Happy International Women’s Day: Girl Gamers are Here to Stay

It’s a famous stereotype: an average gamer is a teenage boy, playing games by himself in his dark bedroom. Well, that average gamer may not be who, or what, you think.According to a study conducted by Entertainment Software Association, women gamers over 18 years old actually top the number of male gamers under 18 – 31% against 18%. Where’s that pasty teenage boy?You probably haven’t heard that almost half of all video gamers are women, which makes it an activity enjoyed by both sexes. It’s actually a very timely theme, given the fact that it’s International Women’s Day on March 8, and because of the recent media attention for gender gaps. With this in mind, an interesting question pops up: what are female gamers playing that male gamers are not, and vice versa?Women are – generally – not into multiplayer games, such as World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, and Runescape, for example. While half of solitary role-playing games are women, when it comes to social role-playing games, two-thirds of the members are men. It’s an interesting outcome, since women overall are – stereotypically, again – more social than men.You can also find big differences between the most common primary motivations to play games for male and female gamers: for women, it’s completion (getting all stars, completing all missions - 17%), fantasy (16.2%) and design (14.5%). For men, it’s competition (14.1%), destruction (11.9%) and completion as well (10.2%).Talking about gender gaps: despite the fact that women almost make up the majority of the gaming audience, the number of women working in the games industry remains shockingly low – In Britain, only 12% of game designers are women. The reason? Well, it isn’t because women don’t want to work in games…Women of the gaming world: there’s still more men than women gamers on YouTube. Ready to make six figures? Check out your competition: Loserfruit, iHasCupquake, LDShadowLady and Lia (Sniper Wolf).Our conclusion? Stereotypes schmereotypes… Everyone is welcome at the Arcade Hotel. Happy International Women’s Day!