When thinking about video games there’s a certain picture inscribed into everyone’s minds, and that is of the juvenile male sitting in a secluded room, devoid of real life and caring only about their “game”. At least i’m pretty sure most moms think like that :p. What you will never think about is a female individual playing the “games” and there is a very good reason for that. Almost all video game marketing done these past 30 years focuses around male players, and tend to suggest, they concern male gamers alone. It’s the kind of stereotype like boys play with cars and guns, while the girls have their dolls and mini kitchenware. To an extent all of this was true, up until 10 years ago when the first mainstream tech appeared in the form of smartphones.

Of course female gamers existed before that, they were just the minority. With the introduction of smartphones people that would never normally play video games, suddenly had access to a library of games in a way similar to what consoles had. Slowly they started playing the cute mini app store games and realized ” hey this is fun, i want more”. This resulted in a lot of female gamers taking the plunge into the serious pc/console gaming. Essentially video games were a taboo industry for females. They usually didn’t even consider trying them out in the first place, as it was considered a “men’s thing”. All of this has changed now.

According to a research made in 2015, female gamers now comprise the majority of gamers, holding a whooping 52% of the gaming market share. If you think about it, till a few years ago a male dominated market, is now being overrun by females. So, if all that is true, then why do female gamers still feel like a minority in most people’s minds? Well the answer to that is more complicated than most people think.

First of all the well known harassment issues. Female gamers tend to hide their identity when playing online games to avoid being harassed by male players. Unfortunately the female gamer idea, is not mature enough in most male gamers, resulting in sexism and often obscene behaviours. It’s very rare you will join a public gaming channel and listen to a female gamer, that doesn’t mean they are not there, quite the contrary.

Secondly, since female gamers don’t have the testosterone, e-penis enlargement, issues male gamers have, they don’t care about dominating others or showing off. They mostly care about having fun and being efficient. The best team/guild leader will always be a female gamer. But again since they don’t show-off or try to fight their way into stupid online arguments they appear non existent.

Lastly female gamers are not blindsided into “serious gaming”. They will both play Castleville on facebook and later login LoL and wipe your ass. Why? well because it’s fun and they don’t care. Males are too busy justifying their prowess over how serious the game they are playing is. Thus a major number of female gamers utilize different platforms from the classic gaming arsenal of consoles and pc’s.

If you take all of that into consideration, nowadays, we are in a very strange situation, where the majority of gamers are female, but they are still treated as the minority. From personal experience and gaming with my wife for over 7 years i can truthfully say, that female gamers, even tho having different gaming priorities are equal if not better than their male counterparts. Humanity has evolved, in part because of sexual equality, this past century. In the same way gaming, now still trying to identify itself in society, will mature in a similar way the following years.