Women and Video Games: A troublesome relationship
(This article was researched using Kognie, an AI Research Assistant.)
Online games and esports have always been male-dominated, as you can find only a handful of female pro players in the world. You may have witnessed several instances where gamers are unfriendly to women or even harassed them in online games. Many of these instances involve toxic players who like to gatekeep the game, often saying phrases like, “Girls do not belong in gaming” or “Women are bad at games”. In this blog post, we cover some reasons why women and video games have had such a troublesome relationship.
Gaming has taken off recently with the esports professional scene only getting increasingly popular. And although the number of pro players has increased, even someone familiar with esports will have a tough time naming a female pro player.
Why is this the case? Certain factors can play a role, like gender-specific socialization, where girls do not get enough exposure to video games at a young age, while their male counterparts enjoy them freely. We will get more into this later when we go in-depth and analyze the reasons behind this disparity and its effects on women gamers.
Women and Video Games: Why is the number of Women in Esports so low?
At the very start, we must analyze this simple question. Why is the number of female pro players in competitive games so low? The number of female players is not zero, but it is far less than their male counterparts. To answer this, we have to look at some different factors that might play a role in it.
The stigma of "Women are bad at video games"
YouTube: Devin Nash
This is the most common phrase you will encounter when it comes to discrimination against female players in the online gaming community. Even though men call women bad at games, there is zero evidence of that being the case. Why does this happen? This is because of the vicious cycle of discrimination that leads to women leaving the game. We elaborate on the cause in the following paragraphs.
If you have followed esports, you might be familiar with many teams. However, teams comprising female members or an all-female team, are very rare in popular esports.
YouTube: Nicolai
Even when there are teams, they seem to fare badly in games. A famous example of this is Vaevictis Esports (2019) in League of Legends who have a 28 lose-streak in competitive play with their female roster. Another is Team Siren, from the same game, who became a meme in the community due to having a poorly made promo video and bad performance.
However, these stories do not mean that females are bad at video games. A study done in 2020 showed that the overall playtime in spatial-action games determined the performance of both genders. Females can also perform at a similar rate or better, depending upon the time spent on it (American Behavioral Scientist). A second study done as early as 2016, showed that female players advance just as fast as men in MMOs (Wiley Online Library).
After looking at these studies, we tried to find a few that reinforced the “women are bad at games” stigma, but surprisingly we found none. This statement has been debunked in many studies, but it persists in gaming communities even now.
Harassment, Gender-based Toxicity, and Gaming as a skill
Women and Video Games (image via. pexels.com/RODNAE Productions)
As mentioned in the previous section, gamers (regardless of gender) improve over time as they are exposed to the game. Therefore, gaming can be understood as a skill that one can learn over time. But when online harassment and sexist behavior are taken into account, the matter becomes clear. These issues force some women to avoid playing, which in turn causes their skill level to drop, reinforcing the stigma that women cannot play games. This is a vicious cycle that has been born from online toxicity and sexist behavior.
A study done in 2021 showed that female gamers face harassment from men, which in turn made women minimize their presence within online gaming spaces. Men, who did not face these problems, dominated the gaming culture. These factors played a role in showcasing women as outsiders and men as natural gamers in gaming cultures, further leading to the cycle of marginalization of women in gaming (Bertan Buyukozturk. 2021).
Another study done by Reach3 and Lenovo showed that almost 59% of women use male characters and non-gendered names to avoid conflict or harassment. Moreover, a total of 77% of women stated that they had problems in games due to their gender. Out of these, 44% faced unsolicited relationship proposals (Reach3). This is concerning because:
(1) Women will prefer to hide their identity to avoid any conflict or harassment and (2) Harassment has become so commonplace that women have started to simply accept it or disregard it, instead of fighting back against it. In many cases, this can also lead to complete withdrawal from the game (Jesse Fox, Wai Yen Teng. 2016).
All of these factors play a role in women preferring to simply take a backseat in gaming or withdraw from gaming altogether. Toxicity in gaming is still a problem and many women have directly faced it in games. You can find out more about Toxicity in gaming, here.
Gaming Preferences
Going back to female players and their absence in popular esports, this chart by Quantic Foundry presents a more direct answer. It showcased:
Percentage of Gamers in Each Genre that are Female (image via. quanticfoundry.com)
The chart showed that female gamers had low participation in genres like Sports, FPS, MOBA, and Strategy games. However, these genres are the core of esports right now, with FPS like Call of Duty, Valorant, and PUBG, MOBAs like League of Legends and Dota 2, and Fighting and Football in the sports section.
Female gamers preferred Match 3 and Sim type of games the most, followed by Puzzle, MMOs, and Drama.
Game Development and In-game characters vs Women
Jill Valentine from Resident Evil (Image via. Capcom)
While discussing the problems faced by women directly in games, like harassment, gender-based discrimination, and social stigma, we cannot forget smaller issues that are present in the games themselves.
Over-sexualization of female characters has been deemed a problem in social media for quite some time. The argument proposed that due to the lack of female game developers; male game developers are creating ‘sexually appealing’ female characters that satisfy the male fantasy. With this, only being a slight problem in older games, we move on to the bigger issue. The issue of the game’s protagonist.
The protagonist in a game is the central focus for the players and the one with which players connect the most. In the chart below we see the number of male vs female protagonists in games (2015-2020).
Find more statistics at Statista
In 2015, 32% of the protagonists were male, while only 9% were female. Comparing this to 2020, where 23% are male and 18% are female, we can see that the game industry has taken significant steps forward in including more diversity.
Women and Video Games: Situation in 2022
Find more statistics at Statista
According to a survey, women comprise almost half the gamers in the United States in 2022, coming at an all-time high of 48%. However, you should note that this percentage takes into account mobile gaming, single-player games, and multiplayer games. Female global viewership of esports has also increased and now stands at a global average of 22%. The involvement of women in gaming has increased a lot in the last decade.
YouTube: theScore esports
Moreover, there are several women playing games in competitive formats, some important names being Sasha “Scarlett” Hostyn and Li “Liooon” Xiaomeng. The former is a professional Starcraft 2 player and is the top-ranked female esports player in the world. She is also ranked in the top 500 gamers around the world.
YouTube: ESPN Esports
The latter is a Hearthstone player, who made history in 2019, as the first female player to win a BlizzCon Esports tournament. Her motivational speech after winning the tournament stands as one of the major moments in gaming history.
We're gonna need a bigger trophy cabinet... pic.twitter.com/WVEppCnO5S
— G2 Esports (@G2esports) September 1, 2022
Overall, the entry of women in games has increased with several new esports pro-teams featuring female players. Some examples are G2Gozen, Dignitas Fe, Godsent, etc. G2 has also released a new League of Legends roster in 2022, with a new all-female roster. This team is name G2Hel, and as for their performance, we will have to wait and see.
The Kognie Team aims to provide well-researched articles such as this on many topics. If you are interested in gaming, we recommend checking out our other articles on The Story of Cyberpunk 2077: Disaster and Redemption & The Rising Popularity of Indie Games.