During the global pandemic, the gaming industry saw a huge boom as its revenue increased steadily but massively. However, not only did the gaming revenue increase but the demography of gamers also saw a huge change. For instance, 44% of all the gamers in the United States in 2020 were women. This percentage was 40-28% for the Asian continent according to reports from Niko Partners and Google.
Numerous studies have indicated that female gamers are on the rise across the globe, which is a welcome surprise.
Why Are People Playing Games?
Even though it might look like males and females are playing games for the same reason, it is not the case. Numerous studies have revealed that the motivation for playing games differs across gender. For example, most people play non Gamstop PayPal casinos to compete and challenge themselves.
On the other hand, the males are playing games, especially games that belong to the hyper-casual category with TapTap for fighting their stress and to get a sense of achievement. Most of the time, the female gender is engaged in gaming due to social reasons. However, most males are playing games for passing their time or for recreational reasons. For instance, most male gamers prefer to actively take part in devising strategy in the game and leave the casual part of the game to Auto Clicker which are useful in completing a level at a rapid pace. In addition to that, studies have indicated that females are not limiting themselves to any particular genre of game.
The females play games across all the genres, especially the games which are popular in different platforms and devices. The increase of female gamers in the gaming industry indicates that it is going through a change to ensure that the gaming industry is gender-inclusive, which obviously is commendable.
A report by Forbes has also indicated that 63% of the mobile gamers are women and only 37% of the mobile gamers are male. A survey has indicated that women love playing desktop adventure games, followed by RPG, action, MMORPG and strategy games.
The Composition Of Workforce In The Gaming Industry
Even though the number of female gamers is rising, the same cannot be said for the workforce of the gaming industry. Even now, 84% of the executive positions of the gaming companies are occupied by men and the rest by women. The representation of females in the gaming industry is still a problem. While trying to dive deep to understand this screwed up representation of males and females in the gaming industry, it was revealed that many women felt that their gender acted like a limiting factor in their careers. Also, 33% of the women faced issues like bullying and harassment in the gaming industry because of their gender.
The representation of males and females in the workforce of the gaming industry is also directly visible in the gaming products too. For instance, only 5% of video games have females as their protagonists. The gender stereotype is clearly visible in such gaming products. In addition to that, the female characters which sometimes appear in the gaming products mostly appear in a hypersexualized and objectified manner. Thankfully, reports have indicated that the percentage of female characters as protagonists in video games has been increasing over the past few years.
It is important to consider the fact that 46% of the worldwide games are female and on the basis of that increase the representation of women in the workforce of the gaming industry. It is important to drop off the gender stereotype in the gaming industry and the work for the same should start from the grassroots level. For instance, women should be encouraged to pursue courses on game designing or handling other technical aspects. It is only when the ratio of men and women in the courses of designers and programmers are improved, that the presentation of the female in the actual workforce can be improved.
In addition to that, it is important for gaming companies to create an inclusive working environment while keeping the importance of diversity in mind. In fact, many companies are already working towards creating a more gender-inclusive work environment. Also, many venture capitalist companies who are interested in investing in gaming companies have stated that the probability of investing in a gaming company is more when at least one of the co-founders is a woman. The future for the female gamers and the females who want to work in the gaming industry is improving for sure and the result of the same will be visible in the upcoming years.
