Like it or not, the world of gaming has been heavily dominated by males for years and years. However, the pendulum is slowly turning and the gaming world is beginning to cater for female customers. The old stereotype of a girlfriend watching Emmerdale whilst her boyfriend sits locked away in the bedroom playing FIFA could be about to end.
Recent figures in the UK suggest that the ratio between men and women playing video games is now 58 to 42 in favour of men, dashing the idea that women don’t game. In this article we take a look at how the gaming industry is adapting, or not adapting to the rise of female gamers.
Female protagonists
In a recent study it was shown that only 24 of 669 games featured a female protagonist, with the vast majority of the 24 female led games underperforming in sales. If you were asked to name a famous video game with a female protagonist which would you say? Tomb Raider?
Tomb Raider, featuring lead protagonist Lara Croft was first launched in 2001, 17 years ago and since then there have been relatively little games with lead female stars. The traditional thinking of game developers is that titles with a female protagonist don’t sell as well as a male one.
But that doesn’t really tell the true story. If Assassin’s Creed lead Ezio Auditore had been named Eva Auditore would the game have sold less copies? Probably not, because it would have been a fantastic game regardless of the sex of the protagonist.
The problem doesn’t seem to be with choosing male protagonists, but it seems to be with the execution and promotion of games with female leads.
Marketing
Regardless of how good a game is, if it isn’t marketed properly then its sales will suffer. Online advertising campaigns and traditional television campaigns can be make-or-break for video games, and that’s where the problem lies with female-led games.
Studies suggest that games with female protagonists receive 40% less money for marketing than those with male-leads. Why? Because developers are still living in the past, in a world where video games are exclusively for men.
Video game advertising has often relied on the outdated views of traditional machismo characteristics and testosterone fuelled competition, and when it’s tried to move away from that, things have gone drastically wrong…
Inherent sexism
Imagine you’re a video game advertising manager and you’re looking to appeal to a new generation of female gamers. What do you have to go on? Well, firstly you know – or believe – that women don’t game, and they much prefer cooking, cleaning and beauty.
You know that men love football, shooting and fighting. So far so unbearably-stereotypically good. In the past you’ve seen advertising campaigns for FIFA, Call Of Duty and Battlefield all aimed at the male market, all playing on traditional male stereotypes.
So if you want to appeal to women, surely you do the exact same? You throw in loads of pink in your graphics, make games with dance-modes, cooking-modes and cleaning-modes? Yeah that sounds like it’ll work!
Wrong. As Nintendo found out when they took a pink, fashion orientated approach to the marketing campaign of their game ‘Nintendogs’. The approach from Nintendo was incredibly outdated and old-fashioned and that was in 2005.
Unfortunately the gaming industry hasn’t really learned from those setbacks, instead ploughing on with the same tried-and-failed tactics.
Who’s promoting female gamers?
YouTubers. The gaming world isn’t just about the titles that get released, it’s about how they are received and what the fans add to them. YouTube and streaming sites such as Twitch have become massive.
People have become minor-celebrities because of their YouTube or Twitch gaming exploits. And female gamers are taking the bull by the horns to promote female gamers. SSSniperWolf is one of just those.
The 25-year-old first started her YouTube channel in 2013 and focused on Call Of Duty gameplay as the name would suggest. Since then she has gone on to gain over 7 million subscribers.
Elsewhere there are YouTubers such as Ihascupquake, fangs and LDSHADOWLADY all making their way as strong female leads in the gaming world.
Who’s doing well?
Despite the tone of this article being quite negative towards gaming developers, there are industries that are making progress in attracting female gamers and doing it in a normal way. Surprisingly, the industries that are excelling are online betting companies.
Unlike the video game sector, online betting seems to have no traditional customer-base and no gender bias when it comes to attracting new customers. Their net is cast far and wide to attract new business and keep revenues booming.
One company that is leading the way in attracting female gamers is Rose Slots. Unlike the majority of games, slots games provider Rose Slots have chosen to go with a female protagonist on their website in a bid not to alienate women.
The games on the site are all traditional slots, and the vast majority on the site are not overtly gender-orientated like video games. There are of course themes that could be said to cater more for women or men, but on the whole the site displays and egalitarian vibe that the video game industry could do well to recreate.
Summary
Gender stereotypes were massive in the 20th century, but people are starting to move away from them in the modern day. No longer is it acceptable define men and women to outdated stereotypes. Everyone is equal, and everyone is free to decide what they like and don’t like.
The video game industry needs to take note of this and make sure that its products cater for both sexes. Advertising campaigns should reflect this also and make every effort to move away from sexist stereotypes.
Female-led games should also receive the same marketing budgets as their male counterparts to ensure the equality of the gaming-world going forward.