It's too difficult to point out exactly how and why gaming developed into a "boys club" thing, it happened over a very gradual period. When gaming started both girls and boys were in fact equally interested with these amazing new passtimes, even in TV adverts from that time you would've seen girls playing Pac Man and Super Mario just as much as the boys.

I believe the gender shift happened when gaming became more complicated, more advanced, more technologically-oriented than ever before. In the 90's your typical game was no more complicated than Angry Birds, but when you started seeing the rise of games like Thief, Deus Ex, Mortal Kombat, etc? Boy did I see things change. It's still a mystery to me, but I believe gaming becoming more complex/advanced the the point of becoming full-time jobs is at least a FACTOR to why fewer and fewer women were interested in it. Which brings me to my final point...

Females in techie/geek circles - Geeks and nerds are the bread and butter of gaming and technology. But there is still a jarring lack of females when it comes to those communities. Go to a big tech/PC gaming forum like Overclock.net - the community there is predominantly male. All the people doing crazy things with their computers (modding), setting crazy records, experimenting with builds, etc are predominantly male (I know it because lots of them have big hairy hands in their photos, or show their faces ). Console-oriented forums like Halo/CoD get even more one-sided, I couldn't tell you how many females existed on those forums but the sheer hostility/language and immaturity of the way people talk REALLY makes me think that the community is overwhelmingly male!

As much as I said I hate to use personal examples, I will mention my university experience - in my Java/C programming, CAD design and Electronics classes there was a grand total of ~3 girls (including me), 2 of whom dropped out halfway through because they were too busy texting friends or giggling. This is compared to 30-35+ boys, gosh I would've felt awkward as hell had I not made some decent guy-friends in those classes, can tell you that right now. In the entire Engineering campus (Network, IT, Electrical and Mechanical) there is a jarring lack of females. They are all on the other side of the campus, pursuing other degrees! Not that there's anything wrong with that, but can people see the kind of picture being painted here? Overall they're just not interested!

This leads me to think that females display less interest than males when it comes to diving head-first into the guts of gaming, engineering and technology. Something boys display a rather alarming obsession with when you look at Lego. As to WHY, oh jesus I'm not even going to bother answering this one. It's just too big a question and I've already taken a huge risk by posting my opinions thus far, anything I have to say on such a broad subject will probably see me dog-piled in hate

Please remember, these are just my opinions. Nowhere have I implied that hardcore gaming/techie/nerd women don't exist, they absolutely do. I simply implied that there are fewer of them compared to males.

I believe that the male bias in gaming is NOBODY'S fault - not of the men, not of the women, and anyone claiming otherwise is an idiot. It is simply one of the countless side-effects of how industries have shaped over decades and decades...no single person or group is responsible. So fixing such an "issue" is VERY difficult, it can only be nudged very slightly (at best) and we will have to wait for many more years more to see the gradual (very gradual!) rise of females in hobbies and industries where they weren't interested previously - that is, IF they are interested. I sure as hell am.

 

[cookyt]

I choose to interpret your question as: "Why are women a statistical minority with regard to gamers?"

I would say that it's the result of alienation due to the predominantly male game culture, and the tendency of people to attribute characteristics of their own person to faceless entities such as people online. I.e. it's male gamers assuming that other gamers are male.

As for why gamers are mostly male in the first place: I have a hypothesis. Most programmers in the 70s and 80s (when games were getting traction) were male, so when these men designed their games, they put elements which resonated more with males than with females (not to blame them, as this is a subconscious thing we all do, and it's much easier to design a game which you would enjoy playing yourself). As a result, most early games gained more traction with males than females. The difference might have started out small, but would have snowballed due to game designers wanting to design games for the largest demographic who already played games - males.

These days, the games industry is much more conscientious of the women out there, and I would like to think there are much more women producing games now than ever before, resulting in a much more gender-even experience. If this statistic is true:

I read somewhere, that statistically, 42% of gamers are women.

then the whole point might be moot, anyway.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

I don't personally know any females that play video games besides Facebook and mobile games.

As to why? I guess culturally it's seen as a boyish activity? Thus girls that do play games are seen by many as being weird.

I've befriended a fair few girls in game however, just no where near as many guys (judging from their voices).

 

[cookyt]

snip

In my response, I tried to touch on many of the points you hit, but your post is by far more complete. It was a very informed post, and I enjoyed reading it.

I think you're right that it's nobody's fault that gamers are predominantly male, and that it's mostly a result of the history of the people who built the communities we have today. I think it's strongly tied to the reason that fields like Computer Science, Mathematics, and Engineering also have a skewed M-F ratio.

To add to your anecdote about your classes, I've taken several Computer Engineering, Computer Science, and straight Mathematics classes at Uni, and there are usually very few women in those classes. The Computer Science courses usually have, at most, 5 per ~60 students (with numbers for introductory classes). Oddly, the Computer Engineering and Mathematics courses have much better numbers (10 to 15 per ~60 students), though there is still a male bias.

 

[Jingle Fett]

snip

Totally agree and that's been my personal experience in college as well. In the CG/videogame art classes I've taken, there were at most like 5 to 7 girls out of like 30 or 40 and most of the time there were fewer. That's in the art classes, the ratio in the programming courses is nothing short of a complete sausage fest. Kind of depressing but oh well.

My line of thinking is simply (like you said) that lots of girls just aren't interested. People go on and on about us needing more women in the game industry and I totally agree, but if they're not interested, there's not much that can be done about it. If I remember correctly, someone at EA said they were more than happy to hire females but they quite literally barely get any applicants, as opposed to male applicants.
Some people might call sexism, but I think some industries just appeal to different genders more than others. I mean the ratio of men working in fashion and salons and stuff like that is probably also similarly skewed, just like how there are fewer women in construction and similar manual labor jobs.

Then again, I just had a thought. Guys at a young age often play with lego and stuff, which plays right in with engineering and programming stuff, it builds logic skills, and does so at the age when we're learning the most. Girls on the other hand often end up playing with barbies and dolls and dress up, which plays right in with design and artistic type skills. And the stuff you do when you're young affects your interests later in life...
So I wonder, if you had a really young girl and only allowed her to play with lego and stuff like that (or had the first toy she ever played with be lego or something), would she be more inclined to go into programming/engineering? Would that stuff come more naturally to her later in life? If you had a boy and only allowed him to play with dolls and dress up games, would he have less of an interest in programming/engineering and more of an interest in fashion?
In my experience there definitely do seem to be more female CG artists/animators than female programmers and that would fit this line of thought because 3d modeling and animating is more design based than logic based...


Anyways, just thinking aloud with that last bit, I know obviously not all guys who play with lego automatically go into programming/engineering and not all girls who play with dolls go into fashion, I'm just thinking in general...

 

[Yuuki]

Then again, I just had a thought. Guys at a young age often play with lego and stuff, which plays right in with engineering and programming stuff, it builds logic skills, and does so at the age when we're learning the most. Girls on the other hand often end up playing with barbies and dolls and dress up, which plays right in with design and artistic type skills. And the stuff you do when you're young affects your interests later in life...
So I wonder, if you had a really young girl and only allowed her to play with lego and stuff like that (or had the first toy she ever played with be lego or something), would she be more inclined to go into programming/engineering? Would that stuff come more naturally to her later in life? If you had a boy and only allowed him to play with dolls and dress up games, would he have less of an interest in programming/engineering and more of an interest in fashion?

Trust me, you're not the only one who's had that idea

The most relevant example I can find is the Norwegian Gender Equality Paradox documentary, which was about getting to the root of why males and females choose the occupations they choose. In Norway there is an huge male bias in the construction/engineering industry and a huge female bias in the nurse/medicine industry. No matter what the government tried, the ratios always returned to what they were...so they concluded that "equality" had already been achieved, everyone is happy doing what they're doing.

Now a word of caution, this documentary has been called all sorts of things ranging from "amazingly informational" to "these people are insane", I'll let you decide what to think of it.

At 10:45 they start looking at children and toys, at 16:50 they look into just how early babies can choose gender-specific things...


(again, make what you want out of it )

As for my personal opinion, I think I will need to see a LOT more evidence before I believe that a 9-month-old baby can already associate with masculine/feminine toys. Repeat the test with like...2000 babies or something, 1000 boys and 1000 girls (shush parents, it's not cruel and it's in the name of science!).

I mean if it's really true, then what you're suggesting about forcing a girl to grow-up with lego/toy guns/etc may completely fail and the first time she lays eyes on a pink barbie (if you let her) she'll desperately want it.

Scary stuff!

 

[Eddie the head]

Maybe hormones effect taste?

I'm a woman, I'm not very feminine at all, I don't get along with feminine women at all, I don't care about stereotypicaly girly things like children, family, clothes shopping, collecting shoes, romance, emotional baggage, drama, dieting, looking sexy, or keeping a clean house.

Therefore I can't see how people who are into that kind of stuff would like the same things I do; RPG & retro video games, american comic books, manga, american cartoons, anime, Dungeons & Dragons, food that actually tastes good, & cheesy indie horror comedies.

Now I went to a Bigfish Conference once & I can tell you that the bulk of Casual Gamers are middle aged women. Maybe 3 people at the whole convention under 40 & only a few men.

If ya wanna get into fake gamer girls, I'd go with the attire; All that sitting around on your ass is bad for circulation. You're gonna want sweat pants & a jacket on.

I don't know for sure about a lot of this but I would say less hormones and more brain chemistry. Men and woman do have differences in how they think due to differing amounts of "Gray matter" and "White matter." I am not an expert but I think "Gray matter" has more to do with hand eye coordination.

Heres an interesting artical about it.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/men-women-different-brains.htm

 

[BlackStar42]

Honestly I actually find it harder finding men who play games. I would actually love to have a boyfriend who shared this interest with me.

This. Wholeheartedly.

More on topic, though, there are plenty of women into mainstream video games. Myself and my closest three female friends, for instance.

Thing is, though, not all women are into mainstream video games. Just like not all men are. Plenty of guys are content with nothing but casual games as well. Not everyone likes more "hardcore" video games - it's a sad fact of life. Different people like different things.

Hey now don't fight, there's plenty of me to go around!

Sorry, had to.

From what I remember from secondary school, there's quite a bit of stigma attached to them still, a lot of girls just assume it's a boy thing. We've been trying to get one of our housemates into Kingdom Hearts because she's a huge Disney fan, and another flatmate who does history is usually interested when me and a friend talk about Europa Universalis, so I've been doing my bit to help get women interested I guess

Captcha: tea leaf

You read my mind. *puts the kettle on*