The Challenges of Being a Woman Gamer
The traditional image of a gamer is a teenage boy hunched over a screen in a darkened room, blasting away at hordes of aliens or enemy soldiers.
It’s an image pushed in popular culture but is an outdated stereotype that is slowly being discredited. Here in the U.S., Statista suggest that women gamers make up 46% of the demographics: "Those typical stereotypes you see in the past, they don't really exist very much anymore," Matthew Grizzard, an assistant professor of communication at the University of Buffalo said. "We've grown up with the medium — it's just so ubiquitous now."
There are still many challenges facing women gamers, from the traditional lack of representation to new and concerning trends of online abuse. Representation has long been an issue in gaming, although the trend is now for equality as much as possible in the bigger games.
One of the very first to offer a female protagonist was the successful Tomb Raider franchise. Lara Croft was very much a female ‘Indiana Jones’ character and became a much-loved part of gaming culture. The Tomb Raider game on Foxy Games is one of many titles that feature strong action women, including Warrior Goddess and Forbidden Thrones, carrying on the representation of women on the leading gaming platform.
Most big releases now either feature a woman protagonist or the option to play as one. The pinnacle of the Assassin’s Creed series, AC: Odyssey, featured the option to play as either Alexios or Kassandra. It was a first for the series, although AC: Syndicate did clumsily allow you to control both Jacob and Evie Fry.
Representation may be important, but attitudes towards women gamers and their preferred games also needs to change. Whilst the Sims title certainly appealed to the younger female gamer developing themes of doll’s houses and keeping families, just like their male counterparts, there is no specific genre that appeals solely to women. The industry is slowly realizing that women who game are just as likely to be slashing their way through Tamriel on Skyrim as they are building a family on Sims.
A Polygon article talks about pink gaming accessories and how they’ve become very successful products in their own right. The balance is between creating something that is offensively aimed at women gamers and putting out a product that does appeal to them as well as their male counterparts. Pink is certainly in vogue at the moment and its popularity has helped break down some of the barriers presented to women gamers.
Attitudes may be changing amongst developers, but sadly other gamers are not always so progressive. Leena van Deventer, an award-winning game developer, told The Guardian of the shocking online abuse she received playing Team Fortress 2. After logging off and going back on pretending to be a 15-year-old boy, attitudes changed.
“One of the guys who was the main aggressors, who I’d identified as a threat if I was playing as a woman — he took me under his wing,” she says. “He was like, ‘Here you go grasshopper, I’ve got your back, I’ve got your health.’”
The fight for equality will not be won and lost in the gaming field, but some male gamers are seemingly doing their best to revert back to the favored stereotypes of a decade or two ago. However, as developers keep including female characters in strong roles in games, it will continue to change attitudes towards the woman gamer, which can only be positive.