Gaming has been a great interest of mine, ever since my first SEGA Genesis console playing Sonic The Hedgehog from that cartridge you had to blow on. Recently, however, I've gotten more into gaming. I've dabbled in games on the Xbox 360, Playstation, Wii, Nintendo DS, PC games, and social media games. And all throughout my life, it was rare to find another girl with the same interest in gaming as me. Even in college! Maybe it's the fact that I'm a business student, but come on... isn't UT is supposed to have a student organization for everything? But I digress...While the popularity of video games in girls is apparently on the rise, (a recent study showed girls make up 38% of total gamers),4 girls are still looked at as incapable of being good at playing games: from being harassed on Xbox Live to the disbelief when a girl won this year's Ultimate Gamer from WCG.3 And, women are also still very much underrepresented at game conferences. Austin's GDC Online 5, from my own approximation, had about 30% women attendees.
So, how come if studies show nearly 40% of gamers are girls, I still see a store full of guys at GameStop?
"38% of gamers" is a statistic I'd like to explore, primarily because "games" is a pretty broad term. It can mean anything from Playstation 3 games to social media games on Facebook. In my Advertising in Video Games class, we learned that one of the fundamental reasons that girls aren't big gamers is simply because guys make the games. It's no wonder that you don't find too many girl gamers when 88% of the industry is men,1 and they usually create games to reflect what guys like.
However, things are looking up for girls. Female professional gamers (gamers that go to tournaments across the country, kick butt, and win money...for a living!) are now more common. Take Ciji Thornton, for example (image left). She's a big Super Street Fighter and Guitar Hero gamer. Or, Katherine Gunn, who claimed WCG's Ultimate Gamer title and caused a big stir for being the first girl ever to win. Networks have popped up online that cater to girl gamers, like www.GirlGamer.com. There is even a group of girls that play professionally and are sometimes considered the spokesmen of girl gamers called the Frag Dolls.
So, here are some questions I'd like to answer for my Current Topic Report.
- What video games do girls play?
- Why do they play it? What draws them to this game, what is appealing about it?
- Why don't they play other games that are out there?
- How do they feel when they compete against guys?
- Does it take a certain personality for a girl to be a "gamer"? For example, do only shy girls or tomboys play games?
- What can people in the gaming industry do to change that and make it more inclusive and accessible to all or most girls?
- Does this barrier between men and women in games exist simply because every industry is male dominated industry?
These are probably questions people in the industry are trying to answer now, but I'd love to find out what is the driving force behind the over representation of men in the gaming world.
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April - Great job on this post... I love the idea for your paper. I'm also impressed at the number of articles you found already. I think your questions are good and provide a nice focus for your paper. Let me know if you want to chat about anything along the way.
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