Women and Gaming

 Introduction:

When it comes to the marketing, reception, and overall use of video games, most of it ends up leaning towards a masculine audience. That is not always the case, as more feminine players continue to stack up on how many people play video games in our modern day. Although things are starting to market to an equal population, there is still backlash and controversies focusing towards female players and shows why mistreatment and harassment towards women is still a problem in the video game industry today.

Growing numbers

 Studies show that of the video game market today, 46% of its makeup involves women. The percentage of it is slowly increasing, as 15 years ago the percent was at 38%. A big reason to show this recent boom of female players is the rise of mobile gaming. With a lot of the population in modern times owning a phone or mobile device, many women (including older women) are starting to access more free and simple games on app store or even Facebook. Since they are considered a part of the gaming market, they still receive profit from these players and show a growing rise of female players due to how most of the mobile games are considered "time-killers" or are not that complex to get into. Although people might see this as hurting the video game industry, it still shows the large rise of female gamers. 

GamerGate and sexism towards female gamers

As stated before, mistreatment towards women in the gaming industry is still a big problem today. With game developers, game company employees, and even eSports players, the majority of them are males while females are still viewed as a minority and are still few and far between in this industry. Although with the rising numbers of female gamers, there is still sexism targeted towards them by men with making negative and distasteful comments towards them playing video games. The public awareness of this led to the events of "Gamergate" which started in 2012. It started when Anita Sarkeesian (media critic) started a Kickstarter with creating videos about female representation in video games. Even though it got a lot of backers and positive feedback from female gamers, there was still a large amount of male gamers outraged over the whole thing, to the point of creating a viral hashtag (#Gamergate) and going to news sites and message boards spewing hatred and harassment towards female video game players. Although this whole situation is not relevant as it used to be, the toxic mindset of gaming only being for men still floats around and female players still get harassment for being gamers (especially on social media). It is not certain if these views will ever go away, but as video game companies continue to aim towards different markets hopefully women in gaming will be more normalized in the future.

 Conclusion:

The video game industry is starting to become more diverse and reach out towards different people, there still needs to be improvement when it comes to female gamers and their treatment from others. Being able to play as a female character and having more variety towards female players in the games they play is showing a good way of how to make them more accepted in playing video games in general. Harassment and sexism are still an occurring problem in big spaces and online gaming communities, but what is important is how developers and companies are incorporating more women in the industry and are able to market to not only just men or women, but to everyone. Variety is what keeps video games engaging, and women deserve that just as much as everyone else.