According to Google Analytics, only 24 percent of gamers are women. At the same time, only 32 percent of teenagers who are interested in game development are girls.
According to the researchers, the loss of interest in game-making happens at a time when gender stereotypes regarding games and IT in general are gaining strength.
To illustrate this, experts from Google asked girls to draw a picture of a person who creates video games. And they found a stark difference between what young and grown-up girls draw.
Eighth-grade girls draw women – beautiful, long-haired girls sitting with glasses at a computer, while high school girls (in grades 11-12 in the United States) draw men – bald, bespectacled, fat. And this is a reflection of how perceptions change with age; how stereotypes are internalized and become an obstacle [to working in gamdean].
In general, this can be said about all technical professions – it’s harder for women to get into it, even if they have a predisposition and ability.
Education is partly to blame for this – children are not taught that there is such an industry as gamedev, and that there are a huge number of professions other than programming.
There should be more women in gamedev. At the very least, because women are a huge audience, and if they are also directly involved in development, games can become more diverse and friendly to other types of audiences.
However, not all companies have been able to achieve this so far – and, for example, deliberately including female characters in games “for a tick” is a sign of “flawed feminism.
Yes, we don’t like (and I speak for myself, too) the ticking off of boy-babes and LGBTQ characters in video games. It’s frankly a stretch. When in a game about a historical period, the developers forcibly introduce women into the setting who were not present in that context and did nothing, it looks awful. I think it’s flawed feminism.
Feminism itself only benefits video games. A variety of characters, strong and interesting female characters–can this make a game look bad if it’s done tastefully?
