Women & Gaming: A Joetaku’s Corner Podcast
For many years, video games have been associated with young/teenage boys and male adults. The concept of a “female gamer” was seen as odd or appropriation of a boy’s activity. These days, women make up 45% of the gaming population in a variety of ways. (June 11, 2013 Tuesday). Women Comprise Nearly Half of Gamer Population; Study shows 45 percent of women play video games, are frequent game purchasers. PR Newswire.) Streaming, let’s plays, reactions, unboxing, the list goes on and on. With big names in gaming such as iHasCupquake, KittyKatGaming and stacyplays, female gamers are everywhere and not the unicorns they once were.
In recent years, the online gaming community has shifted to a genre known as “Let’s Plays” where a streamer or content creator does an entire play-through of a game and either streams it via Twitch or YouTube or uploads the gameplay sections in an episodic manner to their YouTube channel. Many people enjoy this type of content as it’s a great way of being able to see a game for what it is outside of a possibly biased review or don’t have the free time to play the game themselves, so they live it vicariously through their preferred content creator. One such female gamer is C.A., who has graciously agreed to speaking today. She is a gamer who does play such titles as Animal Crossing, The Sims and Devil May Cry on occasion but her preferred method to enjoy gaming is watching Let’s Plays online of games that grab her interest and keeps it there.
Women are not only limited to playing games for twitch or YouTube, but they are also moving into the esports scene and making names for themselves to beat out players such as Ninja. According to research done in Australia, women have won the Counter Strike: Global Offensive (CSGO) championships in 2018 & 2019 respectively. (July 11, 2021 Sunday). PCByte Reports the Global Rise of Female Gamers; The face of gaming is changing with the number of female gamers on the rise. PCByte looks at the shifting gaming demographics in Australia and around the world.. PR Newswire.)
Due to the pandemic, many people have decided to become full time streamers or content creators with many of them being women. This rise in gender diversity has paved the way to the gaming community evolving and adapting to the changing times as it should have decades ago.
