For a long time, we have considered video games as a male prerogative, much like football and fast cars.

The different actors and stakeholders in the games business – publishers, developers, journalists etc. – thought of female players as an insignificant minority. For proof, consider the atmosphere of most video games – violence, heroes with rippling muscles, female caricatures rather than characters – and the tone of the trade press with its buddy culture running straight into macho bravado. And yet we only need to look at the shelves of the major supermarkets or the latest games advertising (1) to realize that things have begun to change. More and more girls and women play and admit they play (as if this had been something good girls don't do). Who are these female gamers and will publishers' creative policies evolve to match this new trend?

If you need convincing, take a look at the rankings of best video games sales for France: for several months now, Les Sims (Electronic Arts) and Nintendogs (Nintendo) have been in the top ten week after week. If you take the week of January 19, 2007, there are even three different versions of Nintendogs among the best play station game sales and, symmetrically, three versions of the Sims among the best PC game sales (2). These games have one thing in common: women represent more than 60 % (3) of the customer base. In parallel, the success of the Wii and Nintendo DS play stations is largely due to female users: a 2007 survey showed (4)S that 65 % of DS users are female (figures for the more recent Wii have not yet been released).

A Real Surge

There are several explanations for this new phenomenon. First of all, video games, after long being given the wary eye, have entered the cultural mainstream. Today, a whole generation of adults has grown up with video games. For them, video games are as "normal" as TV or the movies and there is nothing childish or juvenile about playing games. Secondly, thanks to the evolving work distribution in the household, women have more time on their hands than 10 or 15 years ago. New generations thus discover new leisure activities and video games have become a natural inclusion. Lastly, video games themselves have changed. New designers have appeared on the scene and even if the proportion of female designers remains small, the game themes and iconography have evolved. While violence remains a popular theme, many more complex, more "social" games have appeared on the market.

Together, all of these changes have produced a phenomenon which the mass public has not fully registered: a 2005 survey (5) shows that while 14 % of men play video games, women, who currently represent 12 %, will soon catch up. Figures have not changed since. However, it is important to note that this survey includes cell phone games and games included in PC operating systems, such as "Solitaire" and "Poker".

Initially slow to take the measure of change, game publishers have since reacted. In France, Ubisoft has taken the lead: every year, the latest version of "Alexandra Lederman" owes its success nearly exclusively to the category of 6- to12-year-old girls (6). Logically, in 2006 the publisher offered a Nintendo DS version of the game (the touch-screen play station is easy to master and has had immense success among the female public) and for the year-end season, Ubisoft released an entire range of games for very young girls: "Fashion Academy", "Young Stylist", "Léa, Animal Doctor", which rates second to Nintendo's "Wild World, Animal Crossing" in the hit parade of best-selling "feminine" games in 2006 (7). Likewise, 70 % of sales for Sony's "A Dog's Life", released in 2003 for the PS2 play station, were registered among female customers across all age groups (8). Generally speaking, out of every five games sold in 2006, one was aimed at the female market (9).

Another publisher new to the market, Micro Applications, has released a series of adventure games which have had considerable success among girls and women thanks to the "Nancy Drew" series of the more adult-oriented "Dreamfall". The violence-free adventure game requires a certain degree of thought and analysis and stimulates social interaction (players must sometimes work together to solve the mysteries) and according to figures obtained from Micro Applications, it seems to be the favorite game style of adult players. Thus 70 % of the visitors to Micro Applications' on-line games forum are women (10).
Female Players – Diametrically Opposite to Clichés

Nevertheless, publishers, having long ignored this market, should be aware of developing a stereotyped image of female gamers, assuming that they only like violence-free games centered around feminine professional activities and animals. Thus, the above-mentioned survey (11) shows that 75 % of female gamers vote for the very violent and dark Survival Horror genre (its biggest successes no doubt being "Silent Hill" or "Resident Evil"). While this may be a surprise for some, Jane Jensen, who created the fantasy adventure game "Gabriel Knight", points out that "If you look around in public transport: Who are the majority of readers of Stephen King or Clive Barker? It's women! It's not the violence or horror that turns them away, it's the sexism!" (12)

One may thus question the need to develop games "calibrated for the under 50 housewife" in order to attract more women to video games. Why not prefer to simply move away from the macho clichés which populate many older games and appeal to the players' intelligence or esthetic sense, regardless of age and sex? In any case, there is a clear trend for publishers and developers to give women key jobs in games development when as recently as five years ago, these teams were exclusively male. Ubisoft, for example, has charged a young Canadian, Jade Raymond, with developing "Assassin's Creed", its 2007 bestseller, while Focus Games released the action game "Silverfall", inspired by the Blizzard blockbuster "Diablo" and developed by 32-year-old Jehanne Rousseau. Things change, and this evolution may lead to many more girls and women joining video gamer ranks.
Continued Male Domination

Nevertheless, a number of barriers remain, which dissuade women from taking an interest in video games, and they are largely not due to the publishers. Namely, many female players complain of the misogynous atmosphere which continues to reign in the player community, in particular during on-line games. While 30 to 40 % of players taking part in "Counter Strike" and "Unreal Tournament" (13) are women (14) (the Frag Dolls, a French, Ubisoft-sponsored team and international champions of these two games, are a good example), most hide behind a masculine pseudonym because they fear that otherwise they will not be able to find a playing partner … In the "persistent universes" (the MMORP, such as "World of Warcraft" (15), some female players even complain of harassment and are obliged to choose masculine game names in order to disappear in the crowd. In "Second Life" (16), the most famous daily-life simulator, where there is no violence, according to the publisher (17) there is perfect parity of male and female players with 50 % each. Blizzard, which publishes "World of Warcraft", refuses to communicate figures for male/female distribution, but according to an unofficial source, the game is played by approximately 2 million female subscribers.
Moreover, while the number of girls and women in virtual universes continues to grow, it is interesting to note that on "World of Warcraft" 40 % of female players operate in couples (18). They have generally been introduced to the game by their companion, whose help enabled them to ease into the game which many initially find quite unappealing. It is a fact that many women, who in spite of the changes in social roles find less time to devote to playing games than men, are often discouraged by an inordinately long (19) game-learning process. Video games seem to become a "shared" leisure form, much like the movies.
Another very significant observation is that half of computer-based female players never actually purchase a video game (20): in many couple it is the male partner who is the video game "prescriber". This is more proof that both publishers and trade press have not yet learned how to communicate with these female players, whose foray into the world of video games has basically caught everybody by surprise.

Rémy Goavec

(1) See for example, the Nintendo TV campaign in the summer of 2006.
(2) Source: Baromètre GFK of January 19, 2007
(3) Source: Survey on “Analysis of players”, Micro-Applications/TNS Sofres 2005.
(4) Source: GFK – Ubi Soft analysis 2007
(5) Idem
(6) Ubisoft announces 100,000 copies sold for the 2005 version
(7) Source: GFK – Ubi Soft analysis 2007
(8) Source: Sony entertainment
(9) Source: GFK – Ubi Soft analysis 2007
(10) Source: Micro Applications 2006
(11) "Analysis of players", Micro-Applications TNS Sofres, 2005
(12) Comments recorded in 2005 by Rémy Goavec for "Les Inrockuptibles", not published.
(13) Action games that can be played on the Internet, the most popular in their category
(14) Source: "Analysis of players", Micro-Applications TNS Sofres, 2005
(15) A "massively multiplayer" game, published by Blizzard Entertainment, about 8 million subscribers
(16) On-line game, published by Linden Lab
(17) Le Monde, January 2, 2007
(18) Source: Blizzard Entertainment US, December 2006
(19) Source: 01.net, Survey on players, 2006.
(20) "Analysis of players", Micro-Applications/TNS Sofres, 2005