The Importance of the Female Gamer

As one looks ahead to the future of our favorite pastime, there is currently no demographic that is more important to the ultimate health and blossoming of gaming into a mainstream medium than women. Face it guys–Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo–they have you. You’re old news. Your money has already been spent. But the girl gamer, that ever less elusive female who enjoys playing video games, or even better, the female who even doesn’t know (yet) that she enjoys playing video games, she is the real untapped market.

Women gamers are the fastest growing demographic in the industry right now. Nintendo recently announced that more females are now playing the Wii and DS in Japan than males–an incredible landmark in the gaming world, but one that went by largely unheralded. Likewise in the U.K., 79% of females play some form of games online, also overtaking their masculine counterparts for the first time. In fact, when asked about their favorite leisure activities, the women in that same survey reported that playing games or puzzles online was ranked equally with having sex. Equal. with. sex. Wrap your mind around that.

I am convinced that the female gamer is the most important participant in the industry right now, and although companies like Nintendo have made great strides to engage women in gameplay that is attractive to them, publishers and developers must do more. There are several reasons to do this:

• Only when women see gaming as mainstream will video games be able to mature into the dominant medium of entertainment, taking their place or even eclipsing books, television, and film. Even in my generation (I was born in the 80’s), there are far too many women who either grew up with the impression that video games were unhealthy and/or not for girls, or without games that catered to their tastes. Many of the new fathers in this world are largely gaming friendly, but mothers must be too before video games can become truly accepted and mainstream. The faster this happens, the better.

• Women represent the largest untapped potential in terms of growth and profit. There is currently almost no competition for their dollars, but in ten years, there will be clearly entrenched developers with a foothold in the female market. The time to get in is now, while the landscape is new and untilled.

• The biggest hurdle to being successful in this market is that there aren’t enough games being made from the ground up with women in mind. This is because female representation in the workforce that creates, designs, and distributes games is severely underrepresented. Developers with predominantly male employees don’t want to make games for girls, and when they do, they struggle to figure out how to think like a female in order to create games that women will buy.

It’s a vicious cycle, as women aren’t likely to seek out these jobs (let alone get hired for them) unless they are gamers, but there aren’t likely to be many games that cater to women until more women take careers in game development. The industry desperately needs visionary women who can be poised strategically in the industry to make games that cater to female’s tastes, but there’s no female counterpart to the Will Wright’s or Cliffy B’s out there yet.

Like it or not, women are about to shape the industry. Developers and publishers are realizing that women will spend money on games if there are games being made that they will want to play, and these companies are adjusting their strategies accordingly. If you’re a female and you play video games, what you buy will have a significantly larger effect on what the next decade of gaming looks like compared with what I spend my money on. The normal guy-centered, FPS/Sports/Action titles will still continue to be dominant, but the new money, the millions that will be spent on new genres and new developments, will be ruled by the female demographic. So invest wisely.

But more than that, play on. It’s time that the female gamer became better represented both in the media and in the minds of us men. Welcome to the couch. I know you’ve already been here a while, but try not to take offense. After all, we’re guys–sometimes it takes us a while to notice.

–WG

What did you think of this article? Are female gamers really that important to the industry, or do you have a different take? Leave your thoughts below, and let’s get the conversation rolling!