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[A.Romero]

They are just looking to sell more and maybe a bit of idealism. It seems that that stuff comes in waves. We had the bald space marine fad and now it's just another inclination seeking to get more money.

I'm a 40 yo dude and it never bothered me to not have an option to swap characters. Hell, I'm Mexican and we seldom get good representation in games. It's the same to me. I just want to have well written characters, I don't mind if they like men or women.

Games became more accesible because they got massified. They appeal to a much wider audience now. I can't spend that many hours trying to master a game so I welcome that change. I don't need to show how good I am at every turn. I rather have a wide variety of games that I can try and play without having to invest dozen hours to start enjoying. I'm up for variety so it's great that difficult games are still there for whoever has the time and the inclination.

Overall I think we are having a hard time accepting that the industry is transitioning and looking for another audience. At least that's what I'm seeing with friends.

 

[SEGAvangelist]

I think romance options bring in a lot of female gamers. Lots of new female gamers around due to Baldur's Gate 3, IMO.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

I think it might have to do with ESG score stuff. Japanese publishers are still making traditional looking protagonists, the kind western studios were doing 10+ years ago, because they still believe it gives them a market advantage.

This **** doesn't make any sense unless publishers are receiving some kind of hidden benefit...

 

[AlphaDump]

Gaming has entered the mainstream. Mobile games helped with that push and acceptance.

And for what it is worth, I grew up as a gamer, and now I'm a parent and introduced it to mine. My 4 year old daughter doesn't care about politics, she just finds them fun like anyone else after being introduced to it.

 

[balls of snow]

Girls play CoD. They play the same mainstream casual online shooters that guys do.

Truth. This instafamous model regularly plays cod. Id say let the floodgates open.

 

[Woopah]

Your theory only works if you believe women are naturally not as good at games as men. Which is kinda fucked up.

I'd say it's more to do with the industry moving past "games are for boys" and more towards "games are for people".

 

[mckmas8808]

I have no data to back this, and if there is id be curious to see for an open mind.

With all of the inclusion we see in gaming: female protagonist, female inclusive story narratives, etc, which have all been suggested to help "bring girls to the gaming industry", I find that, being less of an impact.

I feel that the bigger drive, which isn't even a target to a specific gamers, more egalitarian, is games have become generally more easier.

Video games are also more accessible. Even PC gaming, at the higher end, is far more accessible to everyone that years agoe which allows girl to organically.

Dang man........you realize this is kinda sexist right? It's like games were too hard for girls, so lets make them easier to have more girls play them.

 

[Mibu no ookami]

Your theory only works if you believe women are naturally not as good at games as men. Which is kinda fucked up.

I'd say it's more to do with the industry moving past "games are for boys" and more towards "games are for people".

I don't think this is the case. I actually had this discussion with my sister at Thanksgiving.

My nephew wanted everyone to play a one game elimination tournament of Rocket League. Most of us had never played, but at least my brother and I have played video games extensively.

It's not a question of women not being naturally as good as men, but everyone playing a new game they've never played before isn't everyone starting off in the same place. We brought 30+ years of game mechanics and understanding to the competition.

We didn't have to ask questions like what is the button for boost. We were able to just intuit it. You saw someone use boost, you know there is a boost button, you try the buttons that make the most sense for boost in that graphical configuration.

It's like saying Person X and Person Y are equally suited to practice medicine even though Person X went to medical school and Person Y didn't.

 

[U n i o n 0015]

I think it might have to do with ESG score stuff. Japanese publishers are still making traditional looking protagonists, the kind western studios were doing 10+ years ago, because they still believe it gives them a market advantage.

This **** doesn't make any sense unless publishers are receiving some kind of hidden benefit...

People who are butt ugly want to see themselves represented in games, not who they ideally want to be.

 

[ResurrectedContrarian]

Dang man........you realize this is kinda sexist right? It's like games were too hard for girls, so lets make them easier to have more girls play them.

Taking into account obvious patterns of difference between men and women is not sexist.

Women who play games is one demographic, which might have some size depending on the type of game. But women who want to play difficulty-focused games is clearly much smaller in comparison.

You don't have to extrapolate a lot about abilities to even make that claim. You can simply observe things like the higher proportion of aggressive competitive interest in general in boys, or the often repeated and validated tendency for boys to more often have an interest in things/systems over people, which correlates easily with things like obsessively speed-running a hard game.

 

[Woopah]

I don't think this is the case. I actually had this discussion with my sister at Thanksgiving.

My nephew wanted everyone to play a one game elimination tournament of Rocket League. Most of us had never played, but at least my brother and I have played video games extensively.

It's not a question of women not being naturally as good as men, but everyone playing a new game they've never played before isn't everyone starting off in the same place. We brought 30+ years of game mechanics and understanding to the competition.

We didn't have to ask questions like what is the button for boost. We were able to just intuit it. You saw someone use boost, you know there is a boost button, you try the buttons that make the most sense for boost in that graphical configuration.

It's like saying Person X and Person Y are equally suited to practice medicine even though Person X went to medical school and Person Y didn't.

So do you think your brother was good at the game because of his gender, or because of 30+ years of experience?

If the answer is his experience, then why does his gender play any part in it? You'd have to look at the reason why men had more experience with games than women.

To use your medical analogy, it would be like saying that there are more female doctors today because the exams are easier.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

People who are butt ugly want to see themselves represented in games, not who they ideally want to be.

The history of Hollywood, music, TV, and advertising would suggest otherwise, no?

 

[Mibu no ookami]

So do you think your brother was good at the game because of his gender, or because of 30+ years of experience?

If the answer is his experience, then why does his gender play any part in it? You'd have to look at the reason why men had more experience with games than women.

To use your medical analogy, it would be like saying that there are more female doctors today because the exams are easier.

His gender plays a factor, because 30 years ago my sisters weren't playing video games or even debating playing video games.

I discussed this specifically with her and I'm quoting her on that. "You've been playing games for more than 30 years, I don't know any of the controls because I didn't grow up playing games"

And if you look at the games that were popular with girls in the past its been largely games like SimCity, The Sims, Animal Crossing, Mario Kart, Tetris that don't really push you on controls.

I've got 3 sisters, and to a person I don't think any of them could play a FPS on console because of the need to use the right analog stick and them having zero experience with games that require it.

That's not to say that they couldn't learn, but the learning process would almost certainly be long and frustrating.

There are generally two types of gamers who are good at playing 3D games like that.

Gamers who evolved through the process of games going 3D and the evolution of 3D gamepads or gamers who grew up as kids playing in 3D environments.

My niece would be far more likely to pick up the controls of an FPS than my sisters would be able to at this point in their lives.

It's the same as trying to learn a new language as an adult or learning how to ski/snowboard as an adult. Ignoring the fact that women historically weren't playing these games the last 20-40 years is a complete misnomer.

 

[Woopah]

His gender plays a factor, because 30 years ago my sisters weren't playing video games or even debating playing video games.

I discussed this specifically with her and I'm quoting her on that. "You've been playing games for more than 30 years, I don't know any of the controls because I didn't grow up playing games"

And if you look at the games that were popular with girls in the past its been largely games like SimCity, The Sims, Animal Crossing, Mario Kart, Tetris that don't really push you on controls.

I've got 3 sisters, and to a person I don't think any of them could play a FPS on console because of the need to use the right analog stick and them having zero experience with games that require it.

That's not to say that they couldn't learn, but the learning process would almost certainly be long and frustrating.

There are generally two types of gamers who are good at playing 3D games like that.

Gamers who evolved through the process of games going 3D and the evolution of 3D gamepads or gamers who grew up as kids playing in 3D environments.

My niece would be far more likely to pick up the controls of an FPS than my sisters would be able to at this point in their lives.

It's the same as trying to learn a new language as an adult or learning how to ski/snowboard as an adult. Ignoring the fact that women historically weren't playing these games the last 20-40 years is a complete misnomer.

I'm not ignoring that fact that women didn't play games as much, I'm saying that the reason for this is how the industry operated, was marketed and fit into the broader culture, rather than the difficulty.

If I'm understanding the OP correctly, their argument is:

90s - more men than women play games, because women find the games too difficult and men don't.

Now - the gender gap is smaller, because games are now easy enough for women can play them too.

So in your scenario, they'd be saying that your brother grew up with gaming because he was good enough to play games in the 90s. And your sisters didn't because they weren't good enough.

Whereas I would contend that the difference is probably due to the culture in the 90s, and your brother having more interest in gaming than your sisters. Not because your brother is naturally better at gaming than your sisters are.

I hope I'm making sense.

 

[Mibu no ookami]

I'm not ignoring that fact that women didn't play games as much, I'm saying that the reason for this is how the industry operated, was marketed and fit into the broader culture, rather than the difficulty.

If I'm understanding the OP correctly, their argument is:

90s - more men than women play games, because women find the games too difficult and men don't.

Now - the gender gap is smaller, because games are now easy enough for women can play them too.

So in your scenario, they'd be saying that your brother grew up with gaming because he was good enough to play games in the 90s. And your sisters didn't because they weren't good enough.

Whereas I would contend that the difference is probably due to the culture in the 90s, and your brother having more interest in gaming than your sisters. Not because your brother is naturally better at gaming than your sisters are.

I hope I'm making sense.

I see what you're saying.

Yeah, I'm not agreeing with OP here.

 

[DownLikeBCPowder]

I'm sure it's all sorts of things. When I was in grade school, I can only think of one girl I was aware of that played anything more than the random bout of Tetris before putting the GameBoy (if they had one) in the closet or something. That's really not to say anything of the guys - plenty of guys would make fun of you for playing too much Sega or whatever. On the other hand things have slowly become mainstream as time has continued and the market has become more prevalent, a lot of kids play games these days and I imagine part of it at least is people like me grew up and introduced it to their children regardless of gender. My daughter plays all kinds of games.

 

[funking giblet]

Bunch of Pantshitters getting upset at cartoons is what it is.

 

[Raonak]

Back in the day, computers, and by extension video games, were seen as a very technical niche thing, it was only for nerds, who were mostly male.

Then in the 00s, videogames became mainsteam amongst males, and then in the 10s, they became mainsteam in general.

The change in demographics is just due to natural audience expansion as game companies realised that everyone loves videogames

 

[BadBurger]

Stuff like Twitch and TikTok introduced many thousands of women to not just gaming, but also the entire online culture surrounding gaming, so publishers and devs want to cater to that new audience. They have money to burn, and they attract other potential customers with even more cash to spend.

Same thing happened with comic books a decade ago.

 

[S0ULZB0URNE]

Woman are the biggest buyers of games.

Someone has to buy little Jimmy the cod and gta that he shouldn't be playing and buy those Fortnite skins.

 

[cash_longfellow]

Think you have to open up a bit.

In Ancient Greece, females were so excluded that the roles of female parts went to men.

Your example of the Little Mermaid was a poor one and really not in line with Black Panther.

It's like saying James Bond has to be Scottish and have brown hair. Was it forced inclusion to have Daniel Craig play him? It seems really interesting where we want to draw the lines, but I'm going to leave it there as I don't think it's prudent to keep discussing this in this forum.

Wut?

And, also, it isn’t prudent to keep discussing here?…it’s literally the thread topic. Using Ancient Greece as an example is quite interesting considering we are talking about 2023 and media.

 

[U n i o n 0015]

The history of Hollywood, music, TV, and advertising would suggest otherwise, no?

Yes, but not in like the past 5-6 years or so.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Your theory only works if you believe women are naturally not as good at games as men. Which is kinda fucked up.

I'd say it's more to do with the industry moving past "games are for boys" and more towards "games are for people".

Isn't it likely that, on average, women aren't as good at games than men? Hand eye coordination, reflexes, spatial recognition etc...

We've seen a number of all female esports teams perform pretty terribly over the last few years. That doesn't prove anything but it doesn't exactly close the door on the notion either.

Yes, but not in like the past 5-6 years or so.

Has human nature changed in the last 5 - 6 years or is a strange ideology perverting what we get from these companies? Again, why are studios from Japan and Europe still pumping out games with traditionally attractive protagonists?

 

[ResurrectedContrarian]

Isn't it likely that, on average, women aren't as good at games than men? Hand eye coordination, reflexes, spatial recognition etc...

We've seen a number of all female esports teams perform pretty terribly over the last few years. That doesn't prove anything but it doesn't exactly close the door on the notion either.

It's hardly an extreme position at all to expect this to be true.

After all, even in nations that have open and heavily promoted pathways for women into chess for many decades, there simply are never women who can enter into the highest levels of chess ability to compete with the top men.

Of course, that's a matter of measuring extreme outlier ability. "Hard video games" isn't at that level. But some of the same underlying conditions hold; for instance, men being more oriented towards spatial play and much more likely to have the borderline autistic traits that power many niche hardcore gaming genres.

Even if you see some women playing COD or whatever when it becomes popular, it's always going to be men who are the ones creating and building out niche genres long before they cross the barrier of social acceptability and start pulling in female players.

 

[Apocryphon]

Marmots don’t use money. They have shoes.

 

[mckmas8808]

Taking into account obvious patterns of difference between men and women is not sexist.

Women who play games is one demographic, which might have some size depending on the type of game. But women who want to play difficulty-focused games is clearly much smaller in comparison.

You don't have to extrapolate a lot about abilities to even make that claim. You can simply observe things like the higher proportion of aggressive competitive interest in general in boys, or the often repeated and validated tendency for boys to more often have an interest in things/systems over people, which correlates easily with things like obsessively speed-running a hard game.

I think you need more data before just making these assumptions. It's how societies ruin the futures of certain bodies of people. Bad assumptions can lead to bad outcomes. Speed running a hard game isn't the default for most male gamers either.

That's for a really niche audience of people. You shouldn't use that as your constant.

 

[Mediocre Arachno-Lad]

Speed running a hard game isn't the default for most male gamers either.

It's just an example, dude.
Sports, e-sports, racing, gambling, goddamn tiktok challenges. Everything that has a competition element draws much more interest from a male demographic.
There's nothing to argue here, science has long been settled on this.

 

[TGO]

I wouldn't say it's difficulty, more lack of experience which increases the difficulty and puts them off.
more so for some then others and this applies to both men and women.
Games have become more accessible and controls have become better.
games have also become more cinematic which helps as at first they like to watch then actually try playing the game.
but controls are the biggest reason to give up on a game
just go back to a older game and see what they was being subjected to, gamers learned to adjust and master the most awkward control systems but to someone new that can be overwhelming and ruin the enjoyment of game and just put them off.
although there are still some that believe it all stupid.

 

[systemr123]

I will forever be perplexed at how gender and race become such important topics amongst a certain segment of gamers. Especially since the character in question doesn't actually exist.

Yep shouldn’t matter at all, unless you make a Norse history game for example where only white people lived or something like that. Obviously you should be able to reflect history without woke outrage.

And that’s the problem. Nobody has issues with playing as either female or male, or a certain race. It’s just that it should fit with the material and not shoehorned in because “diversity”.

And since gaming is escapism in general, just like movies and stuff, the characters in it should be attractive or fun to play with, and not be forced to be woke empty shells with ugly faces and disfigurements because “diversity and inclusion”. Leave all that stuff for the real world and all will be fine.

Entertainment companies like Disney are finally receiving the backlash they should have received immediately, and I hope in a few years everything can be back to normal, where an entertainment product is entertaining, and not a forced social lesson where no fun allowed.

 

[Woopah]

Isn't it likely that, on average, women aren't as good at games than men? Hand eye coordination, reflexes, spatial recognition etc...

We've seen a number of all female esports teams perform pretty terribly over the last few years. That doesn't prove anything but it doesn't exactly close the door on the notion either.

There's some potential for differences, but is that enough to stop people playing games?

For the OP to be right, it would need to be the case that the past saw gaming as being equally attractive to men and women. But that women stopped playing games because they were too hard.

And that we now have a gender balance because games are "easy enough for women".

I think cultural and marketing factors are more important. E-sport teams are irrelevant for the discussion, since obviously any woman in an e sport team is a woman who plays games.

 

[crackajack]

I guess looking on highly competitive, professional sports and how few or even none women are there when it's without gender leagues like eg in Rally or Formula 1, it is quite clear that the top women can't compete with the top men, even though sponsors would go to war to finally present a woman playing among the boys on the level Michele Mouton did in her peak era. I assume competitive stuff in general is closer aligned to the usually more aggressive, comepetitive tendencies of males. Males need to truly succeed to get any joy in life, females only need to exist to get "you go girl" BS encouragement and have at least the option to not actually work for anything in almost all cases, above poverty levels, which only millionaire nepo males get.

Nevertheless I doubt that difficulty is as important for average people stuff. Only Souls games and Wipeout Elite and males would also drop out. Proper easy stuff also helped males and true accesibility stuff helped disabled people even more so. I assume difference in interest in certain topics and gameplay is more important and while games are generally for many people still just kids stuff, the acceptance for adults increased and also the "natural" gap between females playing with dolls, males with superhero figures got smaller and girls today play more and more of the same stuff, especially videogames with mobile gaming being a driving factor. For either gender the small display with mostly crap games is a big micro-babysitter (ie keep that crying thing occupied for a while) contributor. Some girls now woman tried major successes, Sims, My little Pony, and the adventure and rpg genre more than action and shooters since forever, but I think today's girls are not so much pushed into specific roles, while some differences won't disappear anytime soon, maybe even increase with politics and society adjusting and pandering to that group and sometimes creating and or solidifying the very result they pretended to fight against.

 

[K2D]

Core and mainstream gamers DO NOT CARE whether you play as woman or a man. In general, as long as you have good writing and all that.

Men and women both like eye candy too, though you have a portion of men and women who HATE that as well. Mostly for ideological reasons.

The biggest barrier for most casuals is actually just being newbies and being unfamiliar to control schemes. The difficulty lies in them not having the motor memory needed for a running start. That, and the notion of a barrier of entry.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

There's some potential for differences, but is that enough to stop people playing games?

For the OP to be right, it would need to be the case that the past saw gaming as being equally attractive to men and women. But that women stopped playing games because they were too hard.

And that we now have a gender balance because games are "easy enough for women".

I think cultural and marketing factors are more important. E-sport teams are irrelevant for the discussion, since obviously any woman in an e sport team is a woman who plays games.

Good points. Copy that.

 

[mckmas8808]

It's just an example, dude.
Sports, e-sports, racing, gambling, goddamn tiktok challenges. Everything that has a competition element draws much more interest from a male demographic.
There's nothing to argue here, science has long been settled on this.

I know about the competition thing. I was just saying that example is a super small part of the market. Most people don't even complete their games and you're talking about speed running.

 

[mckmas8808]

Yep shouldn’t matter at all, unless you make a Norse history game for example where only white people lived or something like that. Obviously you should be able to reflect history without woke outrage.

And that’s the problem. Nobody has issues with playing as either female or male, or a certain race. It’s just that it should fit with the material and not shoehorned in because “diversity”.

And since gaming is escapism in general, just like movies and stuff, the characters in it should be attractive or fun to play with, and not be forced to be woke empty shells with ugly faces and disfigurements because “diversity and inclusion”. Leave all that stuff for the real world and all will be fine.

Entertainment companies like Disney are finally receiving the backlash they should have received immediately, and I hope in a few years everything can be back to normal, where an entertainment product is entertaining, and not a forced social lesson where no fun allowed.

You need to spend more time on GAF then. Some gamers 100% have an issue with the bolded.

 

[systemr123]

T

You need to spend more time on GAF then. Some gamers 100% have an issue with the bolded.

Those are no gamers, but just professional naggers

 

[rofif]

All women I know don't give a shit or know anything about games.
Some even actively hate them and don't let their husbands play games.

So obviously women can't into games

 

[Rickyiez]

Girls like to overcomplicate things while guys have too much ego in competitive multi-player games. No wonder I don't enjoy playing with others much anymore

 

[DarthPutin]

I don't think it's "inclusion" in this primitive sense, I don't believe it's difficulty, either, per se. Maybe more story-driven games, better graphics and more appealing/interesting themes. Plus gaming going more mainstream generally.

There are non-violent or more cutesy games that many women seem to enjoy (Animal Crossing, other Nintendo titles) - but I suppose those existed for a long time.

I promise you a ton of women are playing Hogwarths because of course it's appealing to them, even non-gamers. So that's an example of an obvious 'bait' right here.

Anecdotally, most of my female friends don't play games. Of those who do:

- One is struggling with Witcher 3 on easy and wishes it had zero battles. She just wants story/choices. Barely games. Playing Hogwarths right now. Says all her gaming friends only play Genshin Impact (there's another one!)

- Very hardcore, latest games Cyberpunk and Atomic Heart. She even writes LitRPG, artistically bankrupt, but profitable book genre based on video games.

- On and off with general interest in gaming. Goes for beautiful vistas like Horizon (or Green Hell, but she's into jungles heavily). Beat Hollow Knight by herself, including White Palace.

- As for myself, I always had interest in gaming as innovative medium for telling stories. However, what broke me was an appeal of being "inside the movie" and getting to inhabit these beautiful worlds, so definitely graphics/focus on story. And since I am an autist, when I am interested in something, I go HARD, not so much with gaming itself, but with information consumption. One of the first things I figured out were mods and cheats, so difficulty is neither here no there for me. Would never get into Nintendo style gaming (which many women seem to prefer).

 

[Wildebeest]

I think if any one thing has worked to make gaming more "female friendly" it is the takeover of paid gambling mechanics and cosmetics in gaming. A lot of women are fiends for gambling. It is really something that unites a lot of people.

 

[ResurrectedContrarian]

Being honest, the gender pattern is typical for many things, not just gaming (look at tabletop roleplaying, for another example)

• men (sometimes socially withdrawn, or even awkward or autistic) spontaneously create a whole new kind of activity, and it grows underground in groups of guys getting together to expand and push it forward (early video games, the original D&D, etc)
• during this phase, the vast majority of women look down on it as a nerd hobby for awkward guys, and wouldn't touch it with a 100 foot pole
• later, it finally breaks the threshold to become a mainstream hobby and the stigma disappears, coming along with heavy corporate and pop culture acceptance
• now women want into it, and join its ranks; but they find the "culture" of the hobby to be off-putting since it's so male focused... even though that's perfectly understandable given that it's inevitably a hobby that was generated entirely by men developing their own interests
• corporate players see an opportunity here: "expand the player base" (more $$$) by further inviting women in a pandering way, and also push back on the "boy's club" mentality as if that's a toxic problem, so that you get free publicity

 

[Shut0wen]

Thing is 90% of women that play games play multiplayer games, the other 10% play final fantasy, that is a fact, found this out irl