Female gamers, more than an ornament

Written by Rahma Yulita | Read in Indonesian

The competitive scene in the gaming world, such as esports, is gaining traction. It does not only exist for male gamers, but has also started to include female gamers with no less quality, enabling them to compete in tournaments.

An example is Universal Pin (or known as UniPin), a payment service provider for online games that held the UniPin Ladies Series Southeast Asia Championship (USC).

USC is a female-only “Mobile Legends: Bang Bang” tournament in Southeast Asia. Citing Suara, UniPin Community Senior Vice President Debora Imanuella said this tournament was created to facilitate female gamers so that they can compete and show their abilities at a professional level.

This is especially considering that there are still very few communities that provide a comfortable space to guide and nurture women to compete professionally in esports–almost non-existent, in fact, in other countries.

As of 2020, women account for nearly 41% of all gamers in the United States. In Asia, which accounts for 48% of the world's total gaming revenue, the female gamers population reaches 40%-45%, according to Google and Niko Partners.

The increasing number of female gamers raises questions regarding their motivation and behaviour when gaming. According to Forbes, several studies revealed the differences in the motivation and behaviour of male and female gamers.

Besides looking for distraction, female gamers in France play games to challenge themselves in competition. Their male counterparts play games to relieve stress and achieve success through competition.

In the United States, women play games for social reasons, where they like to be socially involved to maintain good relations with others. The game selection is endless and women tend to play games in all kinds of genres, especially trending online games.

Female gamers are often underestimated

Despite their increasing number and ability to compete in the competitive scene like most male gamers, it is not uncommon for female gamers to be underestimated in the gaming industry.

Good Girl: Game On!, a gaming community for women, in its press statement confirmed that popularity does not make today's gaming industry gender friendly. In fact, 65% of female gamers felt rejected when they wanted to join a gaming community.

In addition, 77% of them suffered bad treatment, such as gender discrimination, sexual harassment and derogatory comments. In 2022, the female pro-gaming community Luna Nera uploaded a sexist and demeaning message hurled by a male influencer at one of its members.

Luna Nera also conducted a survey which found that 72.5% of its members had been harassed online.

A study by Reach3 Insights with Lenovo showed that 59% of 900 female gamers from the US, China and Germany chose to hide their identity.

Why? Of course, to avoid sexual harassment when gaming.

Citing Kumparan, the esports team FF Gaming had a similar experience. Apart from sexual harassment, they have also experienced discrimination in tournaments.

However, with the development of the gaming and esports industry, there are more and more places for female gamers to compete to demonstrate their abilities and show that they deserve respect because of their gaming skills, not just because of their gender.

Women in the gaming industry in terms of products

Seeing how the gaming industry has featured many female gamers in the competitive scene, how about women in the industry in terms of products?

There is still a small number of “important” female characters in games. This is because of the stereotype in game products, where female characters are fewer in number, more often used as sexual objects and more frequently presented as non-essential or passive characters.

In 2022, EDHEC Business School interviewed 31 gamers regarding the impact of gendered storytelling on gamers' perception of gender stereotypes. They studied the games "Assassin's Creed" and "The Witcher".

The results are quite surprising and concerning. This is because the proportion of male and female characters in the game "Assassin's Creed" has a fairly large gap, which is 87.1% versus 12.9%. The proportion of speaking time of male characters in the game is 90.2%, while female characters’ proportion is only 9.8%.

"The Witcher" generated a similar result, where the proportion of male characters dominate with 60%-80% and female characters are only 10%-30%.

However, we can see some progress with the appearance of playable female characters in the legendary game “Grand Theft Auto 6 (GTA)” for the first time in its history since the game was released in 1997. “GTA 6” is rumoured to be released in 2024.

In recent years, positive changes have also been seen in terms of equalising gender representation. One example is the striking change in the physical appearance of the character Lara Croft in the game "Tomb Raider". She now looks more modest and does not highlight her sexy clothes.

This of course greatly influences people's perception of the role of women in games.

By demonstrating gender equality in game products, game publishers showed a social responsibility to contribute to educating their audience about gender equality, diversity and inclusion.

What is the future for women in the gaming industry?

The role of women behind the scenes in the gaming industry is an interesting topic to talk about. Statista data showed that 38% of game developers in 2021 were women, up from 27% in the previous five years.

Having more women behind the scenes means developers can design and create games that will not only target an exponential growth of female streamers and gamers, but also truly connect with them.

While there are still significant issues with the depiction of women in gameplay, having more playable female protagonists in games will improve the game's quality in creating a more inclusive gaming community.