A Look at Gender in Games
We'll start with how gender is outside of the industry to try and help us better understand why the work force behind the games are predominantly male.
As you can see from the graph below you find that yes, there are more male players than female but not by a large margin until the teens where the female player base seems to drop 11% behind the male market. This evens out a little more going into the 20's and early 30's with a large proportion of the male market dropping (14% vs females 11%) but still shows a clear divide between the two genders.
As expected the drop in both male and female players through 35-49 is ruffly the same as the 20-34 bracket with slightly more females dropping off. 50+ there is a very large drop.
The average hours players is the most interesting factor in this chart for me as it is clear the male market play almost twice as much as the female market throughout the brackets, till the 50+.
My thoughts on this is history, history between men and women. Equality between the two genders is still a relativity new concept to the human race given we have lived with certain beliefs and understandings of what each of us bring to the community & family.
The high amount of both male and female in younger ages to me seems totally reasonable as we have always thought of games as a method of learning and understanding, which we have covered in Natural Funativity article by Noah Falstien.
Even though we live in a world were equality between both of us is law, is there a underlining sense of we are different and we both have different traits, skills & abilities to offer which will ultimately effect charts like this. For example, in history the males have been the hunter gatherers, the soldiers and the leaders. Where as the females have been the cooks, the cleaners and the ones to look after the children not to mention give birth to them.
There's a clear differences between us but we both rely on each other, work together as a community to provide, look after and survive. I think this is so imbedded in us it will take generations for us to break to achieve real equality and even then, we are still different in body and mind.
Ancient games when they first came into existence I believe we're reserved to the powerful, rich or religious (for divination) and they may of not even been considered "games", at least not as we know them now. Tactic games for determining war strategies by kings or leaders, the rich to gamble or pass time and religious for determining fate or gods will by druids & monks. All these roles have one thing in command, they would of all been male during that era.
Young females would of played games as pass time, such as in church as discussed in the "Games Britannia" series but would be (at that time) around the age of 12+ be forced into marriage or baring children.
This may sound far fetched but if you think about how much more the males would of been able to access games than females through their existence and what age groups they would of been you can see a connection with the chart above.
Target market are somewhat to blame for when looking at getting more females into the gaming community. This could be down to many factors such as male developers and designers predominantly making games and not knowing what the female market want but having a clear sense on what the males want as they can just cater to themselves.
My last point is the age groups, how accessible games are and the multiple genre's of games. As digital game have only really existed for 30+ years its possible the 50+ age group don't play them as the younger generations do due to them not being brought up with them as we have. I expect a rather large rise in the older generation playing games as we get older. Notably I believe it will still be predominantly male but we will see a rise on both sides.
We are still in the changing point regarding equality between the two genders and it is something that will take time and work on both sides to achieve. Something that has been done throughout humanity's existence cannot simple be changed instantly but it does require everyone to understand this and accomplish it together.
