Male and Female segregation in the Gaming Industry.

Recently in my Critical Game Studies lectures we had a discussion on whether or not is the gaming industry sexist? We all had a look at a few pages or surveys in our grasps. We all started on one mission to discover why there was a lack of females on our course and in most of the industry at all to be honest. Through out this post we will be going on a journey to find this one out.

The source of data we used for this discussion were two survey, one performed on 2010 and the other in '09. The first survey is about who many of each gender are hired in the gaming industry, whilst the other is more a survey about each gender playing computer games as a whole.

Table 1. The percentage of man a women in each job description within the gaming industry.

                                              Males % Females %
Ops/IT/HR                             53%        47%
Writing                                   70%        30%
Mkt/PR/Sales                         75%       25%
Production                              79%       21%
QA                                        87%        13%
Executive                               88%        12%
Visual Arts                             89%        11%
Design                                   90%        10%
Audio                                    90%        10%
Programming                         95%        5%

Analysing the data, one can see there is a vivid correlation that there are fewer women in the industry than males. A smaller number of females in face. How does this affect the industry and its products.

Whilst one can already see the the biggest concentration of females is in HR and the greatest minority are in the programming sector, one has to ask "Why is this?". It appears females no longer have to type up redact or E-Mails other than the most mainial now such as checks, there is no longer any interest in that field and no need for it.

I have one thing to suggest for this. Games didn't immediately start off woman friendly. The reason for this being that when games started out they were often text based and their reputation was quite nerdy with mostly males owning the high end (at the time). And due to this games were often see as a sort of subculture where they would often be aimed at males. And the guys who made these game tended to be nerdy guys in a basment how were shunde by pop culture. Where as today in the mainstream markets only programmers know how to code and they were the ones who started of this industry along with their pals. And until recent years nobody know the industry excised unless you were a gamer.

How ever when the few women got in it was because they earned their place there. By this I mean in such departments as programmers artists. These people are programmers but there are just few due to the reputation by the masses they have received unless they had a passion for it.

However you could also ask who are the ones playing games (so they would have the desire to create the master pieces?) The picture below will show the UK % of genders playing games and their time spend doing so, showing a correlation.



Right, there is one thing this chart tells us, woman continue playing these games (possibly because their mental state lasts longer) whilst men become distracted with other things. However I don't think I can back my self up on that one.

Any way, what is evident is that both genders now play computer games. So unless you are designing to teenagers you need to keep a unisex design in mind. However if you were designing specifically for one gender you wouldn't need to worry about this at all due to the difference in playing times between both genders.

But now there is another problem: Which gender are computer games made for?

As a class, we were given a list of the latest 30 in the charts for the previous week ending in 27th Jan 2012. Although I wasn't about to locate the list so it's typed up below as the best selling games in America (Hopefully this is the next best thing).

1. CoD: MW3
2. Fifa
3. Battlefield 3
4. Zumba Fitness.
5.The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

As is visible, the top three games appear to be made for the more hardcore audience, they are the once who are playing just so they spend more time to improve themselves, due to the nature of computer games. The oddest part comes in at number four where a mainly female games comes in, which I find surprising as the gaming world is slightly becoming less male orientated. However Elder Scrolls in aimed at both audiences but it is male lenient due to the historical and brutal nature of the games context.

What is the meaning of this then? Well it just means that the focused has stayed with the male market due to the higher demand of said goods but for female games the sector is gradually growing as the market becomes more lenient. However games aimed at both gendered are in higher demand now to due their market share and are available to both gendered so there is a greater market value in them for profit.